Getting the Job Done
President George W. Bush's Administration is focused on a series of
Foreign Policy objectives, particularly in the Middle East, with clear
imperial overtones that have led to grave social, humanitarian,
diplomatic, political, security and military crises in Iraq, Afghanistan
and other countries in that region. Now we are seeing a power struggle inside
the Republican Party itself, between the so-called "Realists" or
Pragmatics led by James Baker III, Henry Kissinger, Lawrence Eagleburger,
Brent Scowcroft, Robert Gates and George H W Bush (Senior) on the one
side, who are trying to force-feed the 79 Recommendations of the Iraq
Study Report on President Bush, and the "Hawks" both inside the
Administration (notably, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney) and outside the
Administration (notably the very powerful Zionist "Israel First!"
organizations such as AIPAC, B'Nai B'Rith, American Jewish Committee,
and Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert's government itself).
If the Hawks end up having the upper hand - and there are
increasing signs that this will be the case - then no doubt we will very
soon see unilateral military action on the part of Israel followed by
the US, against Iran and other countries in the region, which will
result in dramatic violence and disruption in the entire region, that
could very well spill over to other parts of the world.
Aside from the on-going illegal military occupations of
Iraq and Afghanistan, the impending attacks on Iran, Syria, Palestine and
Lebanon will most certainly generate major crises and convulsions of a
military, political, economic, financial and, crucially, monetary character.
The latter has specifically to do with the use and abuse of the US
Dollar as an instrument of Imperial World Power by the Bush
Administration.
In today’s “globalized” and “interdependent” world, the
effects of hi-tech applied to geopolitics, the economy and finance have
transformed the whole world into potential victims of vast "virtual
tsunamis" involving not ocean waves but rather waves of
technology-driven social catastrophes, financial collapses and
artificial crises resulting in civil wars, external invasions, genocides
and collective disruption on a scale never seen before. And even though
these may be virtual and abstract tsunamis, the harm, hardship and
suffering they cause to real people and real property are very tangible
and lasting.
We
believe that the world is about to undergo the controlled
destabilization and collapse of the US Dollar, which will be replaced by
a “New Dollar” backed by Official “Good Gold.” The primary driving
forces behind this global process are the Bush Administration, allied to
major private financial-industrial interests in the United States. the
UK and elsewhere, controlled by private Overworld geopolitical planning
emanating from a network of think-tanks, primarily the New York-based
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which acts as the hub of a
veritable web of like-minded, supplementary, specialist planning centers,
universitities and Corporate R&D departments, all suitably and
economically aligned towards common global goals.
That Global Goal consists of re-engineering the world's social,
political, economic, financial, monetary, military - even religious -
architecture, so that it accomodates as best as possible the medium and
long-term objectives of the extremely powerful players to which this web
of think-tanks is subordinated. I.e., their Mission is to design the
Strategic Blueprint for the New World Order being born right before our
eyes, and the Tactical Work Plans for its execution, knowing full well
that managing this whole process means managing huge social upheavals this
planning process generates. It necessarily entails death and
destruction for hundreds of millions of people, not just in the Middle
East, Africa or Latin America - albeit, those regions are where such
violence is mostly being directed - but also in specific
poverty-stricken ethnic sectors inside the Industrialized Nations
themselves, as we saw in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast when Katrina
struck in 2005, or in the silent dramas that unfold in the slums of New
York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Pittsburgh, London,
Liverpool, Paris or Marseille.
Imperial Overdrive
“The
King is dead! Long Live the King!”
Such has been since Medieval times the cry announcing the demise of an
English Monarch and the immediate enthroning of the chosen Royal
Successor. If the US Dollar is the “king of world currencies” dominating
and governing today’s usury-based international financial system, it is
no doubt an old, decrepit, tired and sickly Sovereign. And since the
Empire will never allow its throne to remain empty or subject to
unpredictable forces, we can be certain that old and sickly "King Dollar"
already has an annointed blue-blooded royal successor, with rosy cheeks,
golden locks and sturdy health.
At
any moment, the world will hear a loud and clear announcement declaring
“The Dollar is dead! Long live the
New Dollar!”, at which time the Throne of Usury in the
Temple of the "God" multitudes vow they "Trust", will usher in a new
Sovereign to enforce the centuries old creed: “Business as
Usual...”.
