MOSCOW, May 22 (RIA Novosti) -
      "The Russian Trading System, Russia's premier stock market, announced Monday that it would start trading in gold, oil and oil products on June 8.
      The announcement comes in the wake of President Vladimir Putin's state of the nation address May 10, when he said Russia, as a leading oil exporting nation, should establish its own oil exchange to trade crude and petroleum products for rubles."

"Vladimir Putin and the rise of the petro-ruble" by Mike Whitney 05/22/06:
"As the reserve currency [USD], the US can maintain its towering $8.4 trillion national debt and $800 billion trade deficit without fear of soaring interest rates or hyper-inflation. Trillions of greenbacks are constantly circulating in oil transactions just as hundreds of billions are stockpiled in foreign banks. In effect, the Federal Reserve is issuing bad checks with every dollar printed on the assumption that they will never reach the bank for collection. So far, they've been right, and as the price of oil continues to skyrocket, the Fed just keeps cheerily printing more worthless paper sending it to the 4 corners of the earth. Regrettably, if Russia or Iran goes ahead with their conversion plan, then the bad checks will flood back to their source and precipitate a meltdown."

Dave Kimble, in "Collapse of the Petrodollar Looming":
"Russia's oil exports represent 15.2% of the world's export trade in oil, making it a much more significant player than Iran, with 5.8% of export volumes. Russia also produces 25.8% of the world's gas exports."

The Federal Reserve has maintained that the US debts aren't critical as long as foreign investors keep on buying more and more of America. Aside from the question of whether this is prudent US policy, the weakness in the Feds' theory is that it depends on the stability of the US dollar.

For more on the importance of the US$ monopoly in oil trading,
see my blog  Debt-Increase
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Update Jan 09, 2007:
2006 is over and still no trading in rubles. Russia needed the World Trade Organization. Is Russia holding off trading in rubles as a bargining chip?

Likewise, The proposed Iranian Oil Bourse. See my blog  Debt-Increase

The United States is the world's biggest welfare state. And I don't mean internally. At some point in the fall of the dollar, our debts will become a burden for our international creditors. The international banks must know that the collapse of the dollar will hurt economies everywhere. They will will try their best to continue to hold us together. Let's hope they are smart enough to pull it off.

Aloha, Larry