TexAg91

Good grief! There's a Star Wars crawl for THAT song?

Palmtree, I'm going to guess that up to the moment the official news is released about a fundamental change to the nature of the IQD, there will be no official changes at the public exchange websites like XE and whatnot. They will continue to publish the program rates online, until they are told not to.

On XE, as of 10:25am CDT, 1187 IQD / 1 USD. Statistical noise. Stay focused: Full HCL passage Security stable (not perfect, but stable) Full implementation of budget, tariffs, etc. Oil in the 55+USD per barrel range Then start looking for an RV.

Re outgoing wires suspension: what does this mean?

Shab, One small point. While Adam has been very consistent in saying that he believes that an RV to benefit us would not occur before an implemented HCL, I do not remember him saying that said HCL passage would trigger an RV. So, back to Luigi, it might be some weeks after an HCL before the RV we are looking for would occur. For my own opinion I would think that in addition to a published HCL, Iraq would want to see security and the price of oil meeting some agreed upon level of stability and strength. From comments I have read from GOI officials in other contexts, it seems they would really like to see oil at $55 and ideally $60 per barrel. I am not fully convinced that even after a published HCL they would perform a real RV regardless of the price of oil. If I see the HCL published in the gazette AND oil in the 55-60USD range, THEN I will be very excited. But then they will do what they want and what they beleive is in their best interests. I'm just hoping those are my best interests, too!

Artitech, its them darn republicans and their dadgum Global Warmin' that's makin' things colder just to fool us all! I hear they're evil, that way! And tricksy!

DDavo, They are debating many aspects of the HCA, as noted in the article itself: I would imagine that was the main purpose of starting with a non-legally-binding agreement: to identify problem areas and then bring those into whatever comittee is used to get the Agreement to a Law. They are hashing those things our right now and some time this coming week or next, the proposal will come before parliment for a vote. Assuming of course no political bloc stages a walk out or the like. Keep in mind that just as with the budget, they will go through some stages: Agreement of hydro-carbon relationship between provinces and baghdad. Implement the Agreement for a period of time and determine if there are any major concerns as a result. Bring the Agreement and various concerns before a committee to iron those out and arrive at language that all sides accept as law. (NOW) Present final HCL languange before parliment for vote. Assuming it passes, wait for a week or two for it to be published in the gazette. Even after being published there may be a short delay before the HCL is implemented and enforced. Hopefully parlimentary passage occurs this month with entry into the gazette maybe end of March or (more likely) early in April. There are a lot of people on this site that are much (much) more versed than I am regarding international currency, fiat currency, moving to an internationally accepted currency, etc. However, I would say that whenever the HCL is published to the Gazette, the RV (whatever that will look like) will occur in days. At that point all that would hold them back might be concerns over the price of oil and/or a reluctance to don their "big-boy pants" as someone else noted.

For me, focusing too much on "this part of this article said" and " that article said" will drive me to distraction. We are trying to parse computer generated approximations from one language into another that isn't even of the same root. The important things for me are these: LOP or NO-LOP, RV or RI, whatever it is, one thing we can't deny is that there is a lot of activity going on there since the start of the year. This has not always been the case. Seems like something has begun that cannot be stopped. Delayed, yes. Drawn out, yes. Not stopped. This is the beginning of the end-game. But it is the end-game. I cannot control what the CBI does or when they do it. They have not yet left me a message on my phone asking what my opinions are regarding all of this. SHOCK! Given the paltry (and that's being generous) banks savings rates in the States, even if worst case happened I'd still have a nutso rate of return for my 10 years' investment. Much higher than a bank. That's worst case. I appreciate Adam not chiming in on every interesting article. He saves it up for a free weekly chat and avoids rah-rah or "the sky! She's a fallin'!" and just focuses on what he knows. As a VIP, I know the "gospel" will be the RV phone notice. Anything before that might be interesting but that's it. When that notice comes THEN I'll kick into gear. I just hope my phone's not dead! Its like Christmas. No amount of worrying or wondering what you'll get will change what you get. Socks are not as "cool" as a new bike or working light saber, but they are new socks that were given to you. You didn't pay a thing for them . So just determine that no matter what, you're going to love what happens and appreciate it. If you are carrying dinar, you WILL be blessed once the end-game completes. It may be a small blessing or a "knock your socks off, twice" blessing, but either way it will be a blessing. That is the coolest part of all of this. Ok, enough soap-boxing from me. Keep Calm and Carry Dinar!

