DONALD TRUMP SUPPORTERS THINK PRESIDENT WILL MAKE THEM RICH IF THEY BUY IRAQI MONEY
A number of people in the U.S. have bought millions of Iraqi dinars in hopes that President Donald Trump would revalue the currency to make them rich.
Rumors that the U.S. government was planning to set the Iraqi dinar—currently worth .00084 of a dollar—to something equal to or even beyond the dollar predate Trump, going back to the period of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s rule before the Gulf War in the early 1990s. The U.S. first took military action in response to his invasion of Kuwait, later sanctioned Baghdad and ultimately unseated the leader in a 2003 invasion, leaving the U.S. in control of a ravaged economy.
As The Daily Beast reported Tuesday, however, this theory has taken on new life under Trump, who some supporters took literally when he promised in April 2017 that all currencies would “be on a level playing field” in response to allegations that China was manipulating the value of the yuan.
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Rebuttal:
The use of the above picture as a RIDICULOUS characterization of the current situation – directed towards eBay and how currency may (or may not) be sold there currently, should cast grave doubt on all of the information in this article.
This is VERY OLD currency no longer valid or in circulation. This is the writing of a single, unscrupulous, private eBayer. This was apparently written before Saddam was deposed. What does a single eBay ad from prior to 2003 have to do with ANYTHING?
Why don’t these shills bother to include the SIGIR report (see page 84) as delivered to the US Congress in their final reporting? Because it would be too factual… and it doesn’t line up with their SLANDEROUS tilt… that’s why.
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In April 2003, exactly one month into the Iraq War, Newsweek’s Sally Atkinson penned this in response to a reader from Lahore, Pakistan, who asked what his 100,000 Iraqi dinars would be worth after the war:
“Sadly, they’re not worth much even now. Before the first gulf war, one dinar equaled about $3. Now one is worth less than half a penny. So your 100,000 are good for only about 50 cents. And they’ll probably be worth even less when the war ends, says Bob Hormats, a Goldman Sachs economist. At some point, the new Iraqi government will likely create a new dinar (without Saddam’s picture on it) and allow old ones to be converted, but a war rarely helps the exchange rate. Hurry and sell them on eBay before everyone else does.”
But as a new conflict raged between U.S. troops and Sunni Muslim insurgents in 2006—the year Hussein was executed by the Washington-installed Shiite Muslim government in Baghdad—mainstream media outlets began to report on a peculiar trend in thinking among investors.
In January of that year, CNN financial editor Walter Updegrave strongly cautioned a reader inquiring on whether or not they should buy into the Iraqi dinar hoping its value would restabilize. That September, ABC News investigated the phenomenon and, a month later, Boston Magazine, was speaking to self-styled investors in the Iraqi dinar as well.
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Isnt’ it curious how views not held by “the establishment” are portrayed as “self-styled”… This is how they treat people they want to talk down to.
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The years dragged on and, though Iraq’s crisis only deepened, droves of online sites continued to sell Iraqi dinars to customers in the U.S., promising them that the revaluation was right around the corner. One of the most consistent critics of the theory has been Forbes’s John Wasik.
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Rebuttal:
Mr Wasik has generally been supported by the establishment financial industry… initially by the insurance industry (specifically, John Hancock Ins. and Investments) and then later by the broader insurance, banking (specifically, Wells Fargo) and investment world. Of course, he’ll be critical of anything that competes with the interests of those he’s paid by.
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In 2013, as the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) that emerged out of Iraqi’s Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants began to wreak havoc across Iraq and neighboring Syria, rumors surfaced that Wells Fargo would begin to trade in the dinar, a notion Wasik shot down.
By 2015, he reported that the FBI was investigating Iraqi dinar dealers. The following year, Wasik noted the Securities and Exchange Commission had filed a complaint against a Utah man who made some $1.7 million selling dinar while claiming to have inside knowledge on an upcoming revaluation.
The schemes continued, however. Just last month, “one of the largest Iraqi dinar exchangers in the United States were convicted by a federal jury following a five-week trial,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta, where two co-owners of Sterling Currency Group and its chief operating officer were found guilty of peddling the embattled currency.
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Rebuttal:
The above is a FALSE reporting of the actual events.
The following is an excerpt DIRECTLY from the DOJ website:
“On October 9, 2018, the defendants TYSON RHAME, JAMES SHAW, and FRANK BELL were convicted of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud. The defendants RHAME and BELL were also convicted of making false statements to federal agents. The defendants were acquitted of money laundering charges”.
Source: Justice.gov
Rebuttal:
They weren’t “found guilty of peddling the embattled currency”. That is a lie. They were found guilty of CONSPIRACY to commit mail and wire fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud and lying to federal agents. Meaning they planned the fraud (as evidenced by their own e-mails and admissions to one another), they committed the pre-planned acts of both mail and wire fraud. On top of all of it, then they lied (on various other subjects) to federal agents.
Selling of Dinar wasn’t the issue.
If they were selling widgets and committed ANY of the above acts – they would still go to jail over it.
In fact, in a direct conversation with one federal agent during the Sam Tayeh investigation, it was proposed to me… (and was ultimately born out in his final guilty plea)… had he simply had a currency license, there would have been NO ISSUE.
In the instance of Sam Tayeh, IT WASN’T ABOUT SELLING DINAR, IT WAS ABOUT SELLING DINAR WITHOUT A LICENSE.
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Quick searches on Google and Twitter show plenty of believers are still buzzing about a potential Iraqi dinar revaluation, and hoping that billionaire businessman-turned-president Trump will be the one to bring it about.
Source: Newsweek.com
Final Rebuttal:
This article was initially published in “The Daily Beast”… a notoriously far-left political rag here in the U.S.
In retrospect… first it was President Bush going to do this, then it was President Obama either doing it or holding it up, now this HIT PIECE is written so as to make President Trump supporters look stupid or, if this happens under his watch – to make it look like Trump is trying to make his supporters wealthy.
The fact that investors were willing to buy the new Iraqi currency going back as early as 2003 – 2004, almost immediately after President Bush signed E.O. 13303 – flies in the face of this “you’ve all been duped” rant. They did not require anyone to tell them anything – not a guru, not an unscrupulous Dinar seller, not a HIT PIECE news article and CERTAINLY not some “investment specialist”. People figure stuff out on their own. They don’t need to be told what to think.
Here is the real question. I wonder where The Daily Beast got the impetus to do this? Who put them up to this? Why the QUACKERY reporting??
Is someone, somewhere, up to SOMETHING? This very much appears to be HIGH-STAKES political jockeying based on information available only at the HIGHEST levels.