J's Cafe Nette

Archive for May 1st, 2008

From today’s Omega Letter by Jack Kinsella:

OPEC’s second largest oil producer — and therefore a major player in the international oil cartel, is the Islamic Republic of Iran.

And, as the world’s second largest producer of oil, Iran insists it needs nuclear power to meet its domestic energy needs.

For reasons that confound logic, that conundrum presents no challenge for much of Europe, the Chinese, the Russians, and even some of the Sunni Islamic states that have the most to fear from a nuclear-armed Shi’ite Islamic republic.

But what is even more baffling is the fact that Iran seems determined to use its oil wealth to force a military confrontation with the United States.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the depreciating dollar a “worthless piece of paper” at a rare summit last year in Saudi Arabia attended by state leaders from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Now he’s going to prove it. This week, Iran announced it was ending all oil transactions in US dollars.

“The dollar has totally been removed from Iran’s oil transactions,” Oil Ministry official Hojjatollah Ghanimifard told state-run television Wednesday. “We have agreed with all of our crude oil customers to do our transactions in non-dollar currencies.”

Iran’s oil ministry says that it will only accept euros or the Japanese yen for oil, a direct slap at the struggling US dollar. Iran’s central bank has also been reducing its foreign reserves denominated in U.S. dollars, further weakening the currency on the international market.

To understand what Iran’s shift away from the dollar means to you and me, we need to take a quick trip through the history books.

After the outbreak of World War Two, America became the armory to the world, selling billions and billions of dollars worth of weapons to the Allies, for which it demanded payment in gold.

By war’s end, the majority of the world’s gold reserves reverted from America’s European creditors of the 1930’s — and back to the United States.

The Bretton Woods Agreement in 1945 made the US dollar convertible to gold at the government level. This established the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

But the twin wars on poverty and in Vietnam drained the US economy, forcing the Fed to increase the money supply, most of which ended up as foreign reserve currency holdings.

The runaway inflation caused by the artificial increase in the money supply began to worry investors. By the 1970s, foreign governments began demanding payment for their dollars in gold.

On August 15, 1971, the US announced it was ’severing the link between the dollar and gold’ and defaulted on its payments.

In order to keep the dollar (and the global economy) from collapsing, the US had to find some economic replacement for the gold standard. In 1973, Washington cut an iron-clad deal with the Saudis.

The US would prop up the Saudi regime in exchange for a Saudi pledge to accept only US dollars in payment for oil sales. Eventually, the rest of OPEC followed suit.

The world had to buy oil. And since they could only buy them with US dollars, they needed to continue to hold US dollars in reserve.

In order to buy oil, the world’s net oil importers HAD to maintain a reserve supply of US currency, keeping it out of circulation, which kept the world from being flooded with dollars, which would, of course, devalue it.

Should OPEC drop the US dollar as its official currency, all those dollar reserve holdings would suddenly be released on the global market, and the US dollar would soon be worthless.

Tehran’s decision amounts to an act of economic warfare against the United States that, should it take hold among the rest of the OPEC states (including Venezuela) could bring the American economy to its knees.

So it should be of no surprise to anyone to learn that the United States has just dispatched a second American aircraft carrier group into the Persian Gulf.

This may well be — ahem — the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Assessment:

Washington can’t afford to admit that it is going to war over oil — even though there is probably no reason more historically justifiable.

Those historians who blame the United States for forcing Imperial Japan into World War II point to the US embargo of Japanese oil as the principle cause.

Since Japan had no natural resources of its own, war was Japan’s only option. And seen from Japan’s perspective in the 1930’s, one can hardly argue — but the Allies utterly rejected that argument in 1945.

There is something about going to war over oil that sticks in our craw; it seems so, ummm, mercenary and self-serving — Americans are better than that.

And we are better than that — right now. It is much easier to behave honorably when somebody takes your lawnmower than it is when you are about to lose your house.

Here we see the inherent truth in yet another old saying — “desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Iran has been steadily making Washington’s case FOR war for the White House. Noted Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week; “What the Iranians are doing is killing American servicemen and women inside Iraq.”

The Pentagon is not eager for war with Iran — US forces are stretched thin now, but are nowhere nearly exhausted.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen made that clear at a Pentagon press briefing last week, warning Tehran:

“I have reserve capability, in particular our Navy and our Air Force so it would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability.”

The US already has a broad and convincing case for war against the Iranian regime; its support for Hezbollah, al-Qaeda in Iraq and Hamas; its belligerency towards Israel, its harrassment of US-flagged ships in the Gulf — but it is the threat to the US oil economy that is the red flag.

One of the enduring images from the pre-Iraq invasion demonstrations were of sign-carrying American Useful Idiots chanting “No Blood for Oil.”

In January 2003, Americans were paying $1.78 a gallon. Now that it is approaching five dollars, “No Blood for Oil” means something altogether different — now that its our blood on the line.

That second carrier group isn’t steaming in the Persian Gulf for nothing.

