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Saddam was not "taken out of power" until 2003, right?And someone has already neg'd me for just asking this question?

In Adam's blog (that we all get mail about) he says this (bold added by me) This may be among the most common explanations used for why the dinar could be revalued back up. Namely that it was devalued suddenly down when Saddam was thrown out. The problem is that this is simply false. Go research at the CBI's history page and they say in 1995 (8 years BEFORE the Iraq war) the dinar had fallen to 3000 dinars per dollar (far less than mere pennies) due to massive printing of the currency over a period of years. Go look on currency history sites like http://www.oanda.com/currency/historical-rates/ and you might not see exactly the same pattern, but one pretty close. Every resource I know of confirms this. Adam is clearly a smart guy and is very knowledgeable about the dinar so it is very hard for me to imagine he actually does not know the correct history here. So why push this clearly false info?

From his biography, previewed on 60 Minutes tonight, we see that had Steve not delayed his surgery for 9 months while he pursued non-traditional methods, he might have had a much better outcome (i.e. if they could have operated before the cancer spread to his liver and other organs).

He starts off with two clear lies. 1 "I find myself in a tv studio...". If you look how he is lit with just one light and of the backdrop, its more like someone's garage. 2 "the central banks all owned by the same people and networks..." . This has been gone over many many times. Its rubbish. In order for the Fed to be controlled by a single group, that group would have to own controlling interestes in a large portion of all private banks in the US. Simply shareholder records easily show this to be false. I only watched the first few minutes. But to me he's just mixing in some facts about banking with his spin on various conspiracy theories.

Except that you neglect to mention that the dinar was down to ~3000 dinar per dollar by 1995. i.e. it didn't drop suddenly in 2003 due to Saddam's fall, it had already been this low for several years.

I can't see Iraq agreeing to limit production to 3 or 4Mbpd without something huge in return. But it will also take several years to get to the point that its an issue. Its also not clear just how binding OPECs quotas are since the Saudis routinely pump a half million or so over. Right, anything even close to 1:1 is a fantasy.

"rumor"? I won't even go that far. A rumor i something they actually heard, this is obviously just pumper fabrication.

Right you are! I mean its been a whole 16 hrs since it was posted here . We certainly don't want to risk the crisis of a newbie passing by and not being immediately presented with this masterwork of gibberish! I was worried for a moment, but now thanks to Easy I can relax. Boy, we doged a bullet there ! (couldn't resist).

TimS is correct as I see it. This "explanation" has been posted 1000s of times since being made up by who knows who back in 2008 (judging by the $50/b oil price). A completely conflates the role of the Fed and the UST flowing money (and even oil) back and forth in a totally illegal manner.

Agreed. If it comes in at 0.05 or greater than there is no "room" left for an RD and I'd leave a big chunk in the game (taking out maybe 1/3) but if it RV's to 0.0015 so a 1000:1 RD is on the way, or even 0.015 that a 100:1 RD is coming, then I'd cash out everything.

Follow your own advice!!How did we finally get out of the great depression and all of its follow on issues? Massive deficit spending for WWII . Wars can be good for the economy because of war spending, but we have already bought the tanks and bullets so a massive manufacturing ramp up will not be needed and our debt is already very high. So in this day and age wars are only expensive and a drain on the economy.

Very few, but now they have 3,000 times as much dinars as they had back when the dinar was worth $3. For a country that imports a huge amount of everything that they buy, yes purchasing power IS hughely impacted. Prices in Iraq would have to fall by 3000x if they RV by that amount. Otherwise there is essentially an economic short circuit between the neighboring countries. On that point I am in total agreement. Again, total agreement.

This makes no sense to me at all. If the point was to convince Iraqis that an RV was not about to happen, why not just say nothing? The most straight forward interpretation of the articles (that I agree are for Iraqi consumption) saying that a RD is coming, is ... that an RD IS coming. It makes the most sense for Iraq's economy as well. In a hyper-inflation environment (that was the case up to a couple of years ago) the key is to have as little cash as possible, so that is likely still a common mode of operation. But for an RV you want as much as possible. This all leads me to think the winner/loser conflicts if a big RV were to occur will be very bad. Sure, but the ISX will still have to be vastly revalued if a big RV happens. This will be a very risky time on the ISX as markets tend to overshoot. The auctions are just redistributing dollars and dinars to regional banks (or so it seems to me). and as for "rambling thoughts", that's pretty much what we all are doing!

And you think he is so stupid to think that getting into a war with Iran (which has a serious military) would HELP his re-election? Please, no matter what you think of Obama's policies he is not an idiot.

Certainly anything that is priced in dollars (prices, wages, loans, etc) will not be effected by an RD or an RV. The ISX is priced in dinars so that seems like a prime candiate. I'd guess any government job or expense has to be in dinars. As for day to day stuff, if its not priced in dinars than all the comments one way or the other about confusion over an RD seems pretty unfounded. But hard to know just what daily life is like.