For
years and until now, the United States has been printing huge amounts of
Dollar bank notes. No one seems to know for sure just how excessive such
currency over-printing really is, but estimates put it somewhere between
five to ten times the monetary circulation needed by an economy the size
of the US (2005 US Gross Domestic Product was u$s 13.000 billion). This
so-called "fiat", unbacked or unreserved money printing has spiralled
totally out-of-control ever since on 15th August 1971 former president
Richard M Nixon implicitly declared the US bankrupt by taking the Dollar
off the Gold Standard.
Since
then, the US Dollar has no backing whatsoever in monetary and economical
terms and is only "convertible" into other bits of paper, so that,
factually, it is only worth the paper it is printed on.
Its "value" rests fundamentally on the collective psychological
perception and social convention amongst hundreds of millions of persons
the world over who feel that the Dollar has abstract "value", which is reinforced
by the fact that it is universally accepted for economic and financial
transactions. However, this solely psychological phenomenon can easily
disappear as a consequence of any set of events which may trigger
crises leading to a fall in the prestige and trust generated by the
United States, its authorities and the effects of its policies.
In
an excellent paper, "Crisis of the US Dollar System"
(available
at
www.globalresearch.com)
F. William Engdahl eloquently describes this saying
"This Dollar System is the real source of a global inflation which we
have witnessed in Europe and worldwide since 1971. In the years between
1945 and 1965, total supply of dollars grew a total of only some 55%.
Those were the golden years of low inflation and stable growth. After
Nixon's break with gold, dollars expanded by more than 2,000% between
1970 and 2001! ".
This means that the US Dollar needs to be imposed upon the world economy,
especially in such key capital-intensive industries as oil,
pharmaceuticals, arms, and - let's be honest - drugs and organized crime
which are also very much an integral part of the Dollar-based US and
world economy. In actual fact, the Dollar does have in geopolitical
terms a very visible and verifyable backing: US military and political
clout.
For
example, if an oil-producing country like Saddam Hussein's Iraq decides
to stop selling its oil in US Dollars and opts for Euros (as Saddam did
in 2002), "monetary discipline" is quickly enforced by the US Military
(i.e., Iraq since March 2003). If today another oil-producing country -
Iran - decides to set up its own Oil Bourse competing with the New York,
London and Dubai US-Dollar Oil bourses, then it is immediately
threatened with unilateral military action by the US and its regional
Ally, the State of Israel.
Naturally, in all of these cases, the formal excuse is
not that these countries are trying to rid themselves of the shakles of
having the US Dollar shoved down their throats, but rather some obscure
CIA, NSA, Mossad generated "intelligence", hysterically canned by Fox
News and repeated ad nauseam by the subservient mainstream global
media.
In
plain English, the message is clear: if you mess around with the US
Dollar and put it at risk as Imperial Global Currency, then you 're
gonna find out the hard way that the US Dollar is backed by a hugely
powerful Military War Machine that soaks up over 50% of this planet's
arms and war Spending. This, however, cannot hold for much longer so
some sort of "Plan B" is in the works, ready for rapid emergency
implemented.
The
Controlled Destabilization and Collapse of the US Dollar.
The
reader may ask how come we do not know what the amount of Dollars in
circulation really is. Well, this seems to be top secret national
security data almost impossible to discover mainly because, contrary to
what most people believe, the US Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) is a
private entity, even though the US Government may exert some
influence over it.(1) I.e., the public institutions of Government
cannot require the Fed to supply this information, especially considering
that Benjamin Shalom Bernanke, Chaiman of the Board of Governors of the
Federal Reserve Bank need only inform Congress on a quarterly basis what
his monetary policy is. We stress that he only has to inform those
policies, but not seek any authorization, instruction, consensus or
agreement from Congress or the Executive branch. I.e., the Fed is only
accountable to itself which, in turn, leads back to the private banking
cabal where Real Power resides in the US.
