'The Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair'

Details behind the strategy I helped engineer—the Saudi Arabian Money—laundering Affair (SAMA)—are provided in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. In summary, as far as the media was concerned, the House of Saud agreed to three important conditions; it would: I) invest a large portion of its petrodollars in U.S. government securities; 2) allow the U.S. Treasury Department to use the trillions of dollars in interest from these securities to hire U.S. corporations to westernize Saudi Arabia; and 3) maintain the price of oil within limits acceptable to the corporatocracy. For its part, the U.S. government promised to keep the Saud family in power.

There was an additional agreement, one that made few headlines but was crucial to the corporatocracy's need to maintain the dollar as the standard global currency. Saudi Arabia committed to trading oil exclusively in U.S. dollars. With the scratch of a pen the dollar’s sovereignty was reestablished. Oil replaced gold as the measure of a currency’s value.—”The Secret History of the American Empire,” p.171