For Americans forced to use Federal Reserve Notes (U.S. money) or those who have been concerned with the state of our economy, it is time to take a long hard look at obtaining gold and start converting as much of your U.S. money to it as you can!

There has been a great deal of concern over the U.S. dollar losing value against the Euro. I will point out that the REAL problem is NOT the Euro, but not having a gold-backed currency! Despite the U.S. military successes in Iraq, the U.S. dollar’s value has not strengthened as currency traders had expected. The U.S., as the only remaining ‘superpower’ has only maintained domination in the world based on two factors:

1. Its overwhelming military superiority.

2. Its control of world economic flows by maintaining the role of the dollar as the basis of the world's reserve currency.

It is clear that both the war in Afghanistan and Iraq were about preserving the latter, maintaining the role of the U.S. dollar in International commerce! But there is a fly in the ointment that we are not hearing in the mainstream media, and it has nothing to do with the Euro!

The Muslim world has found a novel way to strike back at the West – or at least at Western bankers who rule the world's currencies – introduce a gold coin. As of August of this year, Malaysia began to use gold dinars in all trade between Islamic countries. Other Muslim countries are also following suit. The gold dinar, which is 4.25 grams of 24-carat gold, is expected to unite Muslim nations who blame "greedy" currency traders for Asia's downfall in the economic crisis of 1997–98. There is also a silver Islamic Dirham coin of 3.0 grams silver. The dinar is currently being used in 22 countries and is minted in 4 countries.

The Malaysian premier, Prime Minister Mahathir Modamad, spearheaded this move last year in November when he proposed that the gold dinar would eliminate paper money which has no intrinsic value and would cease making exchange rates arbitrary and subject to manipulation as seen during the Asian financial crisis. "The risk of speculation can be reduced to almost nothing. World trade can actually expand because the cost of business will be much reduced as the need to hedge will practically disappear," said Modamad.

The Islamic world has historically used a gold coin, the Dinar. Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad says, "Muslims cannot escape the fact that gold is our money. Instead of fighting the will of Allah, I propose that we embrace it. If the one billion Muslims of the world would use gold as their unit of account the volatility would stabilize."

The result of a gold-backed currency in the world could cause the US dollar to crash in value. Some suggest the gold dinar would cause a shift in economic power from the West to the East. Trading in Islamic dinars has recently been opened on the Internet.

This is not a new occurrence. Since the end of World War II, there have been several distinct changes in the role of the U.S. dollar in the world. The role of the dollar was directly tied to that of gold. So long as America enjoyed the largest gold reserves, and the U.S. economy was far the most productive and efficient producer. Organizations of elites, such as the Bilderberg meetings, were organized to gain the same advantages and share the wealth with Europe. By the early 1970's, the Bretton Woods Gold Exchange began to break down, as Europe got on its feet economically and U.S. gold reserves were being transferred to Europe and especially to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The growing economic strength of Western Europe, not surprisingly, coincided with soaring U.S. public deficits.

All during the 1960's, France, under Charles de Gaulle, began to take its dollar export earnings and demand gold from the U.S. Federal Reserve, which was legal under the Bretton Woods agreement. France was not the only country to do so. Other central banks increased their call for U.S. gold in exchange for their dollar reserves.

By May 1971 the drain of U.S. Federal Reserve gold was alarming. Even the Bank of England joined the French in demanding U.S. gold for their dollars. The Nixon Administration opted to abandon gold entirely. This removed the restraints on printing new dollars. The limit was only how many dollars the rest of the world would take. This second disastrous change, handed control over American monetary policy to large international banks such as Citibank, Chase Manhattan or Barclays Bank. Beginning in the mid-1970's, the U.S. system of global economic dominance underwent a dramatic change based on Oil.

Before going further, I will re-emphasize the crucial fact that Muslim countries, including all the OPEC countries, have maintained a gold-backed currency while those countries involved in the IMF and World Trade Organization (WTO) have switched to fiat (non-gold backed) currencies. Oil importing countries around the world were all forced to pay their expensive new oil import bills, predominantly with fiat money. OPEC oil countries were flooded with new oil dollars. A large share of these oil dollars came to London and New York (i.e., IMF controlled Federal Reserve) banks where a new process was instituted in May 1971 at the Bilderberger meeting in Saltsjoebaden, Sweden.

OPEC was suddenly flooded with dollars it could not or, more likely, would not use. U.S. and UK banks took the OPEC dollars and exchanged them for Eurodollar bonds or loans to countries of the Third World desperate to borrow dollars to finance their oil imports.

The buildup of these petrodollar debts by the late 1970's laid the basis for the Third World debt crisis in the 1980's. Hundreds of billions of dollars were exchanged between OPEC, the London and New York banks and back to Third World borrowing countries.

The Third World debt crisis began when the U.S. Federal Reserve unilaterally hiked U.S. interest rates in late 1979 to try to save the failing dollar. After three years of record high U.S. interest rates, the dollar was 'saved', but the entire third world was choking economically under usurious U.S. interest rates on their petrodollar loans. By August 1982, Mexico announced it would default on repaying loans. To enforce debt repayment to the London and New York banks, the banks brought the IMF in to act as 'debt policeman'. Public spending for health, education, welfare was slashed on IMF orders to ensure the banks got timely debt service on their petrodollars. Now you see why our education system began failing in the late 1970’s!