If we add to this the gigantic aggregates of
Dollar-denominated bonds, stocks, shares and derivatives which are
spread throughout all world markets, then the amount of money out there
becomes almost incalculable. However, it is quite clear that the total
sum of Dollars, Treasury Bonds and Bills, and public and private
financial instruments of all types adds up to an amount several times
higher than the total sum of all physical assets and services available
in the entire planet.(2)
In 2005, the official US Federal Budget Deficit was more
than u$s 318 billion (expected to top u$s 420 billion in 2006), whilst
2005's Current Account Deficit (foreign trade) was more than u$s 805
billion (in 2005). These figures are respectively more twice and thrice
the size of Argentina’s foreign public debt. Additionally, the Bush
Administration announced that both Deficits will increase in 2006 and
there are no indications that this situation will improve in 2007, 2008
or 2009. Quite the contrary, in November 2004 president Bush asked
Congress for authorization to increase the limit of the US Public Debt
from u$s 7.6 trillion to almost u$s 8.3 trillion, an amount already
supassed as Public Debt today stands at almost u$s 8.7 trillion. This
is all achieved by issuing US Treasury Bills and Bonds, and printing
more and more Dollar bills by the US Mint.
To
make matters much worse, pressure is growing from Congress and public
opinion sectors, geared on making the Government get its budget numbers
right. A USA Today review article explais that
"the Federal Government keeps two sets of books: the set
the Government promotes to the public has a healthier bottom line of
318 billion deficit in 2005. The set the Government doesn't talk about
is the audited financial statement produced by the Government's
accountants, following standard accounting rules. It reports a more
ominous financial picture: a $ 760 billion deficit for 2005. If Social
security and Medicare were included - as the board that sets the
accounting rules is considering - the federal deficit would have been $
3.5 trillion."
(USAToday,03-August-06)
Benjamin Bernanke's appointment in early 2006 as new Federal Reserve
Bank governor replacing Alan Greenspan who served almost nineteen years
at the helm, was a clear sign that the money-printing spree would
continue. It is a well-known fact that Mr. Bernanke is a passionate inflationist
who in a speech before the National Economists Club in Washington, D.C
on November 21, 2002, said on the subject of "Deflation: Making Sure
"It" Doesn't Happen Here", that "the U.S. government has a technology
called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that
allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no
cost." and, alluding to an earlier statement from economist Milton
Friedman, went on to say that he would gladly "drop Dollar Bills from
helicopters if necessary to keep the economy rolling", hence his
nickname, "Helicopter Ben". (http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches).
The
cost of the invasion and occupation in Iraq is than u$s 200 billion
annually, to which must be added the occupation cost in Afghanistan, the
direct financing by the US of the State of Israel’s War Machine, and the
costs of preparing other future war theatres, notably in Iran, Syria,
North Korea, Venezuela and other “axis of evil” countries. In fact, the
Costs of War are yet another very well-kep secret in the US, with
estimates varying wildly, running from a moderate 500 billion to almost
2 trillion dollars, prompting a recent MSNBC report to split the
"guesstimate" at 1 trillion. (See
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11880954/
"The cost of Iraq war could surpass 1 trillion", 12-Dec-06) And
let's not even start thinking about the US’s military build-up geared on
confronting its great "Long-Term Enemy” sometime after 2015, i.e.,
economic and military powerhouse China…
The sheer enormity of these figures can help us
understand why the US Federal Budgets suffers successive shortfalls of
400, 320 and 420 billion in 2004, 2005 and 2006 respectively. There is,
however, no indication whatsoever that this shortfall will force the
United States to limit its war efforts in Iraq or Afghanistan, or curb
domestic social policies, or freeze other war expenditures and the
military build-up poised on Iran. Quite the contrary, they are
increasing them more and more. So then, the obvious question is:
Then Where does the United States get the Financial
Resources to pay for all this?
The
answer to this question is quite simple: it raises this money by
printing US Dollar Notes and US Treasury Bills and Bonds (5 and 30 year
maturities, respectively), taking advantage of the high “export” factor
the Dollar has been enjoying, which enables the US Government to print
and issue money, and immediately push it out of its domestic economy and
primary international financial circuits, thus avoiding what would
otherwise explode as severe inflation of the Dollar. If we look at the
gigantic figures involved, we can quite properly define this phenomenon
as covert (hyper)inflation that has remained hidden from public view….for
now.
