That doesn't lessen their validity...

Indeed. But events have not yet caused me to revisit my views. In the words of Keynes:

"When the facts change, I change my mind"

I tend to take the longview.. The US hegemony can't last forever and seems to be on increasingly shaky military and economic ground...

New resources aren't being discovered, technology (the stuff we're allowed to see) doesn't seem to be innovating quickly enough to avoid confrontation in the near term...

Anyway, I think we will see the euro become the new standard for petrol at some stage, it'll be interesting to see how the American psyche reacts to that...

We need a series of FAQs, but answered rather than asked..

Here is a nice read from Paul Krugman, one of the pre-eminent economists in this area.

http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/seignor.html

Ccy is just a store of value, where the amount issued is in proportion to the amount of real goods produced,it should measure the store of real value created by its country..

The us is printing more money and as such is diluting the value of its ccy visavie widening the ratio...the rate of the ratio widening is occuring faster with usd than the other world ccys hence a ccy devaluation is a slow inexorable thing untill this ratio shift is changed
And, opec is shifting to euro delivery based on future fx rat

gulf states follow Saudi's move.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/b ... 500680.ece