OPEC & Apocalypto: We've got the early review...

Today I got an e-mail from NEWS MAX of all people, saying that OPEC has just dumped the dollar. Could this be true? That's earth-shaking news if it is! So I e-mailed my friend Joe Thompson who knows everything and he wrote back. "Yes, Jane, oil producing countries ARE shifting their oil income away from dollars and into euros, yen and sterling."

Joe went on to say that this was no big deal for OPEC because the U.S. only makes up 10% of the world's oil market. "It only makes sense for those countries to concentrate on the most widely circulated currency in their part of the world. And that's where the main OPEC oil market is -- European and Asian nations."

Thanks for the clarification, Joe. It also doesn't make sense for OPEC to sell oil to the U.S. for dollars because by thus supporting the dollar OPEC is helping to feed the Bush war machine which then turns around and bites them in the [bottom], whereas OPEC can sell oil to Europe and Asia instead -- places where no one is all that interested in napalming OPEC members' women and children.

Okay, so the dollar is now officially on the decline -- but will it have a soft landing or a hard one? Who knows about that either. But if the dollar's value is going down rapidly, I'd better go out and start spending my dollars now while they are still worth something.

And then my son called me up. He must have read my blog -- the one where I was whining that he never called. "Hey, Ma," he said. "Wanna go to a movie tonight?" Sure! And let's go to dinner at the fancy Japanese restaurant too. If the dollar is gonna be valueless tomorrow, we might as well have sushi at Kirala now.

"What movie do you want to go see?" I asked.
"Apocalypto?" OMG. The dollar's coming to an end and the world's coming to an end too? Sure why not. The sushi was really good. The ginger beef was dry. And Apocalypto? The movie critic Richard Roeper's review of the movie was right -- Mel Gibson isn't particularly fond of Mayas or Scots or even early Christians. Mel Gibson is just fond of BLOOD! This movie had more blood in it than any movie I have EVER seen. But it was entertaining although a bit too heavy-handed in inaccurately depicting Mayans as blood-thirsty sadists. Aside from that, I'd give it two thumbs up. But only if you are completely NOT squeamish.

So. What does Apocalypto have to do with OPEC's assault on the dollar? It relates to the movie's opening quote from Will Durant, which went something like this: "Great civilizations can only be conquered after they have started to decay within." It wasn't so much that OPEC was fierce enough to conquer the dollar. It was that the dollar had already started to decay from within.