At
the beginning of 2005, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan warned that
the increase in the Budget Deficit could lead to an economic crisis. He
also pointed out that the Deficit is unsustainable and warned that
“this could lead to a stagnant economy or worse”. In spite of the,
then outgoing, Chairman's rhetoric he himself ushered in "Helicopter
Ben" Bernanke's arrival at the Fed by signing a vital internal order
that stopped the Fed's releasing to the public data on the M3 Money
Supply volume, i.e., the key monetary indicator that shows how much
money the Fed is actually pumping into the entire system. (3)
The US
Dollar: that Un-backed Currency…
When president Nixon withdrew the legal foundations for
the Dollar’s metallic gold and silver backing, it ceased having any
intrinsic value whatsoever. Today, the cornerstone of the Dollar is US
economic and industrial strength which, in turn, is based on its
military might consolidated after World War II which left Europe and
Japan conveniently devastated. Military victory brought with it the
looting of hundreds of thousands of German, Japanese and other national
patents, inventions and assets, and highly sensitive technological and
military secrets were stolen outright. This, to a great extent, is what enabled
the US to consolidate its superpower status and global prestige. (4)
With the Dollar acting as the world’s global currency – albeit, imposed
by the combined actions of the Federal Reserve Bank, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), the World Trade
Organization (WTO), the Bank of International Settlements (BIS)
and, in our own region, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)
– the United States has been able to finance its Budget Deficits by
exporting Dollars to the whole world, synchronized with major stock, oil
and commodity markets, through various highly complex and not
immediately visible mechanisms and channels. These processes guarantee that
such Dollars and Dollar-denominated financial instruments will flow in
an orderly and balanced manner, for the most part outside of the US, as
they are suitably directed and controlled so as to benefit US National
Interest and that of its key allies. This process was more or less kept in
place until 2001, when the European Union launched its own currency, the
Euro, on the scene. The Euro is a far more solid and stable currency
than the Dollar and represents a major challenge - the major
challenge - to the Dollar, which threatens to unseat it as the preferred
global currency.
In recent years, the US Treasury Dept. and the IMF have
succeeded in suggesting/imposing on around thirty national central banks
in different countries – Argentina’s Central Bank included – that they
should “soak up” US dollars from their domestic economies and hoard them
in their vaults as reserves "backing" their own local currencies and for
foreign debt and loan payments. In other words, these countries "invest"
in US Dollars which implicitly means that they are financing for free,
whole chunks of (uncontrolled) US public spending done by printing
Dollar bills. This process is headed by Japan which today has Dollar
denominated instruments in its central bank reserves to the tune of over
u$s 670.000.000.000; followed by the “Marxist” Peoples Republic of China
with more than u$s 600 billion, South Korea with u$s 220 billion plus a
long list of other countries which suddenly awoke to the “need” to “soak
up” US Dollars and silently hoard them in their central banks whilst
they issue, as a counterpart, their own local currencies to fuel their
respective domestic economies (something that, by the way, China has
been doing fiercely maintaining an "undervalued" Yuan much to the
displeasure of the Bush Administration). As a sign of impending
disasters ahead, these countries have all begun to diversify their
monetary reserve structure and reduce and/or phase out their US Dollar
holdings.
Mashito Kawai, senior director at the Asian Development Bank is calling
for East Asian countries to ensure their currencies appreciate in unison
and do not girate in order to manage the current slide of the Dollar.
"National monetary authorities in the
region together hold more than 3 trillon dollars in foreign reserves,
most of it in dollars and their huge purchases of dollars this year have
played a crucial role in limiting the American currency's decline until
now."
(See
The New York Times, 08-Dec-06 article "Leading Asian Economist Urges
Joint Action on Dollar")
A review
by Peter S. Goodman of The Washington Post, in turn, says that "In
recent years, the value of the dollar has been buoyed by major purchases
of US Treasury bills by Japan, China and oil exporting countries - a
flow of capital that has kept interest rates relatively low in the
United States and allowed Americans to keep spending even as debt mounts....
(but) China is now inclned to shift some of its savings into other
currencies such as the euro and the yen, or into major purchases of
commodities such as oil for a long-discussed strategtic energy
reserve." (See Washington Post, article "China Set
To Reduce Exposure to Dollar, 10-Jan-2006). As this is being written, a
monetary crisis is developing in Thailand with its Baht currency.
