Mike the Usurper wrote:

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

I seem to remember saying something like this was going to happen a while back. If people thought the current recession hurt, wait until this gets stacked on.

This should be news to no one. It's been on the radar since at least 2000 when Iraq switched their oil pricing to the Euro. I remember the tremors caused by that. Speculation over what would happen if all of OPEC switched. Iran announced its oil bourse plan in 2004. By 2006 more than half of their oil export income was received in Euros.

This latest development is part of a logical progression.