...there is always one news article to grab my attention and stands out from the rest...WOW, WOW, WOW news. It says that the purpose of foreign currency in Iraq is to deal with it outside the [national] economy, so it is not possible to consider the existence of a price in the dollar and a price in the dinar: one rises and the other falls. No monetary policy can control such a situation...Folks this is just what we have been waiting for so long to hear...This is huge news.
They are finally getting off the sanctioned use of ONLY US dollars for trade outside Iraq. Yes, they are beginning to act now like they are out of the UN 1991 & 2003 sanctions, that by the way, happened over a year ago. So, yes, it is about time. We all should be jumping for joy and maybe even taking a couple sips (I said just a couple) of that refrigerated champagne… lol.. lol.. lol. Save the rest for what is coming next and that includes going to the bank.
The Ministry of Commerce confirmed today, Thursday, that the country does not need to import any wheat from abroad during the next year 2024.
“Iraq’s store of wheat is still covered until the beginning of next season,” the ministry spokesman, Muthanna Al-Faraiji, told {Euphrates News}. He pointed out that “Iraq’s need for imported wheat for the purposes of mixing only and improving the quality of flour, but as a quantity, it covers Iraqi baskets, we do not need any external quantity.” “Do you know that Iraq will import 3.8 million metric tons of wheat over the next year to meet all Iraqi bread requirements?” US Ambassador to Baghdad Alina Romanowski said in a tweet on the X platform earlier today. “U.S. companies will help meet the growing demand for wheat in Iraq while the Iraqi government increases locally grown wheat production,” she added.
Question from Yolanda: We purchased our dinar almost 20 years ago so I do not have any idea where to go to purchase any longer. Can you tell me where we can go to purchase? THANK YOU for all you do!!! Yolanda Rathbun
Mnt Goat Answer: Guten tag Yolanda. Hope you had a very nice Christmas. Wishing you and your family a Happy New Year! 😊 I too purchased most of my dinar many, many years ago and have not kept up with anywhere to purchase more. I have what I have and will NOT over speculate. This can get out of hand and so buy only what you can afford. I can remember the advice given to me way back 17 years ago. Don’t buy currency on of Ebay, Amazon or any stranger selling them. There are many people losing due to counterfeits. Buy only from reputable internet brokers or banks that will certify the authenticity of the notes. I find most internet dealers will stand by their guarantee. I was also told to file away your receipt of purchase just in case the IRS needs it for tax reasons later. Put them under a blue light when you get home and you should be able to clearly see the security marks on the paper. Do this as soon as they arrive at your home. If counterfeit return immediately and demand shipping costs to return them. If they refuse, then notify them you are going to report them to the authorities and see how fast they jump to help you.., lol..lol..lol..
There are plenty of internet sites still selling dinar. Just google “buy dinar” and they all jump out at you. The intel guru Frank26 also sells dinar and dong and we know he is a reputable salesman, even though he is a very, very strange, deranged person. Good Luck!
Baghdad Mayor Ammar Moussa Kazem confirmed on Thursday that the capital’s metro project will soon come to light under the support of the services government, adding that it will cover about 80% of the city’s areas.
A statement from the Secretariat, a copy of which was received, said that “Kadhim held a meeting at the headquarters of the Baghdad Municipality under his chairmanship and in the presence of the Advisor to the Prime Minister for Transport Affairs, Nasser Al-Asadi, the Undersecretary of the Baghdad Technical Secretariat, the Director General of the Design Department, the Technical Engineering Team of the Secretariat and one of the consulting companies specialized in the field of transport and trains.”
Kazim stressed that “the cabinet session last Tuesday approved the necessary financial allocations to contract with a global consulting company to provide an integrated vision for the implementation of the metro capital Baghdad.”
He added, “The Baghdad Metro project is one of the old projects for which the Baghdad Municipality prepared several studies that did not see the light because of the inability to implement them because it was required to take possession of many land and disburse large funds.”
Kadim continued, “The government of services today, under the management of the Prime Minister, has prepared a new vision for the management of the metro file and we are strongly proceeding to implement it, and very soon the project will see the light to serve the people of the capital.”
Kazim pointed out that “the proposed new areas for the metro will cover up to 80% of the areas of the city of Baghdad, which contributes to addressing traffic jams and meeting the transportation requirements for population complexes and overpopulation areas.”
He added, “The Prime Minister’s adviser for transport affairs confirmed that the metro project is now one of the priorities of the Iraqi government and enjoys personal follow-up by the Prime Minister and is contracting with a specialized advisory body that is the best in the world in the field of trains.”
I was able to talk to my CBI committee member contact yesterday and I will review the content of our conversation with you today, what was said and why they put the project to delete the zeros on a temporary hold.
So, these past weeks we have read multiple articles on the decline of the dollar against the dinar and the official CBI rate. These articles tell us it won’t be much longer until the dollar issue is resolved. We all asked ourselves if this might be the reason for the delay. So, in my call to Iraq I asked this question.
I was told this is the issue involved in the holdup. This is exactly what they needed to see in the decline of the parallel market rate as it was holding up the final blow to the dollar and to allow them to continue on with the next steps in the process to get to the reinstatement.
I asked how close does the parallel black market rate of the dollar have to get to the official CBI rate of the dollar?
I was not given an exact figure because even my contact did not know. Of course a very close almost exact would certainly be the target, as common sense must prevail in our thinking on this too. But having told this to me, I was also told that it is not long before the decline is completed with the measures as the CBI in now making with agreements with many of Iraq’s trading partners and future trading partners to use their foreign currency in making trade payments in place of the dollar. I was told this is how Iraq used to do business prior to the sanctions.
