De-Dollarization: The Story of Gaddafi's Gold-Backed Currency is Not Over

A recently declassified email from the illegal private server used by ex-Secretary of State and Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton during the Washington-orchestrated war against Muammar Gaddafi sheds some light on the US establishment's genuine motivation.

"In a newly declassified Clinton email from Sid Blumenthal to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dated April 2, 2011, Blumenthal reveals the reason that Gaddafi must be eliminated," F. William Engdahl, American author, researcher and risk strategic consultant, writes in his article for New Eastern Outlook.

"Using the pretext of citing an unidentified 'high source' Blumenthal writes to Clinton, 'According to sensitive information available to this source, Gaddafi's government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver… This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar," the researcher exposes.

"By 2008 the prospect of sovereign control by a growing number of African and Arab oil states of their state oil and gas revenues was causing serious concern in Wall Street as well as the City of London. It was huge liquidity, in the trillions, they potentially no longer controlled," Engdahl continues.

Meanwhile, in 2009 Gaddafi, then President of the African Union, offered the states of the continent to shift to a new currency, independent from the US dollar, the so-called "Gold Dinar."

According to the researcher, the idea, voiced by the Libyan leader, received high praise from Tunisia's Ben Ali and Mubarak's Egypt.

Gaddafi called upon African nations to create a currency alliance making the gold dinar the primary means of payment for oil and other resources.

"Along with the Arab OPEC sovereign wealth funds for their oil, other African oil nations, specifically Angola and Nigeria, were moving to create their own national oil wealth funds at the time of the 2011 NATO bombing of Libya," Engdahl writes, adding that those sovereign national funds were supposed to make Africa independent from colonial monetary control.

In light of this it is hardly surprising that Wall Street and the City of London threw their weight behind the NATO-led campaign aimed against the "rebellious" Libyan leader.

Engdahl draws attention to the fact that there was something very fishy about the idea of the US-backed Libyan Islamists to create a Western-style central bank 'in exile' (as well as its own oil company) amid the fierce fight against the Gaddafi government.

The researcher cites Robert Wenzel who wrote in the Economic Policy Journal that he has "never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising."

"This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences," Wenzel stressed.

The aforementioned "sophisticated interests" could have been tied to Wall Street moguls and the City of London bankers who sought to eliminate the very idea of a Pan-African currency.

"The Gaddafi dream of an Arabic and African gold system independent of the dollar, unfortunately, died with him," Engdahl notes.

The story is not finished yet: a new gold-backed currency alliance is emerging in the East, threatening again the US dollar hegemony. This group, headed by China and Russia, poses an entirely new challenge to America's monetary dominance, the researcher remarks.