In
the case of Argentina, this phenomenon helps shed some light as to the
true origins of our false “economic recovery”, today basically due to
the fact that the Argentine Central Bank has issued important amounts of
local currency "backed" by growing Dollar Reserves, which has
artificially fueled "economic growth". This will work nicely until such
time as Argentine monetary authorities receive the "suggestion" (i.e., counter-order)
from the US Federal Reserve Bank or the Treasury Dept. to stop doing
this. At present, our Central Bank has reserves for over u$s 26.billion
and rising fast, which is Argentine President Nestor Kirchner’s pride,
because with those dollars he can pay our country’s largely fraudulent
public debt to…..the IMF, WB, IDB and other international creditors,
thus helping to keep the global usury ball rolling! In actual fact, in
January 2006 President Kirchner obligingly settled Argentina's full debt
with the IMF - almost 10 billion Dollars -, just when the IMF is being
seriously questioned by all public and private players and is obviously
being (neatly) wound down and will be (eventually) closed altogether
(See article "How to Resolve Argentina's Recurrent
Foreign Debt Crises" in our Issued No. 2 of 26-Oct-06).
Instead of using those funds to ease the economic and social hardship of
the Argentine people (50% of whom fell below the poverty line as a
consequence of the Wall Street-induced banking collapse and financial
meltdown of 2001/2), President Kirchner opted to pay the IMF and the
banker cartel behind it. This ties in with the fact that in June 2006
he and his former economy minister Roberto Lavagna (today touted as an "opposition
politician"!!!) implemented (yet another) Sovereign Debt Bonds Mega-Swap
to the tune of almost 100 billion dollars, that only partially honoured private
investors holding defaulted debt bond issues, whilst at the same time Mr
Kirchner helped the international bank cartel and the IMF recover the
full amounts of their holdings. Many in Argentina jokingly call Mr.
Kirchner "Hood Robin" because, contrary to Robin Hood's escapades in
Sherwood Forest stealing from the rich to help the poor, Mr. Kirchner
revels in doing exactly the opposite: he steals from the poor to give
it to the rich...
You
Need Money? OK…. Just Print All That You Want!
Let us give a simple example of how this system actually
works. The Federal Reserve Bank issues a 100 Dollar bill which it
delivers to the Government so that the Dept. of Defense can give it to
the US Army which buys ammunition for their soldiers’ rifles, who can
then use it to kill Iraquis in their own invaded country. Now, the last
thing that George W. Bush wants is for that 100 Dollar bill to flow
back into the US financial system, because - given the huge
quantities of money printing involved - that would have a severe
inflationary effect that would end up grinding the whole machine to a
halt.
Because the process we described is repeated over and over again,
millions upon millions of times and allows the Bush Administration to
purchase not just ammunition, but, more importantly, barrels of oil,
tanks, F16 fighter-bombers, Apache helicopters, guided missiles of all
sorts, sizes and shapes, napalm, aircraft carriers, cluster bombs,
bunker buster bombs, uranium bombs, and all those other much needed
instruments to promote “Freedom and Democracy” throughout the world, the
secret lies in making sure that these zillions of Dollar bills do not
flow back uncontrollably into the US economy. If they did, then that
would have an inflationary – even a hyper-inflationary – effect.
What the US Government needs and gets from all players the world over is
that, once a 100 Dollar bill printed by the US Mint has been used to buy
war material (or whatever), it then gradually flows out of US domestic
and primary international financial circuits and stays out for as long
as possible. I.e., that those Dollar bills get “soaked up” by somebody
somewhere far away: Japan, Malaysia, China, India, Brunei, Russia,
Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Indonesia or Argentina. Anywhere, so
long as they do not come back (at least not anytime soon), into
US financial circuits and those of the primary supranational banking
system.
From this viewpoint, we can well understand the huge
pressure exerted by the United States on foreign central banks –
especially those of subordinated countries – so that they permanently
“soak up” US Dollars, which means that they take them out of
circulation. That gives the US some urgently needed respite and
breathing space. Why does the US need to do this, you may ask? Simple:
so that they can continue issuing as many 100 Dollar bills as they need,
in order to give them to the Dept of Defense who give them to the Army
to buy some ammunition….well, you know the story…. And the cycle goes on
and on and on….
