Who doomed the petrodollar: America or Saudi Arabia?

There has been a lot of confusion lately about Saudi Arabia allegedly ending a 50-year-deal with the United States that tied oil sales to the U.S. dollar.

While many have claimed that the deal never actually existed, financial expert Carol Roth is here to clear that up.

“There was a deal put in place, but never once did I come across anything that said we have a specific expiration,” Roth tells Glenn Beck, who notes himself that if the world goes off the petrodollar, “that is the beginning of the end.”

Roth explains that when the United States went off the gold standard, they created a secret delegation that went to Saudi Arabia as part of a diplomatic tour.

“There was an oil embargo put in place by the Arab oil exporters. It sent the price of oil sky-high. So, the big objective was basically the U.S. didn’t want crude oil, you know, energy, which is obviously really what fuels growth around the world to become an economic weapon,” Roth explains.

“They knew, 'Okay, well, now we’re off the gold standard, we’ve got this currency, wouldn’t it be great to have somebody finance our deficits?'” She continues.

In exchange for economic and military support, the Saudis struck a deal with the U.S. to price oil in dollars around the world.

“There was a secret piece of it, and that was that the Saudis did not want everyone to know that they had this huge treasury stockpile,” Roth says, noting that it was because they didn’t want anyone to know how “closely they were in bed with the U.S.”

Now, this deal has ended.

“The FED has managed to hold the dollar not stable either for the world or domestically,” Roth says. “So, it’s not like they even made the tradeoff. They just abandoned it all together.”

“The big issue, if you are these countries around the world that now have everything priced in dollar, all of your major commodities, because it’s not just oil at this point,” she continues, “When you have these huge swings in the dollar, that means that threatens you as a nation, because you now may not be able to afford energy, or you may not be able to afford the food for your country.”

“That’s a national security issue,” she says. “And so, countries were getting sick of that we weaponized the U.S. dollar, and at the end of the day, they’re starting to move away from it.”

This is why it isn’t the Saudis who are to blame for the end of the deal.

“The Saudis did not break a deal. We’ve broken the deal long ago,” Roth says.

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