It all started in Bretton Woods.
"For the first time in history, in the twentieth century, America was able to tax the world indirectly, through inflation. It did not enforce the direct payment of taxes like all of its predecessor empires did, but distributed instead its own fiat currency, the U.S. Dollar, to other nations in exchange for goods with the intended consequence of inflating and devaluing those dollars and paying back later each dollar with less economic goods—the difference capturing the U.S. imperial tax. Here is how this happened. Early in the 20th century, the U.S. economy began to dominate the world economy. The U.S. dollar was tied to gold, so that the value of the dollar neither increased, nor decreased, but remained the same amount of gold. The Great Depression, with its preceding inflation from 1921 to 1929 and its subsequent ballooning government deficits, had substantially increased the amount of currency in circulation, and thus rendered the backing of U.S. dollars by gold impossible. This led Roosevelt to decouple the dollar from gold in 1932. Up to this point, the U.S. may have well dominated the world economy, but from an economic point of view, it was not an empire. The fixed value of the dollar did not allow the Americans to extract economic benefits from other countries by supplying them with dollars convertible to gold."
(The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse, by Krassimir Petrov)
While the US is thinking of growth, deficit, currency..., China, India, Russia, Japan, and possibly Turkey are about to trade an increasing percentage of oil with Iran IN THEIR OWN CURRENCIES. They are not willing to pay the US tax anymore. This is the main problem with Iran! On the bright side, we will have a good benchmark to price different currencies, as the Iranian oil will perform like the Rosetta stone used to translate hieroglyphics.
Iran is the biggest economical threat for 2012 and a war resolution is not discarded at all. All the investment banks and main funds have created various scenarios just in case we see oil above 150 USD. But, is USA in the mood for another war?