By now you might be thinking that if you can get away
with others paying for your expenses and costs like this, then
anybody can play at being a superpower. Well, that’s precisely how
the system works. If George W. Bush needs money to finance his imperial
appetite (which has grown voraciously in recent years, generating
pathological and potentially catastrophic Deficits), then, no problem:
he need only ask "Helicopter Ben" Bernanke at the Fed to issue all the
Dollar bills he can spend; he literally gets “all the money in the world”.
The
key factor is to make sure that this spiraling wheel keeps turning and
churning; printing, circulating, and then “soaking up” these Dollars
through the "right" channels and circuits and at the "right" speed,
fitting the Imperial need of ensuring they are dispatched far, far away. The
real danger for the US is if that wheel were to suddenly stop turning
and churning, because then all of this vastly complex global financial
engineering would simply collapse under a huge load of worthless paper
with the ensuing dire consequences for our 21st Century
Wizards of Oz (by the way, that old 1939 flick is a metaphorical
critique on the Gold Standard - "Oz." - which can be reached by "following
the yellow brick road" to Emerald City, conveniently dollar "green") .
For
the United States to maintain global superpower status, there must
always be somebody somewhere, as far away as possible, on whom to dump
vast quantities of unbacked US Dollars, continually and uncontrollably
printed by the Fed so that once the US War Machine has consumed that
money, it can be silently and discretely removed it from further
circulation (i.e., “soaked up” and hoarded in foreign central banks,
private savings, etc.).
They need these Dollars tp “disappear” after they've been used by them,
at least for a while, and it really doesn’t matter whether they
“disappear” into central bank vaults abroad or into individual investors’
safes in Turkey or Indonesia, or under small investors' mattresses in
Mexico, Argentina, Nigeria or Brazil. That’s not really the issue.
So,
next time any one of us “Foreigners” (“Aliens” as the US Government
sweetly call us), "saves Dollars", or our national central banks “soak
them up” from domestic markets in order to maintain whatever rate of
exchange the IMF requires in order to maintain a “sustainable economy”
(Anne Kruger, dixit) - i.e., so as to ensure that we can pay back
foreign debt loans - what we are really doing is helping finance the US
Budget Deficit. Even worse given today's hot war scenarios, what we are
actually doing is helping to pay for the cost of killing Iraquis,
Afghanis, Palestinians and Lebanese in their own countries, preparing
invasions against Iran, Syria, North Korea or Venezuela, or torturing
POW’s in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
Now we see why in countries like Argentina, successive
caretaker governments presided by the likes of former presidents Carlos
Menem, Fernando de la Rúa, Eduardo Duhalde and, today, Néstor Kirchner
always bow down to help the Global US-UK-Israeli Empire in this
way.
The
New World Order System easily identifies what politicians, journalists,
etc., in each country in our Region are maleable, controllable and willing
to subordinate themselves to the System's objectives. Their careers are
then launched so that they may rise to become presidents of their
countries, but also economy ministers and central bank governors. I.e.,
people like Domingo Cavallo and Mario Blejer
(6) in Argentina, Alejandro Foxley in Chile, and Henrique Cardoso in
Brazil who then receive suitable local and international press coverage,
are honored with "prestige-generating" reviews, interviews, conferences,
dinners, etc., are systematically invited to address the Council on
Foreign Relations, Americas Society, and Council of the Americas (so
that the key New World Order players in New York and Washington can
grade them), and then their election campaigns are generously financed
by the Corporate, Banking and Media infrastructure, that "legally and
democratically" bring them to power... to do the New World Order's
bidding!! In cases like those of Domingo Cavallo and Alexander Fosley,
they are even invited to join the Trilateral Commission...
This
is, no doubt, the worst form of colonialism as it is based on very
complex and highly financed PsyWar operations.
At the end of the day, when something goes terribly wrong (and it always
does...), it lets New World Order commentators and press to turn around
and say to the people in those countries, "don't
complain if everything in your country is mucked up: it's your fault for
voting for the wrong people!". The
problem being that they always make sure that the "wrong people" that
best suit their interests, are the sole candidates in all elections,
irrespective of any left, right or center ideological stance. It's all
a question of recruiting "politically correct" candidates and public
officers. Come to think of it, this is also pretty much the way it
works in the United States, the UK, Europe and elsewhere... Don't be
surprised: after all, this is a global system...