The IMF 'Washington Consensus' was developed to enforce draconian debt collection on Third World countries, to force them to repay dollar debts, prevent any economic independence from the nations of the South, and keep the U.S. banks and the dollar afloat.

Japan had recently emerged as an industrial nation and major importer of oil. David Rockefeller and others, in an attempt to bring Japan into the system, created the Trilateral Commission in 1973. Japanese trade surpluses from export of cars and other goods was used to buy oil in dollars. The remaining surplus was invested in U.S. Treasury bonds to earn interest. The G-7 was founded to keep Japan and Western Europe inside the U.S. dollar system. Japan tried on several occasions to get the IMF to use three currencies; the U.S. dollar, the German mark and the yen, to share the world reserve role. It was never allowed and the U.S. dollar remained dominant.

In 1976, at the IMF Jamaica Accords, gold was demonetized for all countries who had signed their “Articles of Agreement” in order to keep the value of gold down in regards to their fiat currency. In response, U.S. gold reserves have been set at a value of $42.222 per ounce by statute (See U.S. Treasury website). What this means is that all the gold trading that our government does is currently at a value much lower than the current market rate of $396.50 (as of 11-27-03). This means that trading done with U.S. gold to other countries is at our statutory rate and NOT market value. See where our wealth is going?

In a superficial sense, the IMF’s plan seemed to work but, if you look deeper, it created an ever-worsening economic decline in living standards around the world. Thus, the reasoning behind the move of Muslim countries to gold-backed currency! This whole scenario has blown up in the faces of the IMF and the U.S. government.

Saudi Arabia has become the most recent recipient of Pakistani nuclear technology transfers. This follows the discoveries that Pakistan has continued its support of Islamic militancy in the Philippines and potential terrorism elsewhere.

According to Selig S. Harrison, a prominent U.S. Asia expert and the Asia director of the Center for International Policy, it is now common knowledge that Gen. Musharraf helped North Korea with uranium enrichment technology transfers in return for missiles. "The CIA gathered incontrovertible proof that U.S.-supplied C-130 transport planes were used to ship six Nodong missiles from North Korea to the AQ Khan research laboratories in March."

Once again, let us remember that all of these countries use gold-back currency.

No OPEC country dared to violate the requirement to trade their oil using the U.S. dollar until November 2000 when the French and other European Union countries supposedly convinced Saddam Hussein to defy the United States by selling Iraq's oil-for-food not in dollars, 'the enemy currency' as Iraq named it, but only in euros.

I purposely placed “supposedly” in italics for this reason. The U.S. Dollar has steadily dropped in value in relation to the Euro and would have been ample justification for the United States to pick this particular time to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein. However, there is even more important justification that would propel us into war with Iraq.

Remember that Muslim countries and other far east countries believe in gold, gold-backed currency and resent the IMF/FED/WTO system of fractional reserve banking (or more easily termed “floating currency”) and always have. It has now come to light that these countries have been working on a long-term plan to profit from this system as long as they could and then remove themselves completely from it!

As Saudi Arabia has 60% of the world’s oil reserves, they were in the pre-eminent position to accomplish this goal but for one factor, they did not have nuclear capability until just recently! This, of course, is a threat large enough to prevent imperialistic countries from invading.

Therefore, the first step to move their plan along would be to have another Muslim, oil-producing country take the first step. Logically this would be Iraq.

Saddam Hussein has been a target of the U.S. since before the 1991 Gulf War. He has repeatedly tried to provoke the U.S. while attempting to maintain an image of solid adherence to Muslim principles.

Therefore, when Iraq leaked plans to defy the dollar in favor of the euro, their impetus was to create a panic situation. The concerns of the FED and IMF were, if the move to the euro spread through OPEC countries, there could be a panic sell-off of U.S. dollars by foreign central banks and OPEC oil producers. This would thus devastate the already weakening dollar. Saddam was not alone in spreading this rumor. In the months prior to the latest Iraq war, the same rumors were heard from Russia, Iran, Indonesia and even Venezuela. An Iranian OPEC official, Javad Yarjani, delivered a detailed analysis of how OPEC at some future point might sell its oil to the EU for euros not dollars. He spoke in April, 2002 in Oviedo Spain at the invitation of the EU.

Many researchers have put out articles stating that the Iraq war was seized on as the easiest way to deliver a warning to OPEC and others, not to flirt with abandoning the U.S. dollar in favor of the euro. Was this part of the Muslim overall plan as well?

Saudi Arabia, at least up until now, has followed the IMF/FED requirements to trade in U.S. dollars. This devalued dollar has enabled the Saudi's to purchase gold (of which they had very little) with their profits in oil sales in order to obtain lasting value for their rapidly depleting oil reserves. Saudis believe that once their oil is gone, which is an inevitable reality in the long term, they don't want dollars. They would much prefer gold. In our next issue, I will continue with further issues regarding the IMF and FED’s activities to curtail the inevitable drop in value of the U.S. dollar. In the meantime, I would strongly suggest that Americans consider buying gold as it will ultimately be the best means to protect your financial viability.

©2004 Gerry O’Shier All rights reserved.