Forum

  l’ébranlement du systeme monétaire international s’accélère, le coup du refus des investisseurs emiratis candidats au rachat des ports appartenant à  P&O risque d’avoir des conséquences incalculables ...

Amicalement F Gazel

Arab central banks move assets out of dollar
By Philip Thornton, Economics Correspondent
Published: 14 March 2006
Middle Eastern anger over the decision by the US to block a Dubai company
from buying five of its ports hit the dollar yesterday as a number of central
banks said they were considering switching reserves into euros.
The United Arab Emirates, which includes Dubai, said it was looking to move
one-tenth of its dollar reserves into euros, while the governor of the Saudi
Arabian central bank condemned the US move as “discrimination”.
Separately, Syria responded to US sanctions against two of its banks by
confirming plans to use euros instead of dollars for its external transactions.

The remarks combined to knock the dollar, which fell against the euro, pound
and yen yesterday as analysts warned other central banks might follow suit.
Last week the US caused dismay after political opposition to the takeover
of P&O by Dubai Ports World forced DPW to agree to transfer P&O’s US port
management business to a “US entity” .
The governor of the UAE central bank, Sultan Nasser al-Suweidi, said the
bank was looking to convert 10 per cent of its reserves, which stand at
$23bn (£13.5bn), from dollars to euros. “They are contravening their own
principles,” he said. “Investors are going to take this into consideration
[and] will look at investment opportunities through new binoculars.”
Hamad Saud al-Sayyari, the governor of the Saudi Arabian monetary authority,
said: “Is it protection or discrimination? Is it okay for US companies to buy
everywhere but it is not okay for other companies to buy the US?”

Syria has switched the state’s foreign currency transactions to euros
from dollars, the head of the state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria, Duraid
Durgham, said.
Last week the White House told US financial institutions to terminate all
correspondent accounts involving the Commercial Bank of Syria because of
money-laundering concerns. Mohammad al-Hussein, Syria’s finance minister,
said: “Syria affirms that this decision and its timing are fundamentally
political.”

The euro rose a quarter of one percentage point against the dollar to a
one-week high of $1.1945, although it retreated in later trading.
Monica Fan, at RBC Capital Markets, said: “The issue is whether we will
see similar attitudes taken by other Middle Eastern banks. It is a question
of momentum.”

Nul doute que si nos amis Britanniques choisissaient le rafale pour équiper leurs PA, nous profiterions de la qualité de leur technologie (c’est beau la communication & le marketing politique!).

Le processus achevé  de sujetion militaire envers les USA n’est-il pas un élèment d’alignement désormais structurel de leur politique étrangère ? en Irak comme ailleurs, en matière nucléaire ou conventionnelle ?
En un mot, sont-ils des alliés réels et effectifs de la France ?
“
““A 2 doigts du désastre

http://www.corlobe.tk/article2298.html#forum420

Publié le 15 mars 2006 par Rédacteur en chef
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Dernière mise à jour le 15 mars 2006
A la fin décembre 2005, une équipe de soudeurs des chantiers navals de la division sous-marins de BAE Systems à Barrow-in-Furness a terminé le jonctionnement des éléments de la coque de l’Astute, le premier sous-marin nucléaire d’attaque de sa classe destiné à la Royal Navy.

Cela marquait la réalisation physique de la structure de l’Astute, permettant ainsi aux équipes travaillant dans la mécanique et les systèmes de combat de commencer leur travail à bord plus tôt que prévu auparavant.

Il est loin le temps où le programme Astute se trouvait en pleine confusion, au début 2002. C’est à ce moment, 5 ans après l’attribution du premier contrat, que BAE Systems et le ministère de la Défense se sont finallement réveillés devant l’énormité des dépassements de budgets et la montée des retards causés par une mauvaise gestion du projet, un outil de conception assisté par ordinateur immature et une hémoragie de compétence et d’expérience dans l’industrie sous-marine.

Le projet Astute avait déraillé. Après de longues négociations, le ministère de la Défense et BAE Systems se sont mis d’accord en février 2003 sur des changements à la structure du contrat de l’Astute, mis en place de nouvelles échéances financières et recadré le programme. Par conséquent, la compagnie a perdu 250 millions de £ sur ses comptes de 2002.