That explains why our market-economy puppet central
bankers and economy ministers have had no problem in issuing Argentine
Pesos to buy Dollars in the local market, whilst the IMF and US Treasury
Dept suitably applaud them for that. However, if you suggest to the
Central Bank to issue Argentine Pesos to finance the building of our
much needed national social and strategic infrastructure, then all the
“experts” and “media analysts” would go haywire to the cry of “Inflation!”
Why is it that these “experts” insist that a 600 km four-lane highway is
not proper “collateral” for issuing local currency, whilst neat piles of
paper Dollars sleeping in the Central Bank, is. Ah, the mysteries of
global finance…
It cannot be stressed enough that the real backing the Dollar
nowadays has is US economic strength, stick and carrot diplomacy and,
above all, the immensely powerful and apparently invincible armada of US
military might which, since 11th September 2001 is
permanently perched ready to attack, bomb and invade anybody anywhere
and for any reason. Not bad as a “convertibility” scheme: today, the US
Dollar is convertible into bullets, bombs and tanks, not to mention
covert CIA actions which could even include highly complex and costly
domestic terrorist attacks like 9/11 which served as a casus belli
or catalyst for pro-israeli neocons in the Bush Administration to
declare war on the entire planet. Maybe someday we may even discover what
really happened on that clear morning of September 11th in
New York City and Washington DC, though that won't happen anytime soon…
In
short and as a crude example of what we are saying, every time the
Argentine people need to buy a barrel of oil, we must, as a community,
work and toil to earn u$s 62 to buy it. However, every time the
US Government needs to buy a barrel of oil, it just has to ask the Fed
to print u$s 62. Clearly, the difference is no small matter… Again: like
that it’s easy being a global superpower...
Mafia
+ Usury = “Market Economy”
But,
as the old adaggio goes, “all good things must come to an
end”. And it would seem that with George W. Bush, the era of
printing all the money you want is fast coming to an end. In Argentina,
we know only too well what happens when you uncontrollably print “all
the money in the world” to pay for government spending. Former
president Raúl Alfonsín (1983-89) did just that and collapsed the
nation's economy into 5000% hyperinflation in 1989, with the ensuing
widespread hunger, street riots, violence, unemployment, suffering and
hardship amongst the population.
Long before George W. had even been born, a perverse
unnatural process had begun whereby Finance and Money, which should
always be subordinated to the Real Economy of Work and Production, went
out of control and – like a virtual tsunami – grew and grew and
grew into the monster which it is today. Swamping and drowning out the
Real Economy, destroying the forces of Labour, deconstructing Production
and generating mass poverty and unemployment on a worldwide scale. "Creative
destruction", economist Joseph Schumpeter once called it.... I believe "Outright
Fraud" and "Genocide" are far more appropriate words.
Indications of the exponential swelling of this
tsunami are everywhere to be seen, even though local and
international “analysts”, academics and the specialized media do not
seem to notice it. One of many indicators of this can be seen in the way
the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) Index grew during the Clinton
years. Right after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, when George
“It’s the economy, stupid!” Bush Sr. lost the 1992 elections to
the young and upcoming Bill Clinton(6), the Dow sat placidly at
3.700 points. Eight years later, however, when Clinton ended his second
term in office in 2000 the Dow was at 10.900 points and had a short time
earlier peaked at 11.700 points; that’s 300% growth over eight years!
The obvious question is: did the US economy also grow
300% between 1992 and 2000 as the DJIA did? The answer is clearly, no. Economic
growth in the nineties in the US was very good but only averaged 3 to 4
percent per annum, so that during the entire Clinton era aggregate
economic growth was not more than 40%.
Now, if the Real Economy only grew by 40% in eight years,
how is it that the “Virtual Economy” of Finance and Speculation grew by
300%? Something is clearly rotten, and not exactly in the State
of Denmark. The key to all of this can be found in factors like Usury,
printing of "Fiat" Money, and rampant Parasitical Speculation which are
embedded into the very fabric out of which today’s global financial
system is made. Money is created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve
Bank and the private mega-banking system by the billions of Dollars, the
latter using the well-known and absolutely perverse Banking Multiplier
Effect which allows private banks to, in effect, create money. Come to
think of it, since the Fed is 97% owned by those private banks... its
the Old Crooked Snake once again biting its own tail...
