Monday, July 20, and over the weekend the Central Bank of Iraq and the US Treasury reached an understanding. 7 Iraqi banks that had been shut out of the world's payment system were let back toward it.

The headline that ran everywhere said they were cleared for dollar transactions. They were not. The Arabic in the statement excludes the dollar by name, and most of the community will trade decisions on the wrong version this week.

The part nobody connected is who has been waiting at the other end of that line. On 14 July 2003 the Coalition Provisional Authority signed Order Number 20 and created the Trade Bank of Iraq. That August, JPMorgan Chase won the contract to run it, beating consortia led by Citigroup, Bank of America, Wachovia and Bank One. No source we can find states the arrangement ever ended.

February 1895. The US Treasury was down to roughly $45 million in gold, weeks from failing to honour its own currency. Grover Cleveland did not go to Congress. He went to J. Pierpont Morgan.

What kind of bank walks into an active war zone to build a banking system nobody will properly use for 20 years? That is the shape we teach in today's briefing, and why a signed order from 2003 matters more than the headline from Saturday.