If the price of Oil is negative what happens to the petro dollar and consequently the dollar?
- Richard Allen
- Apr 20, 2020
- 3 min read
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/072915/how-petrodollars-affect-us-dollar.asp
The World has been off the Gold standard for decades now ever since President Nixon pulled the US off of the Gold standard due the vast expenditures of the Vietnam and Cold war which created a massive foreign trade deficit.. American once vast Gold supply accumulated primarily since World War II was dangerously diminishing to pay these debts. The US consequently switched to an Oil based system of backing its dollar/currency. This really meant lead and steel of its military as American control over the World Oil supply was almost complete outside the former Soviet bloc and enforced with force of all kinds. The first chink in this seemingly invulnerable system was the Islamically thwarted Iranian revolution, (itself benefiting from US's defeat in Vietnam). The US has spent trillions and killed millions to try to reestablish this monopoly in the decades since. Its empire continues to run massive yearly trade deficits.
If the US did not have its immense military, other countries would have long since cut off the US consumption of their very tangible commodities and cease to accumulate potentially worthless US debt obligations and currency. Countries like Libya, Iraq, Venezuela, Russia, etc... who have or attempted to escape this bloodsucking cycle of US dollars for their Oil and other commodities have been sanctioned and threatened with every form of destruction. America has become a massive drug addict armed to the teeth with nukes, No one dared to challenge this psychopathic country which has threaten to nuke countries dozens of times over decades and has never surrendered the right to a nuclear first strike.
The system hit a glitch recently with this massive decrease in consumption resulting from the pandemic. Demand for oil has dropped so precipitously, (reaching negative $37 a barrel), that Oil futures contracts which set prices long into the future demanding payment upon physical delivery has created an crisis for huge oil brokering corporations. These prices are well under the already draconian low prices that so recently was at the unheard price of $11 a barrel. Not only are oil brokers unable to find buyers for this oil, have no place to put the oil but are bankrupt as well by the crisis. There are storage costs and interest payments to be met on loans secured to conduct these transactions.
Corporations of all industries have attempted to combat against the falling global rate of profit by looting their respective countries central banks by way of interest free or even negative interest rate loans to pump up their declining share prices. Thus the obscene displays of wealth reflected in the stock markets, on which management and shareholder cash in while the Titanic of an economy sinks. So corporate treasuries are entirely devoid of any excess capital to tide them over from even the most limited interruption in the circulation of capital or commodity sells. The scandalous recent bailout so quietly and shameless supported by all of the reformist progressive politicians and propagandists, reflects the underlying reality that Corporations, Banks indeed all capitalist institutions are effectively bankrupt. being held up solely by the brute force of the modern day neoliberal Capitalist police 24/7 round the clock surveillance state.
If Oil is worthless, how can not the dollar which is entirely dependent on it, not also be worthless. The dollar is exponentially more worthless by the shameless inflation of the currency performed by the Federal reserve and other associated allied foreign banking institutions. A decade of austerity imposed on the entire World has not come close to paying back all the socialized bad debt of speculation and outright fraudulent capitalist institutions of all kinds resulting from the 2008 crisis.
I predict a system of rationing to be setup in the aftermath of this tremendous devaluation of the dollar among First World working classes. Loyalty must be insured in the home countries as neocolonies will revert back to their original brutal colonial forms. Billions in the Third World will starve and die diseases. Respective middle classes will disappear or become miniscule defined in terms of classical Marxist doctrines. Oligarchies will be formalized with titles and backed by brute force. Revolution will become evolutionary imperative of a species desperate to survive one more day.
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