Beaucoup est survenu depuis cette époque. BAE Systems a reconnu les faiblesses de son modèle de gestion de projets, qui séparait les fonctions du Prime Contract Office [1] à Farnborough des activités d’ingéniérie et de fabrication du chantier de Barrow. Il a donc rassemblé les 2 organisations dans une seule équipe responsable du projet, centrée sur Barrow.

Une autre dimension vitale dans le programme de reprise en main a été la participation du constructeur américain de sous-marins, General Dynamics Electric Boat, au travail de développement. Un accord de Foreign Military Sales [2] a été conclu avec l’US Naval Sea Systems Command [3] afin de permettre à Electric Boat d’assister BAE Systems pour le travail de conception. De plus, une liaison de données classifiées à haute-vitesse a été établie entre les 2 rives de l’Atlantique pour permettre à une équipe de dessinateurs américains de travailler sur le modèle informatique de l’Astute.

Par Richard Scott, consultant naval de Jane’s.

[1] Bureau des contrats principaux.

[2] Ventes militaires à l’étranger.

[3] Commandement américain des systèmes navals.
Article original : Jane’s (http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jdw/jdw060315_1_n.shtml”
(le lien s’ouvrira dans une nouvelle fenêtre).”“

je voudrais par me répéter mais ...

IED : improvised explosive device, le vieux piège à con du booby trap, autrement dit

VBIED : vehicle-borne IED : la voiture suicide !!!! hourra ...

aimons la précision du vocabulaire comme l’on s’aime soit même, et bonne journée.

Je me souviens d un coquetele washingtonien organise par l ex ambassade de Yougoslavie ou les cinq “presidents” etaient presents (a l epoque un systeme de rotation etait en place). Ils avaient amene avec eux un ou deux cuisiniers charges des “petits fours”.
Le “repas” fut excellent et je trouvais l ambiance excellente aussi. D autant plus qu a l epoque je revenais de Malaisie ou un systeme de rotation “presidentielle” existait aussi.
Je souhaitais vivement que leur systeme reussisse - malgre les divergences typiquement yougoslaves qui faisaient les delices des journalistes americains .... et du Departement d Etat .....

Il n en fut rien comme l Histoire nous le dit.

Je n avais jamais vraiment compris pourquoi on ne preferait pas d=ans nos capitales “civilisees” qu un tel systeme de rortation soit preferable a l eclatement d un pays.

Je comprends un peu mieux maintenant: mes habitudes a voir des coups fourres partout ne m avaient pas eclaire sur ce point .... jusqu a votre article.

Je presume donc que l eclatement de l Union sovietique a donne des idees a tout le monde pour pereniser les conflits permanents.

A quand donc l eclatement de la Chine et de l Inde: voila au moins un but qui peut meubler les nuits (blanches, noires ou multicolores) de nos diplomates occidentaux .... puisqu il n est pratiquement plus possible de rever a la globalisation.

Si vous trouvez un monde meilleur que ce cirque romain permanent faites-moi signe !!

En attendant c est un delice de faire fonctionner ses meninges a partir de vos analyses.

Continuez, cela me permettra peut etre d annuler tous mes abonnements ailleurs !!

...et c’est sans commentaires…

http://www.lexpress.fr/info/quotidien/actu.asp?id=2875

L’Express, je le suis depuis quelques semaines. Il semble bien en pointe pour tout ce qui est néo-conservatisme à la sauce française : “Le parisianisme” dans sa plus belle expression comme on peut le lire ici parfois.

J\‘ai lu dans un sujet très récent que l\‘idée du Rafale pour les UK à la place du JSF venait \“peut-être\” d\‘un bloger \“Richard North\”...
Cela fait en fait quelques mois que je suis en relation avec deux journalistes anglais, dont Jon Lake. Ceux-ci m\‘avaient déjà affirmé au mois de Juin que eux-mêmes préfèreraient voir des Rafale sur leurs porte-avions, plutôt que le F-35. Cette idée, selon eux, était assez répandue chez les journalistes.

