At last a theme where I can contribute, being an economist. :-) Money today is Fiat money. There is no correlation between the dollar and the oil. Oil has its price on dollar, not the other way around.
Currencies have their value based on several things, amongst which: government credibility, inflation expectations, public debt, interests, etc... There would be significant changes in currencies exchange prices if the oil economy should collapse. But that is not because the oil backup today's currencies, but because some of those things that holds some currencies values worldwide would change significantly. I mean, lending money to Venezuela or Russia could be a bad idea, since these countries currencies value depends a lot on oil/gas exports. People would sell bolivares and rublos because their perception of these currencies risk would increase overnight. America would have a smaller trade deficit and China would have an even larger trade surplus. What would happen to the financial markets wordwide? Nobody knows... Oil/Gas companies are either first or second largest companies in some very large markets like USA, China, Brazil, Great Britain, France and Russia stock exchanges... The electricity generation and distribution companies are also very important for the financial markets, as those companies usually are blue chips and long term "safe houses". Best regards, Bruno 2012/1/17 <mix...@bigpond.com> > In reply to Mark Iverson-ZeroPoint's message of Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:29:56 > -0800: > Hi, > [snip] > >In addition, if currencies are based on the petro$, then that's going to > >collapse like a tons of bricks when the financial industry realizes that > >LENR just made petroleum obsolete. Then, currencies will be Nickel-based? > >Or what? > > ...there is really only one thing that all humans agree is valuable: human > effort. Everyone values their own time. It may be the only resource that > will > remain scarce. > > Regards, > > Robin van Spaandonk > > http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html > >
