Thread: Iraq/Dinar News. 09/05 to 01/14/07

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Vice President Dick Cheney sought Saudi help on Saturday in dealing with Iraq's spiraling violence and other regional trouble spots where U.S. policy is on the line: Iran, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.


Cheney's visit with King Abdullah was brief, lasting only a few hours before he flew back to Washington, but it underlined the two allies' concerns over upheavals across the Middle East, which many Arabs blame on U.S. policies.

In a sign of the urgency of the U.S. concern, President Bush is scheduled to meet with Iraq's prime minister in the Jordanian capital Wednesday and Thursday to discuss security matters.


The unusual succession of visits by the two U.S. leaders was planned before outbursts of violence this week dramatically worsened the situation in two countries of key American interest — Iraq and Lebanon.

On Tuesday, an anti-Syrian Lebanese politician was gunned down in Beirut, highlighting the fragility of the U.S.-backed government and heightening tensions between that country's pro- and anti-Syrian forces.

Two days later in Iraq, suspected Sunni insurgents set off a series of car bombs that killed more than 200 people in a Shiite district of Baghdad, fueling an upsurge in the retaliatory sectarian slayings that threaten to tear the nation apart.

The meeting at Yamama Palace likely focused on both conflicts, as well as the Israeli-Palestinian front, which stands at a key crossroads amid attempts to form a new Palestinian government and get peace negotiations going.

The U.S. Embassy declined to comment on the discussions and Saudi officials were not available.

Before the meeting, a Saudi official said Cheney was expected to ask oil-rich Saudi Arabia to use its considerable influence with Iraq's Sunni Arab minority to promote reconciliation with Iraqi Shiites and Kurds. Sunni insurgents have staged some of the bloodiest attacks on U.S. troops and Shiites.

In return, Saudi Arabia wants the U.S. to help rein in Iraq's Shiite militias, which have been blamed for sectarian attacks that have killed thousands, said the official, who agreed to discuss the meeting only if not quoted by name because of the sensitivity of the talks.

On Lebanon, the Saudi official said the kingdom wants to ensure there are no cracks in support for the U.S.-backed government, which is opposed by groups allied with Syria and Iran. Saudi Arabia has strong links to the anti-Syrian bloc dominating Lebanon's Cabinet and parliament.

The official said Saudi Arabia hopes Washington will not snub any Palestinian government that emerges from talks between the militants of Hamas and the more moderate Fatah faction. The U.S. and other nations have shunned the current government led by Hamas, which has refused to recognize Israel and renounce violence against the Jewish state.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, is trying to work out a new unity government with Hamas, but Arabs hope the U.S. will be flexible with how much Hamas must moderate to allow a resumption of the peace process with U.S. ally Israel.

Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries on the Persian Gulf are also deeply concerned over the West's confrontation with Iran over that nation's suspect nuclear program.

Gulf countries worry about the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran and its attempts to expand its influence in the Middle East. But they also fear the West's attempt to force Iran to rein in its program could bring Iranian reprisals.

Cheney meets with Saudi king in Riyadh - Yahoo! News

Dinar-Excited but a bit concerned

A Crude Look at Iraq’s Wealth

Henry Thompson

Iraq is a wealthy country and every Iraqi is a present value millionaire. Wealth in the world is shifting toward owners of crude oil making Iraqis wealthy.

Over the next two decades, total world energy consumption will almost double. Serious alternatives to oil energy are decades away requiring a doubling in the underlying price of crude oil. In the US, oil consumption is expanding, oil production is declining, and imports are climbing. Oil prices and the energy share of GDP will certainly increase over the next 50 years.


The energy bill will have to be paid with profits going to the owners of energy resources, not the oil companies. Owners of the oil reserves will profit as the price of oil rises due to increasing scarcity. Oil extraction and refining are very competitive with profits slightly higher than the average industry but with higher than average risk.

The price of a barrel of crude oil now ranges up to $70 with extraction cost in the Middle East $2. The owners of the oil get the difference. Extraction costs are rising but much slower than the price of oil.

The Arab Gulf has 65% of the world’s proven oil reserves. Iraq has 360 billion barrels of potential reserves, and 12% of the world proven reserves. Oil in the ground is like money in the bank making Iraqis wealthy.

