Very comprehensive & insightful:

The Misconstruction of the Euro

In the eurozone, there are fiscally independent sovereign governments coexisting with one (central) banking system. This is a unique construction as normally there is one government with its own banking system.

Governments can finance their deficits through the banking system and money creation. When governments spend more than they receive in tax revenues, they typically issue government bonds. The financial system buys an important part of these bonds by creating new money. Banks purchase these bonds because they can use them as collateral for new loans from the European Central Bank (more precisely the European System of Central Banks).

New money flows to governments that monetize their deficits indirectly. The cost of the indirect monetization is born by all users of the currency in the form of a reduced purchasing power, i.e., inflation. If there is one government per central-banking system, the whole nation bears the cost of the deficit monetization. However there are in the eurozone several governments running their own budgets.

Imagine that all governments but one have a balanced budget. The one deficit government can then externalize onto other nations part of the costs of its deficit in the form of higher prices. This monetary redistribution is the already-existing transfer union in the EU.

A government like the Greeks’, with high deficits, prints government bonds bought and monetized by the banking system. As a consequence, there is a tendency for prices to rise throughout the monetary union. The higher the deficit of a government in relation to the deficits of other countries, the more effectively it can externalize the costs of a deficit. The incentives of this setup are explosive as governments benefit from deficits higher than those of their eurozone neighbors.

The Stability and Growth Pact designed to contain these incentives utterly failed because governments themselves judge whether sanctions are imposed on them.

. . . .

The EMU provokes conflicts between otherwise peacefully cooperating nations. Redistribution is always a potential cause of social stress. The monetary redistribution in the EMU was not understood by the bulk of the population and, thus, did not cause conflicts. The bailouts, the rescue fund, and the interventions of the ECB that were ultimately caused by the setup of the EMU have made the redistribution between countries more obvious.
Murphy, Robert P.

$25.00 $22.00

Germans do not like maintaining the Greek welfare state. In the German media Greeks are called “liars” and “lazy.” The Greek media, in turn, demanded reparations for World War II. While the Germans do not like paying for the periphery, people in peripheral countries blame Germans for austerity measures. They feel that the unpopular measures are imposed on them by foreign (German) pressure. Within the EMU, these clashes and conflicts will continue and probably increase. Remaining in the EMU implies living in such an atmosphere and the risk of escalation.

To make an understatement, the costs of the Eurosystem are high. They include an inflationary, self-destructing monetary system, a shot in the arm for governments, growing welfare states, falling competitiveness, bailouts, subsidies, transfers, moral hazard, conflicts between nations, centralization, and in general a loss of liberty. In addition, these costs and risks are rising day by day. Considering all this, the project of the euro is not worth saving. The sooner it ends, the better. Alternatives exists. A return to sound money such as the gold standard would boost responsibility, harmony, and wealth creation in Europe. (Read more)

More: John Law and the Invention of Modern Finance

Five leading nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — are starting their own financial system with a development bank funded exclusively by their nations. (Read more)

“The dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme is nothing more than a convenient excuse for the US to use threats to protect the ‘reserve currency’ status of the dollar,” the newspaper, which calls itself the voice of the Islamic Revolution, said.

“Recall that Saddam [Hussein] announced Iraq would no longer accept dollars for oil purchases in November 2000 and the US-Anglo invasion occurred in March 2003,” the Times continued. “Similarly, Iran opened its oil bourse in 2008, so it is a credit to Iranian negotiating ability that the ‘crisis’ has not come to a head long before now.”

Iran has the third-largest oil reserves in the world and pricing oil in currencies other than dollars is a provocative move aimed at Washington. If Iran switches to the non-dollar terms for its oil payments, there could be a new oil price that would be denominated in euro, yen or even the yuan or rupee. (Read more)

from :

Dear Sirs:
In a recent OpEd Andrew Sentance resurrects the discredited theory of “cost push” as the cause of price inflation. According to this theory rising oil and commodity prices “push up” other prices and lead to widespread price inflation. Left unexamined is how it is possible for ALL prices to rise.

As tensions between the US and Iran heat up, author Michael T. Winter believes the main reason behind America’s harsh stance is Tehran’s move to seek an alternative to the dollar as an oil currency.

­Economic sanctions, spearheaded by the US and, less willingly, the EU could have a disastrous effect on both of their respective economies. If Iran cannot sell their oil to Europe, there are plenty of customers waiting in the wings, and if they come bearing not petrodollars, but gold and sovereign currencies, then all the better for Iran. These sanctions, if enforced, will in effect place a serious dent in the power of the petrodollar.

Any rhetoric regarding Iran’s nuclear program and the insistence on crippling it is nothing more than a US attempt to force regime change for one more receptive to maintaining the hegemony of the petrodollar.

The world now knows the truth about the US and how they conduct their affairs. US hostilities toward Iran have nothing to do with nuclear weapons development. If that were the case, then North Korea and Pakistan would be facing similar sanctions and threats, but they aren’t. The difference of course is in what lies beneath the ground – oil. Iran has it and the other guys don’t.

At the heart of the issue is not Iran’s dubious attempt to build nuclear weapons, or even oil, but how that oil is paid for. In 1973, Richard Nixon promised King Faisal of Saudi Arabia that the US would protect Saudi Arabian oilfields from any and all interested parties seeking to forcefully wrest them from the House of Saud. It’s important to remember that in 1973, Saudi Arabia didn’t have a fraction of the military and ground forces it possesses today (almost exclusively US manufactured weapons) and the USSR was very much a threat.

In return Saudi Arabia, and by extension OPEC, agreed to sell their oil in US dollars only. As if that weren’t sweet enough, as part of the deal, they were required to invest their profits in US treasuries, bonds and bills. The real zinger is that all countries purchasing oil from OPEC had to do so in US dollars, or ‘petrodollars’. (Read more)

A growing number of states are seeking shiny new currencies made of silver and gold.

Worried that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. dollar are on the brink of collapse, lawmakers from 13 states, including Minnesota, Tennessee, Iowa, South Carolina and Georgia, are seeking approval from their state governments to either issue their own alternative currency or explore it as an option. Just three years ago, only three states had similar proposals in place. (Read more)

This was very interesting. It’s definitely a worst-case and I disagree with some of his points. Nevertheless…

This will continue to quietly spread.

Iran and Russia have replaced US Dollar with their own currencies in their trade ties, a senior Iranian diplomat announced on Saturday.

Speaking to FNA, Tehran’s Ambassador to Moscow Seyed Reza Sajjadi said that the proposal for replacing US Dollar with Ruble and Rial was raised by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Astana on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting. (Read more)