Iran demands oil pay in yen not dollars

The dollar was driven down against the Japanese yen this afternoon, hit by the news that Iran had asked Japan to pay for its oil purchases in the Japanese currency and not in dollars.

Iran has been deliberately moving its exposure to the dollar and dollar-based assets, faced with the threat that the US could freeze its US-based dollar accounts in response to its nuclear plans.

Three big oil producing nations — Iran, Venezuela and Russia — have all been moving much of their foreign currency reserves from dollars to euros in recent months.

Full article, London Times, July 13, 2007

________________________________

Just the tip of the iceberg, but more than most of the corporate media is reporting. The US is hemmoraging debt to bankroll the war for oil and empire, with China and Japan holding huge amounts. The trick for China and Japan, and others, is to ease out of holding so much in T-Bills and other US Government debt, and moving to assets that are stable and not built on a stack of cards. Were China to suddenly dump all its US Government debt holdings, it would almost certainly crash the US economy.

Andrew Leonard at Salon is one of the few columnists to cover these issues in detail, and in a digestable and understandable form.

TLC