I was also told that in the coming months, we will witness what was described as a rapid decline in the parallel market, suggesting that it will reach a level close to the official rate soon then at this time an American green light to release the currency reform process to move ahead again will be given. Of course, this is the expectation of my CBI contact and they know much better than I what is really going on in these meetings.
But here is the most interesting news from our standpoint. I was then told that at some point when the parallel market is stabilized to the official CBI, they plan to conduct one more rate change to the program rate, closer to 1000 from 1320 and then monitor it for inflation for a period of time and then if all goes well, initiate the swap-out of the three zero notes for the newer lower denominations. We all should know comes next after this step is completed……hint…hint…
Yet More Proof they need the currency reform first and foremost: (their words not mine)
So, just in this period of news we read, and I quote from one of today’s articles – “The economic expert confirmed, “This fluctuation in the dollar exchange rate means that there is no correct basis for building a strong economy, and there is no better option than building the economy on its correct foundations,” suggesting that “the dollar will rise again in the Iraqi market.” For their part, observers and those interested in economic affairs expressed their interest in the rapid decline in the dollar exchange rate recently, highlighting the impact of the relationship between Iraq and the United States in controlling the price of the dollar as a pressure card used to achieve its policies towards the country.”
Again, this quote from a recent article tells us that there is no correct basis for building a strong economy first and then watching the dinar rise based on it success. What they are telling us is they really need the dinar to be strong and to overcome the dollar, then they can seriously begin to rebuilt “with the correct foundations”. Enough said… WOW! The foundation is in the currency…get it?
So please Kaperoni guru and other idiots, please stop your nonsense in telling your listeners just the opposite and learn what Iraq is going through and how they are doing it to liberate their currency first, then because of these reforms will be able to rebuild Iraq in all aspects of economy and watch it grow.
Many of my blog readers ask me: Why didn’t Iraq just take the needed steps right from the very beginning in January 2023 to put together foreign currency swap deals with other countries to pay for imports. This way they wouldn’t have had to take an entire year to combat the parallel dollar market. To answer this question I must go a bit deep. I hope you don’t mind because I know many of you have limited attention spans.
I will tell you why. It is because since the sanctions, the US has held a strong grip on their economy and remember they still have to authorize the dollar shipments to Iraq to satisfy the demand for the dollar. This is like “blackmail” to get Iraq to go along with them even though they are now out of sanctions. So, in 2022 the US Treasury contracted with a software developer firm to build the “electronic platform”. This new platform was rolled out in January 2023 to audit and monitor the currency auctions. This was the start of serious de-dollarization. But who initiated it? Was it the US or Iraq. It was the U.S. and so Iraq has to follow the lead and cooperate this effort and move at the pace suggested by the US Treasury, who was there to help in the process.
Of course, this process of obtaining dollars is now being moved away from the CBI requesting them from the US Treasury to the private banks requesting dollars through inter-banking practices, as other non-sanctioned countries traditionally already operate under. This is all so very good!
I also need to point out, as told to us in one of the recent articles in today’s news, is that the government did not spend the budget in 2023 so that it would not be exploited in the local elections by parties and candidates at the time. In 2024 Iraq is calling on the government to start spending the budget more than it was spending in 2023 in order to be a facilitating factor for the market and exchange rate to stabilize.
So, there are many forces working against the parallel black market and will only help to stabilize the dinar official rate yet more. These forces will prevent not only large fluctuations of the dinar against the official CBI rate but also to bring the rate to a stable point to the official CBI rate. I will recap these points of these many factors they are now using:
1.Emphasising the dinar as the “National Currency” and will be the only currency used in country. There will be only one currency in Iraq and it is the Iraqi dinar;
2.Banks allowed now to import cash blocks of foreign currencies;
3.In addition to the recent measures and the consensus with the US Federal to agree to deal with the Turkey lira, UAE dirham, the euro, the Chinese yuan and the Indian ruppe, all contribute to reducing the exchange rate.”
4.We are told the dollar exchange rate will stabilize with the broader launch of the budget in 2024;
5.Banks will be forced to support the industrial initiative, which will gradually work on some industries to become their production internally to reduce the demand for the dollar as they produce in country goods for foreign trade.
6. Iraq must deal with a “basket of currencies” in addition to the dollar gradually so that it is not governed by federal instructions in addition to reducing imports.
See #3 and 6: I believe this is not “the basket” of currencies I talked about many times already to re-peg with the dinar when it goes live on FOREX. These currencies are just temporary pseudo-pegs like currencies being used to gradually get off the dollar more and more when dealing in trade with other countries. So, there is yet another major step to take to get where they need to go globally and that too is coming. Remember “first things first”!
So, we can see what is slowly happening is that Iraq is moving back to a normalcy of their financial system an international normalcy. It takes much more than just putting in place the banking reforms, the means and the mechanisms to do it as we have witnessed over the past years. But now they are actually doing it. It may be slow but remember they are still under the strong arm of the US Treasury on this matter too and are working very closely with them at their pace. In many ways this is good as we want the US to support this process when it comes time to give the “green light”. This is why so many visits by the US Treasury to Iraq, Get it?
We all must stay diligent as it is our savior Jesus who is working to bring all these amazing events that we see taking place and will see in 2024. Remember too I told everyone years ago that the RV and Reinstatement would be coordinated with the ousting of bad politicians in the US Government. In the past they where influential in holding up the process for reasons I will not get into now… it’s called corruption. But now they know their days are numbered and the slaughter and ousting of the party members in politics will happen in the next election. So, the Biden administration gave directions to the US Treasury to now move ahead at rapid pace to move the currency reform process ahead so they can release these SKR’s (frozen bank accounts) from the 2012 and 2013 early exchanges. Remember these illegal exchanges? They are now desperate. They also need the money to campaign in the last stages of the 2024 election year in the U.S. So, yes we are in a very good position.