Saturday, May 9, 2009

Abramburica


Din punctul de vedere al lui Google, noua Abramburicã, desi mai uzatã, a detronat-o pe vechea Abramburicã, spre disperarea multora.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

World War III - the battle for the Universal Currency - part 1

Here is a definition by Wikipedia about what World War 3 could mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_III

As expected, everybody thinks World War 3 is about a devastating (nuclear) conflict at global scale.
On my opinion this is far from even being likely to happen in the current geo-political and social context.

One should not forget that the triggers for World War 1 & 2 were well defined ambitions of a few political regimes to dominate geographical areas through territorial expansion, combined with the weakness of certain political systems, on the edge of collapse (austro-hungarian and tsarist empire).

The situation nowadays has totally changed. Political control over new territories is a bad business case, as it brings more hassle than benefits. Only think of the American occupation of Iraq. It has actually always been the case, but in the past there were less ways to get benefits from a certain region, unless your armies were occupying it.
Nowadays, the fast moving merchandise and information (in other terms: globalization) makes it possible to control and benefit from "occupied" nations or territories by far more subtle means, such as: strategic technology, strong currency, strategic resources, etc.

Since strategic resources are mostly related to the control of geographical areas and strategic technology can be very volatile in times when anyone could virtually research and develop anything, the last big battle is about a Universal Currency.

We won't go any further in this first part, unless with the recommendation for a few relevant articles, to further understand the matter:

Definition and history of a Currency by Wikipedia
The petrocurrency
Petrodollar warfare
Dollar hegemony
US dollar hegemony has got to go - by Henry C K Liu

a few readings that will help understand the considerations in part 2 of this post, yet to come...
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