Nothing short of our annihilation would thrill our radical Muslim enemies more than to see our economy collapse. That was the purpose of 9/11 according to some.

We should be using the oil available to us in our own country instead of depending on the Middle East and now Venezuela for it. We have the reserves and we can get it and still be safe environmentally. We are at least ten years behind on this and we need to make up for it.

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Sue called me Wednesday morning to tell me her computer had died. I spoke to her later and she said her neighbor, who is a computer guru, had checked it out and it was half-way working, but resting at the time while she and her husband took advantage of the good weather and did some garden maintenance.

In the meantime, I’ve had a headache all week, and a sore gland in my neck which makes my ear hurt.

I saw the doctor for my regular check-up last Thursday and had blood taken as usual. I was in high hopes my triglycerides were coming down with the protocol I was on.

The doctor had increased my Niaspan ER from 500 mg at night to 1000 mg at night.

The problem with Niaspan is it causes flushing. This can make you itch, feel hot, get a rash or all three. If you take an aspirin before taking the Niaspan it’s supposed to help with these annoyances.

I did very well on the 500 mg tabs along with the over the counter fish oil capsules I have to take on doctor’s orders and the Tricor tablets that are supposed to control triglycerides.

The treatment started with fish oil capsules then went up to Tricor and then to Niaspan 500 mg. When that didn’t help get the levels down to a manageable number he increased the Niaspan to 1000 mg.

I would take the pill with the aspirin and soon added an atarax pill I use for allergic itching to help with that problem. A couple of hours after taking the larger dose I would look like a cooked lobster from my forehead to my feet and everything in between.

The itching was horrible and I was awake at night more than usual.

I called the doctor and told him of the problem and was told to discontinue the Niaspan and to take a prescription fish oil capsule along with the tricor and over the counter fish oil capsules.

With all this fish oil I was certain good things were happening. You can imagine my disappointment when I got the lab results back and the doctor informed me the triglycerides were even higher than before. The doctor put in a note to start taking 500 mg of niaspan again, but I didn’t have any on hand. All I had were 1000 mg, so I bit the bullet after I talked to Medco and explained why I needed to reactivate the 500 mg niaspan. I can’t cut the pill in half because it takes away the extended release action.

Medco agreed to send the 500 mg and I should receive it in 4-7 days. That is until I got the call yesterday telling me they can’t fill it because they have a later prescription for a higher dose. The problem with those calls is they never tell you what drug they are talking about and since I had sent six prescriptions to them last week I had to call to confirm what the message meant. It’s OK anyway, because I seem to be tolerating the higher dose now.

My blood sugar levels are excellent, my overall cholesterol is pretty good, my good cholesterol is about half what it should be and my bad cholesterol cannot be measured because my triglycerides are so high.

OK, I can’t do the treadmill anymore since I tore my knee up the last time. The Ritis brother Arthur is bothering my back and I’m on pain meds for Mr. Ritis.

The only thing I can do is control my diet, which I admit I hadn’t been doing.

Now, since we have two grandchildren at our house on a daily basis for an hour or so and at night every other week-end, we keep goodies on hand for them to snack on.

Most of the time I don’t snack and am not crazy about cookies, cakes, chips etc. But yesterday my husband and grandson went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of goodies and they keep staring me in the face.

I heard how wonderful the Pringles pickle flavored chips were and resisted them until a few minutes ago when I was starving and wanted something to eat. I didn’t particularly care for them so I tried the cheddar of some special name. What I didn’t know was the cheddar flavor has hot pepper flavor in it and burned my mouth, so that was put up quite quickly.

I went to the refrigerator to get a glass of 1% milk and decided against it because it isn’t organic. Now I’m not particular about what I eat but I like organic milk because it has a better flavor and seems more full-bodied. Instead I found regular 1% milk, which I will probably not use.

So here I sit, full of fat in my circulatory system, my stomach empty and nothing to eat even though the house is loaded with food.

I’m supposed to be a blogger and give you my take on the news, but the fact is I don’t care what’s in the news right now and will not cover the presidential campaign until September.

I don’t care who said what to whom. All I care about are the positions the various candidates are taking on issues I care about.

I won’t vote for Obama but it’s not because he’s black. It’s because he wants us to be in a more socialist society than we are in now and wouldn’t blink to raise our taxes to pay for it.

I won’t vote for Hillary and that’s all I need to say about that. Anything else I would have to say would violate my own rules of not speaking sarcastically about a national figure.

So I’m stuck with McCain whether I like it or not and it’s because he is more likely to hold the same beliefs on most of the issues I care about. I probably disagree with him more than I agree with him, but I disagree with less of him than I do the others.

When is the last time we have been in such a position in our country? Where is our modern day George Washington or Abraham Lincoln? I’m sure we have one but he just doesn’t want to drag himself and his family through all the mud necessary to serve his country. I use the generic male gender.

Anyway, if anyone has a cure for lowering triglycerides I’ll be glad to hear them.

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