Euro contre dollar: un décompte

Il y a un an et demi, il y eut beaucoup de divers bruits autour de l’intention de l’Iran de passer du dollar à l’euro pour la vente de son pétrole. (Il s’agissait de la fameuse Iranian Oil Bourse.) Puis les bruits se sont apaisés, emportés par d’autres (les habituelles rengaines sur l’attaque par surprise et sans avertissement des USA contre l’Iran).

Il y a quelques jours, le site WSWS.org a commencé la publication d’une longue analyse en trois parties sous le titre «Why does Bush invoke the threat of World War III?», comme le président US l’a fait en octobre dernier. L’analyse détaille l’imbroglio géo-politique, stratégique, pétrolier, idéologique, autour de l’Iran et de ce qu’on nomme à nouveau “l’arc de crise”. Il s’agit d’une analyse classique, largement sollicitée par les événements, qui a toujours habité les esprits des stratèges anglo-saxons, britanniques d’abord, américanistes depuis 1945 et l’accord entre Roosevelt et Ibn Saoud sur le pétrole de l’Arabie.

Un passage nous a paru particulièrement intéressant, dans le troisième partie de l’analyse de WSWS.org (aujourd’hui). Il a trait à la position du dollar et a surtout l’intérêt de faire un point général sur les devises utilisées pour les tractations, notamment avec les pays pétroliers de la région. On s’aperçoit ainsi que l’Iran a effectivement presque abandonné le dollar : 65% de ses ventes se font en euros, 20% en yen et le reste (en dollars) serait sur le point de passer au dirham. D’autres détails sont fournis dans une partie importante du texte, le jugement général étant effectivement d’un effacement désormais en cours du dollar: «In the current tense international situation, the possibility that the euro might supplant, at least partially, the US dollar as the main currency of world trade is becoming tangible.»

Voici le long extrait du texte concernant cette situation:

«Washington’s policy of embargo against Iran and war and occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq has destabilized this already tense situation and strengthened tendencies pushing toward the abandonment of the US dollar by the Middle East oil trade. Iran, which has no legal trade with the US, and upon which US financial authorities are trying to impose a total blockade of financial transactions, is perhaps the Middle Eastern power with the least reason to hold dollars.

»Unsurprisingly, the Iranian state has progressively shifted its oil sales at the Iranian Oil Bourse out of US dollars and into other currencies, notably euros and Japanese yen. This event has gone surprisingly unreported in the US corporate media.

»According to a March 2007 report in the Scotsman, China’s Zhuhai Zhenrong Corporation began paying euros for Iranian oil deliveries in late 2006. In September 2007, Japan’s Nippon Oil agreed to purchase oil in yen. In October 2007, AFP quoted Mohammad-Ali Khatibi, deputy head of the National Iranian Oil Company, as confirming Iran’s switch out of the US dollar.

»Khatibi said: “Iran is selling about 85 percent of its oil in the non-dollar currencies. Currently, about 65 percent of the oil sale income is in euros and 20 percent in yen.” He also suggested that the remaining 15 percent of Iranian oil sales could soon be denominated in dirhams, the currency of the United Arab Emirates—a major Iranian trading partner.

»The UPI press service interviewed PFC Energy analyst David Kirsch, who noted that for Iran, “a key motivation is the US informal sanctions that the Treasury, and [US Treasury] Undersecretary [for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence] Stuart Levey in particular, put on banks not to do financial transactions with Iran.”

»Kirsch also implied that, should Iran be allowed to continue its currency policy unmolested, it might end up leading a shift of the Persian Gulf oil industry out of dollar-denominated oil sales. He said: “There is also another key issue that you are seeing, not just in Iran, but in other oil producers, especially Gulf oil producers, is given the depreciation of the dollar, it is better to hold their reserves at least in euros, it is a better store of wealth. Some of the other Gulf producers will accept payment in euros.”

»In the current tense international situation, the possibility that the euro might supplant, at least partially, the US dollar as the main currency of world trade is becoming tangible. The dollar’s role in international markets—from its plunge against other currencies to the explosion of (dollar) prices of global commodities and raw materials—resembles nothing more than worldwide theft benefiting the American bourgeoisie.

»The rapid fall of the dollar risks pricing the European bourgeoisie out of world markets, as its goods are undercut by US competitors, whose costs are counted in cheaper dollars. It also cuts down the value of dollar-denominated profits realized abroad by European corporations, once brought back to Europe and converted into euros.