BG888, sounds like we just need to watch for Yota posts having to do with ISO/SWIFT codes!

BradyBear, you make a great "common sense" argument. I just wonder if the people waiting to invest in Iraq until after the RV are the Gates, Soros, and other billionaire types that already have plenty of wealth to invest early and thus, once again, profit from having the ability to get in on the "ground floor" so to speak. I doubt Soros really focuses on what the HD and LD notes will be doing after an RV. Believe me, I truly hope you are correct.

Thanks TQ. But even if we have a low float, say 100IQD : 1 USD, wouldn't the other things hold? Ok, so my new 100 IQD gets me 1USD and what, my old 1000IQD gets me 10USD? So what happens when it floats to 50IQD : 1 USD? My new 100IQD gets me 2USD and my old 1000IQD gets me 2000USD? That's the "HD notes keep their face value" scenario. How does the "float starting off low" somehow allow us to redeem HD notes at face value? Does the CBI say something, "Up to 50:1 you can redeem HD notes at face value but beyond that they are adjusted to be worth what their corresponding LD denom is worth"? Who knows, maybe all of the banks outside of Iraq are willing to honor the face value of the HD notes divided by the current post-rv exchange rate for some period of time, regardless of what that rate is, but wow, that might cost them a ton of value from whatever other currencies they were exchanged into. They'd have to have some agreement in place with the CBI, or whatever organization handles this, that they could get the value back from what they just exchanged. Of course in the end there will be an RV of some sort. I'm betting in 2015. Once that happens, the CBI and whoever else will determine how they will handle the rates and the denominations and all of that. We will have no say in that or control over it. It will be what it will be. Consequently, I need to stop worrying about it and deal with what happens. I just know that under one of these scenarios there will be a LOT (and not just here at DV) of disappointed people. Myself included.

Ok, somebody please tell why the following line of thinking is in error, because this talk of lower denoms about to be made legal tender is beginning to worry me a little. For the sake of this argument, the exchange rate starts at 1000 dinar to the USD, using the notes most of us currently have. Also assume that I could walk into a US bank today and exchange dinar for USD at this 1000:1 rate. So today, I walk in to my local bank of choice with my 1000 dinar note and walk out with 1USD. On March 1st all of these new lower denomination bills are released into circulation. Now, you can't leave the exchange rate at 1000:1. If you are an Iraqi using 1, 5, 10, 50, 100 dinar notes, you need barrels full at 1000:1. So let's say that the rate for these LD notes is 1:1. My buddy in Iraq sends me one of these new 1 dinar notes, exchanging at 1:1. I go down to my bank and give them the 1 dinar note. Presumably they hand me a 1USD bill. If I also had a 1000 dinar note from the notes that have been in circulation since 2004 or so, would they still give me 1USD, or would they give me 1000USD? Would they keep 2 different exchange rates in effect until all of the 1K, 10K, 25K notes had been turned in, or would the older notes carry the new exchange rate (1:1)? If we're all hoping for the latter, why would banks support that? What, intrinsically supports likely billions of HD notes holding their face value at the new rate when Iraq is expressly moving to the lower denoms? Wouldn't this scenario also make millionaires out of a ton of Iraqis? Just like us, they exclusively possess the HD notes. Will the CBI tell them they have to turn them in for the new LD notes, but let us use the HD notes at face value under the adjusted exchange rate? Given the entire rationale behind this site and the post-rv wealth strategies, I am obviously missing something fundamental. What is it? Please note, I am not trolling or any of that stuff. To say I have a tenuous grip on the subject of international banking is a gross overstatement. I am going off of what I consider to be common sense, but I realize banking and governments and all that often do not make use of common sense. I doubt thousands of VIPs and OSI folks are wrong, but for the life of me I am having a hard time spotting what I have missed.

Adam, it appears that the budget has been passed and published in the Gazette. You have always talked about hca, budget, hcl and then rv. Would the hcl language be covered in the passed budget or should we be looking for an explicit law that will be passed and then also published in the Gazette?

Isn't it like 4:30 there? What time do the banks or government start their days? That early?

