As you’ve probably determined by now, usually one particular post sticks out and sets the tone for every one of these columns. Today is no different…
7-29-2024 Frank26 It’s getting serious there’s no doubt about it…The monetary reform of Iraq has blossomed. I mean if it wasn’t serious before, it’s downright psychotic now I guess. What does this even mean? Well it’s guru talk for I need another way to say it’s positive without saying it’s happening again, and again. So let’s use a gardening metaphor to spice it up! Might as well say the RV is like a box of chocolates…
There’s an immediate shift from the July 18th failure to show the WTO meeting as anything other than, well a meeting, to suddenly Iraq taking quicker steps for ascension. According to the WTO site itself, they plan on Iraq’s fourth meeting sometime early next year. There are some that are not pushing for something happening next month.
7-29-2024 Jeff Did you know the US troops are going to start getting removed in the month of September? Did you know Iraq will finish their accession to the World Trade in August? …They still have 150 laws that need to be done. They have a whole bunch of projects they need to start…The budget is not published in the Gazette…Did you know completing and implementing the reforms is a World Trade requirement but yet they’re going to finish their accession in the month of August? …everything is waiting on this right here [the budget]… Now the overview of this is all over the place. There are 2500 U.S. troops in Iraq holding “observer” status, meaning they are there in a training and support capacity for the Iraqi military. Currently, that ranks 9th among total troops in one country location. I just don’t think that the number of troops in Iraq is a big problem, perhaps it’s the tag of “observer” which needs to change. Tasking that from occupation to assistance. The budget is still suffering from the same problems as the past, implementation. Until such time that Iraq can implement a budget, they will not have a completion of the process. The whole “August ascension” WTO thing, that’s a different story. There’s nothing concrete from the WTO that says they will have a meeting with the idea of an ascension vote for ANY countries at that time. But in the big scheme of things, the ONLY thing I care about from the WTO ascension talk is the restrictions are lifted from the IQD. Period. That means they have an internationally accepted currency and honestly, they don’t need to be in the WTO for that to happen. But if they could achieve ascension, they would have to be unrestricted.
And the from beat a dead horse category:
7-29-2024 MarkZ Question: Is it still possible to see the RV in July? MarkZ: It is still very possible. And that is an impressive comment as there is only 2 days left in July. Remember though that we do not know the timing…but is it possible? Very. Some people just can’t give up on their failures. It could, maybe, possibly, shoulda, coulda, woulda. Enough tightrope walking, no it won’t.
7-29-2024 PompeyPeter Question: “Are two rates operating?” No…there are not two rates. There isn’t 1310 and a hidden rate operating in Iraq or outside of Iraq…It’s against IMF regs and rules. You cannot have two rates operating. I don’t understand why this keeps coming up. The simple thought process is this. You go to the store, let’s just say Target, and you go to the counter to check out with your wonderful purchases and you actually decide to pay cash! You whip out your wallet or purse and pull out the bills and they are DOLLARS! Of course they are, you live in the US. So you’ll pay in USD. What is the value of your dollar? It’s one dollar to one dollar of the price. So when you go to Iraq you pay in IQD. One IQD equals one IQD. It’s only because we hold IQD OUTSIDE the country that we care about what the exchange rate is to OUR currency.
Let’s see what actual news pops out for us in August.
BWM