Iraq can easily produce 6 million barrels of oil a day or 2 billion barrels per year out of its working oil fields. At $50 per barrel, that oil would sell for $100 billion. The population of Iraq is 24 million and that oil income translates to $4000 per capita per year.

For some crude conservative idea of the wealth if Iraq, suppose Iraq sells 1/4 of its potential reserves at an average price of $50 per barrel over the next 20 years. That would generate 90 billion x $50 = $4.5 trillion. If the population of Iraq grows to 30 million, that would be $150,000 per capita for 20 years, or $7,500 annual per capita income.

Estimated productive assets in the US according to the World Bank are $60,000 per capita, and in the world $5,000 per capita. If Iraq invests only 1/4 of its oil revenue for the next 20 years, it would match current US productive assets per capita.

The total value of Iraq potential oil reserves at an average profit of $75 per barrel over next 100 years would be 360 billion x $75 = $27 trillion or $900,000 per capita, making every Iraqi a millionaire. These calculations do not include natural gas revenue, lately about equal to oil revenue for producing fields.

In the entire Arab or Persian Gulf, proven oil reserves are 195 trillion barrels. Selling this at an average profit of $75 per barrel over the next 100 years would generate $15,000 trillion income. If half of that is invested, it would amount to $7,500 trillion or ¼ of the present total productive assets in world.

Iraq is a wealthy country.

I find this to be conservative because oil at some point will rise to $ 100.00-200-300+ plus per barrel! Plus no figures on the natural gas production numbers. Which by the way will be huge, in the near future!

Originally Posted by motomachi

In some sports there is a move that makes the scoring of a point at a particular portion of the game more spectacular. This is one of those times; timing and sometimes it is like car races; you just stay in the "draft" and at that right moment, hit the throttle and pass the leader and score first place! It be nice to have one right about now, a "draft" that is, an Iraqi Dinar Draft to be "bob1940" correct, mind you! (Confused, you need to be mixed up, you find more good stuff when you are!)

CharmedPiper, Good show on this news that you have been pumping out! Put away the pain killer, you are on a roll, but I believe you have found it; as SGS was pointing out about six-eight months ago, as Jordan flys, Iraq has been "drafting"!

Another look: See Paragraph 3.1 An Assessment, from the Jordanian report below. It would start at the bottom of page #15. When you get to page 3.13 Macroeconomics you really start getting excited! Get to 3.17 The Exchange Rate, followed by 3.18-Box 1, Exchange Rate Regime, Basket and Parity; get more excited! Read the Annex "A" and at the end you see that they passed the "Competition Law" in 2002 makes you wonder what made their "Dinar" raise in value, see what they sold off and how their economics started taking off without "OIL!"!

Tell me Shabibi does not know what he is doing, he and others know!

https://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/53/14/36488608.pdf

Does anyone know if Jordan did a series of incremental pegs to reach its current level or did it peg just once to its top value...and then float?

(Hopin for the "as Jordan goes so goes Iraq" hypothesis on this one)

ND

Originally Posted by motomachi

In some sports there is a move that makes the scoring of a point at a particular portion of the game more spectacular. This is one of those times; timing and sometimes it is like car races; you just stay in the "draft" and at that right moment, hit the throttle and pass the leader and score first place! It be nice to have one right about now, a "draft" that is, an Iraqi Dinar Draft to be "bob1940" correct, mind you! (Confused, you need to be mixed up, you find more good stuff when you are!)

CharmedPiper, Good show on this news that you have been pumping out! Put away the pain killer, you are on a roll, but I believe you have found it; as SGS was pointing out about six-eight months ago, as Jordan flys, Iraq has been "drafting"!

Another look: See Paragraph 3.1 An Assessment, from the Jordanian report below. It would start at the bottom of page #15. When you get to page 3.13 Macroeconomics you really start getting excited! Get to 3.17 The Exchange Rate, followed by 3.18-Box 1, Exchange Rate Regime, Basket and Parity; get more excited! Read the Annex "A" and at the end you see that they passed the "Competition Law" in 2002 makes you wonder what made their "Dinar" raise in value, see what they sold off and how their economics started taking off without "OIL!"!