Tiens, cet avis australien sur l\’\“avion du siècle\” est intéressant et instructif. Peut-être que les américains réchignent à partager leurs secrets et progrès technologiques parce-qu\‘ils ne sont peut-être ni vraiment des secrets, ni des progrès…
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/not-so-stealthy-the-15b-fighters/2006/03/13/1142098404532.html

Tiens, cet avis australien sur l’“avion du siècle” est intéressant et instructif. Peut-être que les américains réchignent à partager leurs secrets et progrès technologiques parce-qu’ils ne sont peut-être ni vraiment des secrets, ni des progrès…
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/not-so-stealthy-the-15b-fighters/2006/03/13/1142098404532.html

J’ai lu dans un sujet très récent que l’idée du Rafale pour les UK à la place du JSF venait “peut-être” d’un bloger “Richard North”...
Cela fait en fait quelques mois que je suis en relation avec deux journalistes anglais, dont Jon Lake. Ceux-ci m’avaient déjà affirmé au mois de Juin que eux-mêmes préfèreraient voir des Rafale sur leurs porte-avions, plutôt que le F-35. Cette idée, selon eux, était assez répandue chez les journalistes.

On peut quand meme se demander si les herauts de la globalisation n auraient pas ete entraines par leur convictions presque religieuses - ce en quoi ils s apparenteraient aux neocons - et que le defaut principal de leur croisade globalisatrice ne residait pas au fond dans un enthousiasme fixe sur le dollar qui ne tenait aucun compte des inegalites sociales et economiques entre les p[ays du G8 et leurs associes et le reste de la planete.

Auy fond peut etre qu ils auraient du ecouter Stiglitz ....

rions un peu ...
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0610,fiore,72365,9.html

A partir du moment où la Russie reprend du poids diplomatique et économique, elle redevient suspecte de tous les maux

Comme si la crise pétrolière n’était pas aussi la conséquence de la guerre d’Irak, des menaces sur l’Iran, toutes aventures dont la Russie n’est pas responsable !
Comme si la “révolution orange” à Kiev avait été fomentée à Moscou !

A qu’il était doux pour l’Occident le temps d’Eltsine où le pays était à l’encan et où le “patron” n’avait que quelques heures de lucidité par jour

La sécurité énergétique des nations ne peut passer que par des accords à long terme en se passant des marchés d’option sur le brut et de la spéculation d’origine politique

Les sidérurgistes sont bien capables de passer des contrats à long terme pour le minerai de fer et le charbon à coke
Sont-ils pour autant socialistes ?

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HC10Ak01.html

The F-16 dollar backing
Since 1979 the US power establishment, from Wall Street to Washington, has maintained the status of the dollar as unchallenged global reserve currency. That role, however, is not a purely economic one. Reserve-currency status is an adjunct of global power, of the US determination to dominate other nations and the global economic process. The United States didn’t get reserve-currency status by a democratic vote of world central banks, nor did the British Empire in the 19th century. They fought wars for it.

For that reason, the status of the dollar as reserve currency depends on the status of the United States as the world’s unchallenged military superpower. In a sense, since August 1971 the dollar is no longer backed by gold. Instead, it is backed by F-16s and Abrams battle tanks, operating in some 130 US bases around the world, defending liberty and the dollar.

Middle East
Why Iran’s oil bourse can’t break the buck

By F William Engdahl

Mar 10, 2006

A number of writings have recently appeared with the thesis that the announced plans of the Iranian government to institute a Tehran oil bourse, perhaps as early as this month, is the real hidden reason behind the evident march to war on Iran by the Anglo-American powers. The thesis is simply wrong for many reasons, not least that war on Iran has been in planning since the 1990s as an integral part of the United States’ Greater Middle East strategy.

More significant, the oil-bourse argument is a red herring that diverts attention from the real geopolitical grounds behind the march toward war that have been detailed on this website, including in my piece, A high-risk game of nuclear chicken,  which appeared in Asia Times Online on January 31.

