Today we are going to give you a brief history of the monetary system we live in, better known as the PetroDollar system. Simple explanation to understand a little better the world we are immersed in and we take for granted.
The PetroDollar system is created as all commodities on the planet to be bought and sold in U.S. dollars, which is the currency printed by the United States of America.
To understand why we live in this sistem, we must go back in time to the early 1940s.
The world was involved into World War II, fighting was going on almost everywhere, and the Allies were about to attack German-occupied territories. The most industrialized and powerful country on the planet at that time was the United States, ousting the United Kingdom from its throne as the world leader and dominant empire on the planet.
In 1944, with the Bretton Woods agreements, it is decreed that the dollar will be the world currency pegged to gold when the war is over and consequently all other currencies will be pegged to the U.S. dollar.
With the war over,we had a period of prosperity and economic revival. The fabulous 1950s.
Years go by, however, and we come to the 1970s. The world is divided into two blocks, the Western block versus the Soviet block countries, and all over the world there are more or less heated skirmishes and clashes.
The hottest place on the planet is Vietnam, which sees massive intervention by the United States in open warfare to prevent the Soviet threat from taking over all of Southeast Asia. But this massive effort costs dearly, and the U.S. spends billions of dollars, printing and printing.
Nixon on August 15, 1971, in a surprise move, eliminates gold convertibility of the dollar. Of course it was a “temporary” measure to get out of the crisis. But the United States remains the country in charge of the planet, and our economic planet needs a specific raw material to make the economy work. Oil.
In 1973 Saudi Arabia and the United States agreed to sell oil on the world market exclusively in U.S. dollars. This supports the world demand for dollars since any country wishing to buy oil will have to exchange its currency for dollars and then buy the oil. This system then applies to all raw materials needed for a developed industry. This is also a way of geopolitics control in addition to the presence of military bases in various countries.
The U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia protects the Saudi royal house and the country from all kinds of aggression, since not all countries in the world are aligned with Washington’s policy or wish to sell their oil under this system.
The greater the demand for oil, the greater the demand for dollars in the world becomes.
It must be said that some countries such as China and Russia are trying or have succeeded in getting out of this system, but we are talking expressly about the major competitors to the world leadership of the planet.