The OPEC oil production cut isn't surprising, I was waiting all summer for it to happen. Despite western "analysts" claiming the Arabs would be boosting production to help the west.
What surprised me what Americans throwing the toys out the pram about it. You'd think they at least anticipated it.
Resurrecting NOPEC is dangerous territory as the Saudis have already stated what their response would be.
This is interesting reading 3 years on. Many of the Gulf states have already started to switch away from the dollar anyway, so this Saudi threat has less teeth than it did in the past.
If the Saudis do dedollarise the likely American response will be seizing of Saudi assets held in America. They could easily do this by blaming human rights in Saudi Arabia not to mention the evidence they've been sitting on Saudi intelligence involvement in 9/11.
From the Arab/OPEC point of view there is no point in selling as much oil as possible right now. Any profits will just be seized like Russia and the Taliban. Just liquidate American bonds, investments in America and Europe while you still can. That should cover any shortfall in selling oil. As Russia has shown it's possible to make more money selling less, at least for the short term.
This won't be easy for US to get out of.
All these big events, Russia's war fucking up NATO's backbone economies. Eurosceptism getting hypercharged. India being polarized away from US due to needs to maintain ties to Russia. Now suddenly OPEC is threatening to defect, in fact, already signed into law a move that directly hurts America and is daring US to do something about it.
Think there's no orchestrator behind this? With the talk of sanctions on OPEC, sanctions on India, sanctions on EU, EU internal sanctions on eurosceptics etc. China sits out of the conflicts, taking no damage while picking up the scraps wherever US and their own border domains tear at eachother to assign blame.
America got overconfident because they think having reserve currency status despite being a smaller economy gives them power over the world.
Trump's aggression against China has given the logical result. Beijing is now awake and has turned its attention against America. In its hubris, America thought it would be the one to pivot to Asia, when really, what is going to happen is that China will pivot into America's interest regions and US better have a good defense prepared. Lashing out at Riyadh is playing directly into Beijing's hands.