In 1996, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, two neo-conservatives later to play an important role in formulation of Bush administration’s Pentagon policy in the Middle East, authored a paper for then newly elected Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That advisory paper, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”, called on Netanyahu to make a “clean break from the peace process”. Perle and Feith also called on Netanyahu to strengthen Israel’s defenses against Syria and Iraq, and to go after Iran as the prop of Syria.

More than a year before President George W Bush declared his “shock and awe” operation against Iraq, he made his now-infamous January 2002 State of the Union address to Congress in which he labeled Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, as a member of the “axis of evil” trio. This was well before anyone in Tehran was even considering establishing an oil bourse to trade oil in various currencies.

The argument by those who believe the Tehran oil bourse would be the casus belli, the trigger pushing Washington down the road to potential thermonuclear annihilation of Iran, seems to rest on the claim that by openly trading oil to other nations or buyers in euros, Tehran would set into motion a chain of events in which nation after nation, buyer after buyer, would line up to buy oil no longer in US dollars but in euros. That, in turn, goes the argument, would lead to a panic selling of dollars on world foreign-exchange markets and a collapse of the role of the dollar as reserve currency, one of the “pillars of Empire”. Basta! There goes the American Century down the tubes with the onset of the Tehran oil bourse.

Some background considerations
That argument fails to convince for a number of reasons. First, in the case of at least one of the oil-bourse theorists, the argument is based on a misunderstanding of the process I described in my book, A Century of War, regarding the creation in 1974 of “petrodollar recycling”, a process with which then-US secretary of state Henry Kissinger was deeply involved, in the wake of the 400% oil-price hike orchestrated by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

The US dollar then did not become a “petrodollar”, although Kissinger spoke about the process of “recycling petrodollars”. What he was referring to was the initiation of a new phase of US global hegemony in which the petrodollar export earnings of OPEC oil lands would be recycled into the hands of the major New York and London banks and re-lent in the form of US dollar loans to oil-deficit countries such as Brazil and Argentina, creating what soon came to be known as the Latin American debt crisis.

The dollar at that time had been a fiat currency since August 1971 when president Richard Nixon first abrogated the Bretton Woods Treaty and refused to redeem US dollars held by foreign central banks for gold bullion. The dollar floated against other major currencies, falling more or less until it was revived by the 1973-74 oil-price shock.

What the oil shock achieved for the sagging dollar was a sudden injection of global demand from nations confronted with 400% higher oil-import bills. At that time, by postwar convention and convenience, as the dollar was the only reserve currency held around the world other than gold, oil was priced by all OPEC members in dollars as a practical exigency.

With the 400% price rise, nations such as France, Germany and Japan suddenly found reason to try to buy their oil directly in their own currencies - French francs, Deutschmarks or Japanese yen - to lessen the pressure on their rapidly declining reserves of trade dollars. The US Treasury and the Pentagon made certain that did not happen, partly with some secret diplomacy by Kissinger, bullying threats, and a whopping-big US military agreement with the key OPEC producer, Saudi Arabia. At that time it helped that the shah of Iran was seen in Washington to be a vassal of Kissinger.

The point was not that the US dollar became a “petro” currency. The point was that the reserve status of the dollar, now a paper currency, was bolstered by the 400% increase in world demand for dollars to buy oil. But that was only a part of the dollar story. In 1979, after the accession to power of the ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran, oil prices shot through the roof for the second time in six years. Yet, paradoxically, later that year the dollar began a precipitous free-fall, not a rise. It was no “petrodollar”.

Foreign dollar-holders began dumping their dollars as a protest against the foreign policies of the administration of US president Jimmy Carter. It was to deal with that dollar crisis that Carter was forced to bring in Paul Volcker to head the Federal Reserve in 1979. In October 1979 Volcker gave the dollar another turbocharge by allowing interest rates in the US to rise some 300% in weeks, to well over 20%. That in turn forced global interest rates through the roof, triggered a global recession, mass unemployment and misery. It also “saved” the dollar as sole reserve currency. The dollar was not a “petrodollar”. It was the currency of issue of the greatest superpower, a superpower determined to do what it needed to keep it that way.

