Checkmate?

Tehran, Dec 18, IRNA – "Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Davood Danesh-Jaafari had recently said that Iran is to follow a transaction mechanism on the basis of currencies other than the dollar in retaliation for the US anti-Iran banking policies.

"Since any transaction, made worldwide on the basis of dollar, should be checked in the Clearing House in New York, we decided in line with the government's policies to carry out transactions in other hard currencies," said Danesh-Jaafari in a press conference recently on the sidelines of an e-banking conference. He said Iran plans to minimize use of dollar in its hard currency basket as certain US banks tried to disrupt Iran's dollar-based transactions. He said the move taken by Iran's banking system will in the long-run downgrade the use of dollar as a hard currency. Elsewhere in his remarks, Sheibani put Iran's forex reserve fund assets at dlrs 10 billion."

-- How long is that run? A decade or less to dump those 10 billion reserve dollars? Does Danesh think the Euro is safer? As if the Europeon dollar is any less fiat than the US. Hey! Whatever happened to the Iranian oil bourse that was to create so much damage to the dollar?

W. Joseph Stroupe of GeostrategyMap "makes a brilliant case for sitting up and taking notice of how the Russian bear is opportunistically wrestling to divest the United States of its world hegemony."

Reading this guy could worry a person.

Joe includes Germany in Russia's circle of friends. "Some of the economies of the West, such as Germany, are being included within the developing circle. Outside the circle are those economies of the West that are to be left out of the growing international energy-security arrangements currently being constructed, as alluded to above. Interestingly, and as a profound new development, it isn't the United States that defines the path and scope of the circle. Instead, it is Russia and its strategic partners who are defining it."