The Sun's not yellow it's chicken

A nation with oceans of oil and… Rolling Blackouts?!?

chrismcmahon:

China is a manufacturing economy, deliberately weakening the Yuan helps exports. China also have trillions in foreign exchange reserves and continues to buy up the debt of many nations, you can’t compare them to Iran who are facing sanctions.

You’re missing the bleeding-obvious contradiction here…

China’s currency is weak, but they can buy up everyone else’s debt because they take in so much money… Iran’s currency is weak, and they take in mountains of cash from other countries… hence, Iran should be as well off as China.  It’s all about the balance of trade.

Get it?

HOW they make their money is irrelevant — manufacturing or oil production — what matters in both cases is the influx of money.  Iran has plenty of money streaming in, they sell everything they produce,  just like China. 

You’re arguing that China is different because they only sell BECAUSE their currency is weak.  But that’s stupid, because the issue here is NOT a comparison of WHY they sell, it’s the state of affairs AFTER they sell — the weak currency makes things bad or not for the people. The comparison to China demonstrates that there is nothing to your claim that a weak currency is tadamount to a suffering economy.  In fact, it demonstrates that a weak currency is largely irrelevant, that other factors — THE BALANCE OF TRADE in this case — are vastly more important.

Iran has an extremely favorable trade surplus, like China.