The F-16 dollar backing
Since 1979 the US power establishment, from Wall Street to Washington, has maintained the status of the dollar as unchallenged global reserve currency. That role, however, is not a purely economic one. Reserve-currency status is an adjunct of global power, of the US determination to dominate other nations and the global economic process. The United States didn’t get reserve-currency status by a democratic vote of world central banks, nor did the British Empire in the 19th century. They fought wars for it.

For that reason, the status of the dollar as reserve currency depends on the status of the United States as the world’s unchallenged military superpower. In a sense, since August 1971 the dollar is no longer backed by gold. Instead, it is backed by F-16s and Abrams battle tanks, operating in some 130 US bases around the world, defending liberty and the dollar.

A euro challenge?
For the euro to begin to challenge the reserve role of the US dollar, a virtual revolution in policy would have to take place in Euroland. First the European Central Bank (ECB), the institutionalized, undemocratic institution created by the Maastricht Treaty to maintain the power of creditor banks in collecting their debts, would have to surrender power to elected legislators. It would then have to turn on the printing presses and print euros like there was no tomorrow. That is because the size of the publicly traded Euroland government-bond market is still tiny in comparison with the huge US Treasury market.

As Michael Hudson explains in his brilliant and too-little-studied work Super Imperialism, the perverse genius of the US global dollar hegemony was the realization, in the months after August 1971, that US power under a fiat dollar system was directly tied to the creation of dollar debt. The US debt and the trade deficit were not the “problem”, they realized. They were the “solution”.

The US could print endless quantities of dollars to pay for foreign imports of Toyotas, Hondas, BMWs or other goods in a system in which the trading partners of the United States, holding paper dollars for their exports, feared a dollar collapse enough to continue to support the dollar by buying US Treasury bonds and bills. In fact in the 30 years since abandoning gold exchange for paper dollars, the US dollars in reserve have risen by a whopping 2,500%, and the amount grows at double-digit rates today.

This system continued into the 1980s and 1990s unchallenged. US policy was one of crisis management coupled with skillful and coordinated projection of US military power. Japan in the 1980s, fearful of antagonizing its US nuclear-umbrella provider, bought endless volumes of US Treasury debt even though it lost a king’s ransom in the process. It was a political, not an investment, decision.

The only potential challenge to the reserve role of the dollar came in the late 1990s with the European Union decision to create a single currency, the euro, to be administered by single central bank, the ECB. Europe appeared to be emerging as a unified, independent policy voice of what French President Jacques Chirac then called a multipolar world. Those multipolar illusions vanished with the unpublicized decision of the ECB and national central banks not to pool their gold reserves as backing for the new euro. That decision not to use gold as backing came amid a heated controversy over Nazi gold and alleged wartime abuses by Germany, Switzerland, France and other European countries.

Since the shocks of September 11, 2001, and the ensuing declaration of a US “global war on terror”, including a unilateral decision to ignore the United Nations and the community of nations and go to war against a defenseless Iraq, few countries have even dared to challenge dollar hegemony. The combined defense spending of all nations of the EU today pales by comparison with the total of current US budgeted and unbudgeted military spending. US defense outlays will reach an official, staggering level of US$663 billion in the 2007 fiscal year. The combined annual EU spending amounts to a mere $75 billion, and is tending to decline, in part because of ECB Maastricht deficit pressures on its governments.

So today, at least for the present, there are no signs of Japanese, EU or other dollar holders engaging in dollar-asset liquidation. Even China, unhappy as it is with Washington’s bully politics, seems reluctant to rouse the American dragon to fury.

The origins of the oil bourse
The idea of creating a new trading platform in Iran to trade oil and to create a new crude-oil benchmark apparently originated with the former director of the London International Petroleum Exchange, Chris Cook. In a January 21 article in Asia Times Online (What the Iran ‘nuclear issue’ is really about), Cook explained the background. Describing a letter he had written in 2001 to the governor of the Iranian Central Bank, Dr Mohsen Nourbakhsh, Cook explained what he advised then:
In this letter I pointed out that the structure of global oil markets massively favors intermediary traders and particularly investment banks, and that both consumers and producers such as Iran are adversely affected by this. I recommended that Iran consider as a matter of urgency the creation of a Middle Eastern energy exchange, and particularly a new Persian Gulf benchmark oil price.

