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For your holiday listening pleasure, Jim Willie returns for a comprehensive discussion of the petrodollar and how current events around the Arabian Peninsula are a sign of great distress for this monetary scheme.

Again, what is the “petrodollar”. The idea was championed by Henry Kissinger in 1973 as a way to create ongoing demand for US dollars by maintaining the pricing of crude oil in dollars only. The effects of this were two-fold:

1. To create constant demand for dollars…dollars which were now completely unhinged from any gold backing…and this demand would soak up any excess supply of new currency being printed in the US for military and social purposes.
2. To force oil-exporting nations to keep their foreign currency reserves in dollars, thus creating an ongoing demand for US treasury bonds. This constant demand for bonds would help to keep interest rates…and thus the US debt service cost…unnaturally low.

As a result, any threat to this system, whether it has come from Iran, Iraq or Libya has been squashed either politically or militarily over the past 40+ years. The current flare-up of tensions between Saudi Arabia and Qatar must be viewed through this prism and that is the primary topic of this 47-minute discussion.

To that end, please be sure to review these links while you’re listening:

• http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-06/forget-terrorism-real-reason-behind-qatar-crisis-natural-gas
• http://theantimedia.org/qatar-us-dollar-next-syria/
• http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-tells-fundraiser-that-qatar-is-funding-terrorists/article/2627558
• http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-29/diplomatic-quagmire-qatar-deepens-3-days-saudi-ultimatum-expires
• https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/opinion/28/06/2017/What-is-Qatar-GCC-showdown-really-about
• https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/06/30/business/30reuters-gulf-qatar-currency.html
• http://www.news.com.au/sport/football/explosive-corruption-allegations-rock-qatars-winning-world-cup-bid/news-story/559f09eeba4f5e60c1da8131df39f855

I hope that you find this helpful and informative. Thanks for listening.

TF