Recently attending the fourth Arab-Turkish Congress of Social Sciences (ATCOSS) held at the University of Petra in the Jordanian capital of Amman, I saw in this congress that the Middle East has hope to overcome the tribulations that it is currently experiencing. On the occasion of this congress, I would like to focus on the Jordanian economy. As an economist, the first thing that grabbed my attention was the Jordanian Dinar's (JOD) high exchange rate over the U.S. dollar, as $1 is roughly equivalent to 0.7 JOD. The currency of a country, which pursues an open economic policy, can be valuable in two ways: Either it must have a rapid and continuous inflow of hot money or must have a never-ending foreign trade surplus. However, Jordan is too far off both of these cases, as it is a country that is void of oil and natural gas resources, and suffers from energy and water shortages in addition to a high fiscal deficit, which is a chronic problem of the country's economy. While the foreign trade deficit also poses a major problem to the economy, it is estimated that the budget will have a deficit of $1.5 billion by the end of the year. Although it imports $21 billion worth of goods every year, its exports are only around $9 billion. Potash, phosphate, fertilizer, textiles, pharmaceuticals, fresh fruit and vegetables are the main items of export. Among the most important sources that keep the JOD up are the grants and long-term low-interest loans procured by the U.S., Gulf countries and international financial institutions. Tourism revenues and overseas workers' remittances play an important role in closing the current account deficit. In 2013, the money transferred into the country by Jordanian workers, most of who worked in Gulf countries, was around $1.5 million, while tourism revenues amounted to approximately $3.5 billion. This explains why Jordan has so many refugees, but it accepts them not with humanitarian concerns, but rather for the sake of trade and to relieve Israel.Jordan is implementing an economic stabilization program in accordance with the stand-by agreement of $1.2 billion which was signed with the IMF in 2013. Let us dwell upon this matter as well. The currency of any country that signs a stand-by agreement with the IMF would never be so precious. What is essential for the IMF is that foreign debt should be paid through a foreign trade surplus, and for this, the local currency needs to be devalued permanently. But this is not the case in Jordan for two main reasons: The first is that the country pursues a fixed exchange rate system, which is enough to show that Jordan does not have an open economy under its present conditions. The second is the very intense and continuous input into the country especially from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Currently the U.S. and Saudi Arabia want Jordan to have a specialized defense industry - which is also Jordanian King Abdullah's area of interest - and to make it a manufacturing base for the entirety of the region in this field. Apart from this, I would like to call attention another initiative of Saudi Arabian Monarch King Abdullah who recently visited Iraq's Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi on Sunday, according to the Jordan Times - one of the most widely-read English newspapers of the country - which titled the story of the meeting with: "Iraqi oil supplies might resume by sea." In addition to pipelines, Iraqi oil needs to be carried to the Mediterranean by sea and to this end, such important harbors as Haifa Port should be continuously used and the number of ports should be increased both on the Israeli and the Jordanian sides. In order to achieve this, Israel uses terror and Jordan uses an iron fist in a velvet glove to solve the Palestinian question, without care for the Palestinian economy or international law. Al-Abadi and King Abdullah also focused on economic cooperation, which involves increasing the number of flights, developing railway networks, creating oil pipelines and boosting free trade agreements between the two countries. It seems that, Jordan, like Israel, strives to create an alternative to the Southern Gas Corridor, which currently consists of Azerbaijani resources and will also cover Iraqi and Levantine resources in the near future. Obviously, this is not the volition of King Abdullah himself, but rather a volition driven by Saudi Arabia, the neo-con bloc of the U.S. and Germany. I must say that Jordan's autarchic and self-enclosed economic structure will not allow it to devise such a large energy project on a global scale, as it is at the same time a free market project. In other words, the Jordanian administration, which cannot determine the value of its currency with its own dynamics, cannot create an alternative to the Southern Gas Corridor with an economy that survives on U.S. and Saudi Arabian grants. This administration's mentality dooms its country to poverty with feudal politics and institutions that go back to the 17th century. Therefore, no one should follow the futile efforts of the King.