A supposition on my part. This is based on nothing more than my perusal of other, related, threads on this site. The budget, as far as we here can tell has in fact been printed in Iraq's law gazette. Given this, they will begin funding their 119 Trillion dinar budget very soon. Like in days, I would imagine. They really need, as a result, to get their dinar currency accepted internationally. They also need to pass their HCL. They are not obligated to immediately float their currency after it has been accepted internationally. I suspect they will first, and briefly, do what needs to be done to have the dinar set up and accepted for international transaction, just like Euros, yen, pesos, etc. They might change the peg some, but might very well leave it pegged as is. This would remain in effect until they pass their HCL or in some similar way demonstrate that the hydrocarbon treaties carry the weight of law. As far as I know, they currently do not. Once the above takes place, the currency would, in an orderly fashion, be allowed to float. They might just hang it out there and let it go, but to preserve some order, I could see them manually changing the peg periodically until they get it to some point where removing all controls would not be totally chaotic, for their monetary system. I of course reserve the right to be 100% wrong, but if it were me I would not want my currency to go from unrecognized internationally and manually pegged around 1160 to the USD, to floating internationally at 1:1 over the course of a few days. While it would be fun for us, it would be unecessarily traumatic for them. And even if they did the orderly re-pegs, I wouldn't imagine that lasting more than 3-6 months at most. Just long enough to suck up dinar and allow their internal eoconomy to adjust before final float.

All, What is this "delete the zeroes" thing I am hearing about? Its one thing to have a 25K dinar note and thus have 25KUSD if the post -rv rate went to 1:1. Its another thing to have your 25K dinar note changed to a 25 or the like dinar note and THEN see a 1:1 rate, thus entitling you to 25USD at your bank. In addition to opening up their currency to an international audience, are also considering re-valuing their own currency internally? 25K -> 25, 10K -> 10, etc. or something like that?

By filtering on Validating status, which I assume means the initial account setup was done, but the followup email from the site was never acknowledged, I get back 555 entries, thus 555 accounts were never validated. Not sure why a site would want to hold on to partially validated accounts that are years old, other than indifference or roll-padding. Yes, you can filter out non-validated results. Plus other criteria if you wish. I guess its following the Google method: Don't delete any emails, ever. Just filter out what you don't want to see from your targeted search request. Its a valid approach but a little after my time. I grew up on limited storage and always looked for opportunities to rid myself of sub-optimal or extraneous information, Olivesman, given that the result of members in the "Validating" phase is only 555 out of 10s of thousands of accounts, there would be negligible improvement in retrieval times. If the amount of Validating accounts was 15-20% then not having that data in the pool of data to be looked through as the site indexing engine did its thing might speed up results. Like looking through 80 books to find what you want instead of 100. In this case though its more like looking through 99 as opposed to 100. Not much help. Listen, I'm not losing any sleep over how the site is run or maintained. I don't fiddle with the members' list much anyway, and the forums themselves are fine. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Umbertino, I agree fully. Just responding to Frogee's initial post and question.

This is me being a little anal, but... I have noticed that a load of member requests arrived around the same time in summer of 2013. In fact there are a lot of "VALIDATING" stauts requests from years ago. I recommend that all VALIDATING status requests from 12-31-13 and earlier be purged. This will only impact the requests that have not responded to the validation email in over a year. This will also help streamline and speed up searches due to less cruft that has be be waded through. Thanks

I think *that* was the surprise. Surprise! No surprise!

Welcome TC, To keep your sanity after the initial excitement wears off, focus on the forest, not the trees. It's tough, but don't worry about rate or RV rumors (read about them, but don't worry about them). Rather take the time between now and when the RV does happen to read and learn. If you have $1000 usd in dinars or more I highly recommend getting a vip (may have to be platinum these days, not sure) and then look into Adam's offshore strategies. If you don't have quite that much, a vip setup is still a worthwhile investment for 6 or so years of accumulated knowledge. Check the pinned links you'll find more info there.

The sooner they can all agree on how to follow the HCA to everyone's satisfaction the sooner they'll be ready to implement it as law. These may be small-ish steps and there may be a thousand of them but each step if forward and it gets us closer to the day we're all waiting for! Really positive news. As always, thanks Yota

Adam, Given all of the activity coming out of Iraq over the last 6-8 weeks, what are your current thoughts about the timing of an RV? With all of your study and contacts providing you insight, are you optimistic that it would, barring something catastrophic, occur during Q1 or Q2 of this year? Regards.

Ahh, the Verified Badge of Courage! I am VIP and in OSI. I would appreciate a badge to proudly display! Unfortunately my dinars are in a safe deposit box and not easily accessed for photography. Thank you!