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I think RevBo is also a DV member finally, a fellow dinarian is brave enough to write his opinion. As Bump de Bumpa always says "play nice" A Dinarian Commentary " So, Where Are We Now?" 09/11/2014 Revbo: I wrote this for GLP, so the format may be a little weird for here, but it took me a while, so I wanted to share, with y'all, where I think we're at. So, where are we now? The government has formally been seated, minus the security ministries, but yesterday, Brett McGurk, our representative in Iraq, congratulated Iraq on its peaceful transition of power, so I think our declaration that Iraq now has political stability supercedes any technicalities on that front, and Abadi has said he will have them seated by next week, anyway, so I don't see that as being a problem. ~~~ We are in Turki's window for delete-the-zeros project implementation as referenced in my below post to bring your attention to my speculation as of August 21 that the big change we're all waiting on would happen shortly after the seating of the new government. Here's that post: Revbo (Aug 21): If this goes they're saying it's going to with the government, ISIS should be pretty much done in Iraq right about the same time the new government is seated. Security and stability on the same day. Four days until Abadi brings his cabinet to Parliament for a vote, allegedly, anyway. Sunnis are already on board, and all indications are the Kurds will get their Article 140 and the peasants shall rejoice across the land. I posted something from Kaperoni, earlier today, where he has finally come around to the thinking, that some of us have had for quite a while, that no more laws need be passed to do currency reform. Turki said, a few months ago, when he gets government stability, he will not hesitate to implement the plan. No mention of the Economic Reform Law or banking and investment laws at all. That was before ISIS, and I think security is just as important as stability, and have seen indications of that from Iraqi economists, so I do believe they have to be eliminated, as well. So the earliest it could happen, in my opinion, would be next Tuesday, assuming ISIS has been mostly defeated and Abadi and his cabinet have received a confidence vote from Parliament on Monday. Realistically, they would probably wait at least a few days, but who knows? He said he would not hesitate, which means it very well could happen 10 seconds after Abadi is sworn in. In retrospect, I may have been a tad bit overly optimistic about ISIS having already been dealt with, although I don't think I went all that overboard. Several key victories have been scored against ISIS since August 21, including the liberation of the Turkmen population of Amerli most recently by Iraqi Security Forces, and the evacuation of Tikrit by ISIS forces. Peshmerga has secured Mosul Dam and Haditha Dam was secured yesterday. ISIS's primary stronghold remains in Mosul, but they have already fled half the city and are trapped, to the North, by Kurdish Peshmerga forces. Most of the Sunni population has already turned on ISIS with 25 clans agreeing to fight with the government against them a couple weeks ago, and the remaining Sunni population, with the formation of a national unity government, will now rise up against them, and they will lose any safe haven they may have enjoyed in the west of Iraq. The United States has been self-restrained in our air strikes against ISIS, but has been able to knock out a large number of ISIS leaders and equipment despite the limited attacks against their fighters and infrastructure. Obama has a speech, tomorrow, in which he will outline his new plan for taking out ISIS. The assumption is it will include massive air strikes on ISIS positions in Iraq, now that we have achieved our goal of a proper democratically-elected government with which we can work. ISIS has already shown it will flee in the face of certain doom, and when air strikes get upped from 10 a day to 500 a day, they will surely flee to the relative safety of neighboring Syria. Once that is achieved, I believe we shall have our RV, and it could come as early as a few days from now. There was an article posted on DA about the Abadi government's priorities, yesterday evening, that backs up what I just wrote. I will post the link for the whole article, but it's really long, so I'm only going to post the highlights here. https://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&ie=UTF-8&tl=en&u=http://alsabaah.iq/ArticleShow.aspx?ID=77523 "First: a stable and secure Iraq Secondly, upgrading service and living of the citizen Third: to encourage the shift towards private sector Fourth, increase oil and gas production to improve the financial sustainability Fifth, administrative and financial reform of government institutions Sixth: Federal regulation of relations of local" Notice stability and security are mentioned first. Stability has now been achieved. Security, in my opinion, will come very quickly once the US and our nine international partners fully engage, which should be starting tomorrow. The more interesting part, though, is the second aspect of the new government's plan. Notice they plan to upgrade their citizens' standard of living before they make a move to a market economy or even before increasing oil and gas production. Within that space, according to the plan, they have a very ambitious program they are pursuing to improve the lives of the citizens, and none of it can be achieved given their current budget, so a change in the currency has to be part of Step 2, or Step 2 would actually be Step 4 at the earliest. Here are Kaperoni and tlar's takes on the same issue. Kaperoni, I believe, is being overly pessimistic about how soon security can be achieved, and while I believe tlar is potentially not taking the security situation into consideration enough with his post, a secure Iraq could very well be declared within his timeline, given enough shock and awe, of course. Kaperoni: I want to point out something very important. This is the Iraqi government's priority list of sorts.. And the first three tell the story for the dinar. Nothing is going to happen with the dinar this week, nor next week, nor the end of this month. Here is the proof! Details .... First: a stable and secure Iraq Secondly, upgrading service and living of the citizen Third: to encourage the shift towards private sector So what this list means is first and foremost they must deal with ISIS first. As it says.."First: a stable and secure Iraq" So until the coalition kicks ISIS out of Iraq, we are in a holding pattern. I have heard others (people in the know) say the same thing. Clearly #2 and #3 are exactly what we want to read. So we are in a good position and the dinar will be unleashed hopefully in the coming months once they get boot the scum bags out. Let's all watch how fast that happens. tlar: There is a new government in Iraq. It was touch and go as the sects, Sunni, Kurd's and Shia all threatened early this morning to not show at the 8 o'clock meeting to vote the government in. Politics was getting in the way as each group tried at the last minute to better their position, jockeying for positions. The Shia as well as the other blocks made last minute changes to their list of Ministers. Badr's group, a SOL Shia faction was originally slated to get the Interior Ministry but at the last minute was eliminated and so he threw a hissey fit claiming that he and his block of 30 MP's were going to boycott the 8 o'clock meeting preferring to throw the country under the bus rather that vote because he was eliminated early today. They voted this afternoon and low and behold, Iraq has a new government. That sets the stage for everything to follow. The RV should happen this week. Laws that have been awaiting approval for months, some for years, concerning economy should be passed in a basket quickly. NATO will start the assault on the ISIS almost immediately. Better late than never. Intel is holding that the rate will be above $3.50 per dinar. We are close. By late tonight or early tomorrow the news will report the fact that their has been a peaceful democratic change of government in Iraq. I believe tlar is right, and NATO strikes should start immediately following Obama's speech tomorrow. That would follow the same pattern as previous engagements in Iraq under Bush I and Bush II, with a big announcement followed by a massive international air campaign, and ISIS is far weaker than Saddam's million man army that buckled in the first hours of both of its engagements with the West. Sure, they're fanatics, but they have only 15,000 men at best, a safe place to which to flee for the time being, and not a snowball's chance in hell of achieving any kind of even minor victory against what is coming for them. Saddam's army was better equipped, better trained, and far outnumbered ISIS and they ran away at the site of the first daisy cutter. ISIS has done the same when they have been confronted on a smaller scale, and will do the same when confronted with the full force of the American and coalition naval and air forces in the region allied with a newly armed Peshmerga and Iraqi Security forces on the ground. That could come as soon as tlar's prediction of Thursday, but in my opinion, it will probably take about a week to have them completely removed from Iraq.