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I’ve
never been a big believer in the idea that the world’s increasingly
shaky monetary system will someday be replaced by some sort of new gold standard
(that would be a huge admission of failure by the world’s plutocrats
and some form of global money based on a basket of commodities and national
currencies – that the world’s plutocrats would also control
– is much more likely), but, if a gold standard does return,
we’ll all probably look back at today’s news that Iran is now
accepting gold in exchange for its oil as an important development in that
process. The BBC filed this report on the subject earlier today:
Iran
is to accept gold instead of dollars as payment for its oil, the
country’s state news agency has said.
The
move comes as US and European Union sanctions against Iran have made it
difficult for buyers to make dollar payments to Iranian banks.
 
Mahmoud
Bahmani, the governor of Iran’s central bank,
is reported to have said that the country would accept payment in gold
“without any reservation”.
…
Iran has the world’s third-largest oil reserves. Crude oil is
predominantly traded in US dollars, but Iran already accepts payment in other
currencies.
Likely
related to this announcement comes word in this WSJ story($) about the U.S. Treasury Department
interceding to stop a Dubai based bank from supporting Iranian oil sales by
helping the nation evade international sanctions that were put in place to
pressure Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program.
According
to the report, Noor Islamic Bank, partly owned by the city of Dubai and run
by Sheikh Ahmed, the son of Duabai’s ruler,
was believed to have handled as much as 60 percent of Iran’s oil sales
last year totaling nearly $50 billion.
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