»This was perhaps most prominently discussed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy during his latest trip to Washington, D.C. Noting that every cent that the euro rises against the dollar costs Franco-German airplane maker Airbus 100 million euros in profits, Sarkozy warned that “monetary disorder risks growing into economic war.” He refrained from adding that Airbus’s difficulties profited its only competitor, US-based Boeing.

»For oil sellers like Iran, Russia, and the Persian Gulf kingdoms, most of whose trade is realized with Europe and Asia, the fall of the dollar against the euro (and to a lesser extent versus the Asian currencies) cuts into the purchasing power of their oil earnings, unless they are denominated in other currencies.

»The Asian bourgeoisies, for whom the US is a key export market, are caught between surging prices for oil and raw materials on dollar-denominated markets, and the low dollar prices for their manufactured goods set by US retailers like Wal-Mart. According to figures published in Le Monde, in 2007 alone, dollar prices for oil, wheat, lead, and gold have increased on world markets by 64 percent, 63 percent, 118 percent, and 26 percent, respectively. This has led to what some, notably in Australia, have called the “China resources boom.”

»The US government’s demand that China let its currency rise in value against the US dollar is an unsubtle invitation for the Chinese bourgeoisie to take large capital losses (in home-currency terms) on its gigantic dollar holdings.

»Chinese officials have begun to argue for greater use of other currencies in trade and finance, and in the Chinese government’s own investment portfolio. On November 7, the vice-chairman of the Chinese parliament, Cheng Siwei, said: “In terms of the structure of our foreign exchange reserves, we should take advantage of the appreciation of strong currencies to offset the depreciation of weak currencies.... For example, in the current foreign reserves structure, I mean the bonds we bought, the euro is appreciating against the yuan while the US dollar is depreciating against the yuan. So we should make a balance between the two.”

»Another official, Xu Jian of the People’s Bank of China, commented: “The US dollar’s global currency status is shaky and the creditworthiness of dollar assets is falling.”

»The interest of Chinese officials in other currencies, such as the euro, comes as Chinese goods are increasingly penetrating the European market. The EU reportedly overtook the US this year as China’s largest export market; already in 2006, the EU, due to its larger export volume to China, was China’s largest trading partner (216.2 billion euros, versus 208.9 billion euros for the US, according to EU figures).

»Any significant shift in global demand for dollars toward demand for euros would, however, pose a massive challenge to the US economy. Due to its trade and current accounts deficits, the US requires daily inflows of billions of dollars in capital—that have so far largely come from East Asia—for its financial system to function. Any significant contraction of these inflows risks triggering massive interest rate increases and a collapse in the dollar, as demand for dollar-denominated debt dries up, and thus a serious recession in the US and world economy.

»In this context, it should be remarked that the US establishment has long been aware of the euro’s strategic and military implications. In 1997, five years before the launching of the euro, Harvard economics professor and US National Bureau of Economic Research CEO Martin Feldstein wrote in Foreign Affairs that the formation of a single European currency risked weakening “America’s current global hegemony.” He added that this “would undoubtedly complicate international military relationships more generally.”

»The link between currency rivalry and military tensions is not the product of Feldstein’s imagination.

»Such calculations clearly took place in Europe and Russia at the time of the US invasion of Iraq, in 2003—when the governments of Germany, Russia, and France were trying to oppose US plans for Middle East domination. At an October 2003 joint press conference with then-German chancellor Gerhard Schröder in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that Russia could price its oil sales to Europe in euros.

»Iran’s more recent decision to sell its oil in euros and yen also takes place in a definite military context: a US campaign of political provocation resembling that which, in 2003, led to the US invasion of Iraq.»

Un point doit être mis en évidence en conclusion, qui concerne la perception des événements. Le passage du dollar à l’euro a été présenté, au printemps 2006, comme un événement d’une importance considérable. Un débat féroce s’engagea pour savoir si cela était ou non possible. Ce débat s’est rapidement éteint. L’événement, perçu comme explosif, spectaculaire, a été oublié mais il a finalement eu lieu (dans tous les cas pour l’Iran); il s'est produit sans guère de publicité alors que son annonce avait provoqué tant d'excitation. Nous n’avons pas eu l’effet explosif attendu, ou prévu. Cela n’empêche rien à l’importance de l’événement, qui est une partie de l’explication de la chute du dollar. Cette chute apparaît ainsi encore plus comme une conséquence de la perte de confiance dans cette monnaie, et la conséquence de sa puissance politique en déclin accéléré. Pour le reste, on peut avoir matière à réflexion sur la réalité et le poids de la communication et de ses effets, tant pour dramatiser très rapidement un événement à venir que pour oublier tout aussi rapidement qu'il est en train de survenir.

Mis en ligne le 3 décembre 2007 à 09H16