It is therefore with wry amusement that I have seen a myth being widely propagated on the Internet that the genesis of this “Iran bourse” project is a wish to subvert the US dollar by denominating oil pricing in euros.

As anyone familiar with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will know, the denomination of oil sales in currencies other than the dollar is not a new subject, and as anyone familiar with economics will tell you, the denomination of oil sales is merely a transactional issue: what matters is in what assets (or, in the case of the United States, liabilities ) these proceeds are then invested.
A full challenge to the domination of the US dollar as the world central-bank reserve currency entails a de facto declaration of war on the “full-spectrum dominance” of the United States today. The mighty members of the European Central Bank Council well know this. The heads of state of every EU country know this. The Chinese leadership as well as the Japanese and Indians know this. So does Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Until some combination of those Eurasian powers congeal in a cohesive challenge to the unbridled domination of the United States as sole superpower, there will be no euro or yen or even Chinese yuan challenging the role of the dollar. The issue is of enormous importance, as it is vital to understand the true dynamics bringing the world to the brink of possible nuclear catastrophe today.

As a small ending note, a good friend in Oslo recently forwarded me an article from the Norwegian press. At the end of December, Sven Arild Andersen, director of the Oslo bourse, announced he was fed up with depending on the London oil bourse trading oil in dollars. Norway, a major oil producer, selling most of its oil into euro countries in the EU, he said, should set up its own oil bourse and trade its oil in euros. Will Norway - a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - become the next target for the wrath of the Pentagon?

F William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press). He can be reached through his website, http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .)

...enfoncage de portes ouvertes certes… on a déjà tout lu sur le sujet… mais je voulais des infos sur le Pakistan et sa présence ou non dans le TNP et sa possession de l’Arme. Et je suis tombé sur ce texte, daté de 2004.

L’adieu aux armes nucléaires ?
http://www.un.org/french/pubs/chronique/2004/numero3/0304p64.html

(...)

Nous faisons face à un autre problème sérieux et insoluble. Les arsenaux nucléaires de l’Inde, du Pakistan et d’Israël ne sont pas conformes au TNP. La question n’est plus de savoir si l’Inde et le Pakistan deviendront des puissances nucléaires mais comment ces pays se comporteront en tant que tels. Le défi est de trouver les moyens de concilier l’état nucléaire de facto des deux pays avec le régime du TNP. La définition d’un État nucléaire est d’ordre chronologique : les pays qui étaient des puissances nucléaires au moment où ils ont signé le TNP ont été reconnus comme des États nucléaires. Même si l’Inde et le Pakistan testent, déploient ou même utilisent des armes nucléaires, ils ne sont pas reconnus comme des États nucléaires. En principe, le Royaume-Uni et la France peuvent démanteler leur programme nucléaire et détruire leurs arsenaux mais ils feront toujours partie des États nucléaires. Cette approche aux affaires stratégiques digne d’Alice au pays des merveilles est du plus grand sérieux.

(...)

Certains commentateurs craignent que la maîtrise des armements se trouve dans une impasse et que le désarmement soit remis en cause. Les traités déjà négociés et signés pourraient l’être également. L’une des cinq puissances nucléaires ou trois des puissances nucléaires de facto pourraient reprendre les essais. La confrontation de l’Iran avec l’Agence internationale de l’énergie atomique pourrait pousser ce pays à se retirer du TNP. Si le statu quo du TNP n’a plus cours et si les risques d’un revirement en matière de maîtrise et de prolifération des armements sont réels, nous devons alors accepter qu’il y ait plus d’armes nucléaires et d’États nucléaires dans le monde ou progresser vers un désarmement total. Il n’y a pas d’autre solution.

(...)

Le débat gagnerait à approfondir la problématique du rationnel et de l’irrationnel dans la globalisation.