Tell me Shabibi does not know what he is doing, he and others know!

https://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/53/14/36488608.pdf

Wow! Remember the old "chicken and the egg" joke? Well, looks like someone's been counting hatchlings long before the March 2003 pre-emptive strike began - so...smoke and mirrors to disguise true intentions of staking claims to the area, or what? Believe me....when the RV happens, I'll be able to do a lot of good with the profit. Recall decades ago when we distained the phrase "the end justifies the means"? Talk about yer chickens comin' home to roost! But, hey, FINALLY the little guy gets an opportunity to see the inner workings, take the risks and make himself/family/friends/good works comfy as well. hooray

DON'T LET THE LATEST FIGHTING NEWS GET YOU DOWN!!!!!
To many articles have prooved that the R/V is gone to happen,
There are those in iraq that DON'T want iraq to succeed with the government they have now and will cause what ever problems they can to see to it iraq fails BECAUSE they want to rule (sadar)
BUT we have had too much PROOF that this thing is SO VERY CLOSE and nothing sadar or the bathist do can stop it,
Listening to too much bad news can get you down and make you doubt BUT
when this happens, GO TO THE HISTORY THREAD AND READ ALL THE POSITIVE POST, PROOF ARTICLES that so many here have found and pick yourselves back up to get EXCITED AGAIN, were coming to and END of our wait
BELIEVE

Originally Posted by tiffany

O.K. Mostly the only things I hear about Iraq are from here in the forum, or when I venture through the news channels. (Which isn't often!)

I live pretty close to an Air Force Base and they also have the Reserve program locally too. A group that had been in Iraq for almost a year came home a couple days ago, and one of the local news channels went to the airport with one of the families to film the homecoming.

The girl that they were there to greet was all of 5 feet tall dressed in camo....after greeting and hugs to her family the reporter started the questions...."happy to be home?" yadayada...then asked "How do you deal with seeing such horrific things every day while you are there?"

She turned and looked straight into the camera and said "Things aren't NEARLY as bad as what is reported".

I threw my arms straight up in the air and let out a WOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!

That's RIGHT! I swear she was looking into my eyes, talking right to me!

The reporter immediately wished the family a happy holiday and signed off the segment!!!! I'm thinking he was looking for an 'inside' view on how terrible it is in Iraq, and she just SQUASHED IT FLAT!!!

I just thought I would share since it just verified once again how distorted the news really is by the time it gets to US~!


Tiff

Whilst I am pleased to hear this, we cant dismiss the number of casualties that are occurring in Iraq as a result of these insurgent attacks, bombings, torture and beheading, those are not lies, the pictures are broadcast to prove it.

They can use these things while they are looking for those ones, fives, tens, etc...that they stashed away; meaning those fils, one-twenty Iraqi Dinar Denominations, smaller Dinar Notes!

Use the card to buy bread, even the street vendors can use the old slide tracker and take it to the local bank for consumer/government to business transaction! Paper money will come into and out of play; but like the good McDonald's faster food, the World is on it's way to the "on your mark, get set, ready, OWG!" Gone!

Originally Posted by CharmedPiper

So....could Iraqi's at some point use EJABY to pay their bills electronically from funds supplied through their ESAL account which is the distribution account.

One World Government-> OWG

Originally Posted by Dinar-Excited

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Vice President Dick Cheney sought Saudi help on Saturday in dealing with Iraq's spiraling violence and other regional trouble spots where U.S. policy is on the line: Iran, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.


Cheney's visit with King Abdullah was brief, lasting only a few hours before he flew back to Washington, but it underlined the two allies' concerns over upheavals across the Middle East, which many Arabs blame on U.S. policies.

In a sign of the urgency of the U.S. concern, President Bush is scheduled to meet with Iraq's prime minister in the Jordanian capital Wednesday and Thursday to discuss security matters.

The unusual succession of visits by the two U.S. leaders was planned before outbursts of violence this week dramatically worsened the situation in two countries of key American interest — Iraq and Lebanon.

On Tuesday, an anti-Syrian Lebanese politician was gunned down in Beirut, highlighting the fragility of the U.S.-backed government and heightening tensions between that country's pro- and anti-Syrian forces.

