hothand

At least it wasn't fist fights like in Taiwan.

Academic discussions are necessary to help define various aspects of a problem, possible answers and their consequenses. However, all this is moot unless there is decisive political action and laws passed to make it a reality. In this investment it is taking years and we still don't know the final path. Hopefully the path that the political leaders of Iraq will be made known over the next 2 weeks.

I don.t understand why it can only be used for international transactions and not in country.

I think we are missing the big picture. The simple question is why was the dollar sought after. Back when, the US economy was very strong and we the consumer were the biggest market to sell to. The dollar was very strong and therefore sought after and all nations were happy to accept it. But ultimately the US leaders wanted to insure that it remained the benchmark. They made a deal with OPEC that if they would accept only the US dollar for payment for oil, the US would buy most of their oil from OPEC. This would guarentee that the dollar would be strong. Why else would we buy foreign oil. We have enough oil in Alaska, Montana, etc. to supply the needs of this country for more than 100 yrs. The US should have been a major exporter of oil, not just the Middle East. This allowed the dollar to remain dominant until recently. But our government has lost its way and still think we are in the mid 20th century and will be able to print fiat money to get us out of trouble, or until they are voted out of office