Two days later in Iraq, suspected Sunni insurgents set off a series of car bombs that killed more than 200 people in a Shiite district of Baghdad, fueling an upsurge in the retaliatory sectarian slayings that threaten to tear the nation apart.

The meeting at Yamama Palace likely focused on both conflicts, as well as the Israeli-Palestinian front, which stands at a key crossroads amid attempts to form a new Palestinian government and get peace negotiations going.

The U.S. Embassy declined to comment on the discussions and Saudi officials were not available.

Before the meeting, a Saudi official said Cheney was expected to ask oil-rich Saudi Arabia to use its considerable influence with Iraq's Sunni Arab minority to promote reconciliation with Iraqi Shiites and Kurds. Sunni insurgents have staged some of the bloodiest attacks on U.S. troops and Shiites.

In return, Saudi Arabia wants the U.S. to help rein in Iraq's Shiite militias, which have been blamed for sectarian attacks that have killed thousands, said the official, who agreed to discuss the meeting only if not quoted by name because of the sensitivity of the talks.

On Lebanon, the Saudi official said the kingdom wants to ensure there are no cracks in support for the U.S.-backed government, which is opposed by groups allied with Syria and Iran. Saudi Arabia has strong links to the anti-Syrian bloc dominating Lebanon's Cabinet and parliament.

The official said Saudi Arabia hopes Washington will not snub any Palestinian government that emerges from talks between the militants of Hamas and the more moderate Fatah faction. The U.S. and other nations have shunned the current government led by Hamas, which has refused to recognize Israel and renounce violence against the Jewish state.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, is trying to work out a new unity government with Hamas, but Arabs hope the U.S. will be flexible with how much Hamas must moderate to allow a resumption of the peace process with U.S. ally Israel.

Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries on the Persian Gulf are also deeply concerned over the West's confrontation with Iran over that nation's suspect nuclear program.

Gulf countries worry about the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran and its attempts to expand its influence in the Middle East. But they also fear the West's attempt to force Iran to rein in its program could bring Iranian reprisals.

Cheney meets with Saudi king in Riyadh - Yahoo! News

Dinar-Excited but a bit concerned

Could it be there is (in addition to all the talks and meetings....) could it really be that they are also there for the photo op when the dinar RV's - will there be smiles all 'round and glad-handing and back-slapping and high-5-ing?

This also explains why those so vehemently opposed to unity have ratcheted up the violence over the past few weeks. There really can't be many of them, but ANY damage done by IED's and RPG's and fire-bombing creates negative press..,I'm not minimizing the horror of slaughter, just pointing out that, once the positive economical steamroller begins, the insurgents will have no other choice but to run back into the woodwork, scatter, and either join the good guys in repairing Iraq or be squashed...C'mon RV!!! Lives on so many levels and in so many parts of the world are at stake, here!

Originally Posted by pogo

I agree that sometimes posts may appear to get a little off topic, but I think that's the nature of a public forum. I honestly believe that the majority of news eminating from and about Iraq is relative to our concerns.. whether the post says Dinar or not is irrelevant. I hesitated to post the article concerning Sunni - Shiite history in the "Latest News" thread knowing that it would be considered off topic, but thats where the conversation was at the time. Information has to be read, and then discussed for a forum to function properly and sometimes the direction of the discussion cannot (should not?) be controlled. I'm really not sure where else I would have posted the article anyway. Maybe another "Sticky" called ALL THINGS RELATIVE. How about a Thread on how to deal with off topic discussion? We could possibly come up with Ideas that could save Neno a lot of work. Just my thoughts

Thank You for that info on the history of the Sunni VS Shiites as I don't believe many know why things are the way they are they just think Terrorist
when actually its a war between themselves hence the talk about Civil War& I for believe this is NEWS does it have to be a newspaper article to be concidered news this conflict is the reason we can't get the RV IMO & alot others also . Do you have to be some kind of scholar to participate here?

I absolutely agree! I see the increased violence as a desparate last-ditch effort to block any unity from happening. Eventually, these mercenaries will have to recognize and support the positive aspects of progress being made post-Saddam or they will be hunted and tried for war crimes, later. With all the businesses and countries behind it, the RV is a done deal. Q: when? how much? Ans: Soon...a lot! (guessing minimum $1.68-1.74, but would not be surprised at $2.35!)