Additionally, this all clearly carries with it a deep-seated moral and
ethical problem as the real force behind the “miraculous growth” of the
US economy is “unlimited greed” (Greenspan, dixit), soulless
egotism and homicidal profit-grabbing.
In recent years, the stench can no longer be contained nor checked. The
criminal fraud and inhumanity perpetrated by “world-class” Fortune
500 Corporations and Banks hit the daily headlines: Enron,
WorldCom, Tyco, Nike, Marsh & McLennan, American International Group,
Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Arthur Andersen, Halliburton (Dick Cheney's
company), Harken Energy (George W.'s company), Pacific Gas &
Electricity, Adelphi, Qwest Communications, Global Crossing, amongst
so many others. Huge fines for money-laundering and corporate
misbehaviour were paid out by top banks like CitiGroup (the
money-launderers’ favourite bank), JPMorganChase, Franklin National
Bank of NY, Credit Suisse First Boston, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch,
Goldman Sachs, BCCI Bank of Commerce & Credit International (closed
down – linked to CIA drug trafficking), Brown Brothers Harriman
(Bush), HSBC (originally born out of the British imperial Opium
Wars fought against China in the mid-nineteenth century which gives this
bank great drug money-laundering expertise)…
The list goes on and on, and this spirit of Usury and
Immorality spans the entire world: A-Hold in Holland, Parmalat
in Italy, The Maxwell Group in the UK, Yukos in Russia,
Vivendi in France… Their top corporate bosses investigated and even
jailed: Kenneth Lay (Enron, now conveniently dead), Bernhard
Ebbers (WorldCom), Jeffrey Greenberg (Marsh & McLennan),
Maurice Greenberg (AIG)…
Again, we Argentines know only too well what this is all about!! We’ve
had our share of corporate crooks in such scandals as Yabrán, Beraja/Banco
Mayo, Yoma, IBM, CitiBank, Moneta, ENTEL, YPF, Southern Winds, not
to mention one billion dollars plus in Public Funds belonging to Santa
Cruz Province in southern Argentina which mysteriously “disappeared”
since 1993 when president Nestor Kirchner was governor of that province
and expatriated the funds into off-shore tax havens where they still
mysteriously reside to this very day…
The problem is that this whole process seems to have been
taken several steps too far, so now the whole edifice is on the brink of
collapse. The international financial system resembles a planetary Las
Vegas managed by the Shylocks and Al Capones of this age, who sit in
corporate boardrooms in Wall Street, the City of London, Paris, Zurich,
Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires. They are starting to realize, however, that
their luck is definitely about to run out. For decades they have danced
themselves to a dizzy frenzy around the Golden Calf, stuffing their
pockets whilst generating hunger, war, social turmoil, sickness and
suffering for untold millions around the world. However, the “Game Over”
sign is starting to flicker on...
When former Fed governor Alan Greenspan was once asked in
1996 how he could explain the fact that the Dow Jones Industrial Average
had reached the unheard of level of 11.700 points, whilst the NASDAQ
index had peaked at 6.000 points (today it's down to 2.400 points), his
most eloquent reply was that this whole complex phenomenon was caused by
“irrational exuberance”... You got it?
Just
Do It…
The truth of the matter is that the United States will "stay
the course" in Iraq and Afghanistan all the time it wants, and will
continue financing Israel limitlessly so that it can continue repressing
and persecuting the Palestinian people in their own land, and new
attacks will be made against today’s expanded “Axis of Evil” which -
Condoleeza Rice, dixit (7) - now includes North Korea, Syria,
Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Venezuela….
President Bush recently declared that he will continue
promoting “Freedom and Democracy” throughout the world. His lip-service
thus honours a shrewd recommendation contained in an Old Book, hoary
with time, which is a true Blueprint for World Domination that
recommends Imperial Sovereigns to impose their will by exerting “Force
and Hypocrisy”. Brute force we have plenty of just about everywhere. Hypocrisy
is constantly voiced by our presidents, prime ministers, ministers,
secretaries, government spokesmen, media and corporate leaders. This
gigantic planetary machine needs oil to operate properly; lot’s of oil. And
not just the Iraqui, Venezuelan and Saudi hydrocarbon variety, but also
the virtual “Oil” represented by the Dollar which allows this infernal
machine to run, grow and spin increasingly out of control.
But, alas! The US cannot continue printing Dollar bills
indefinitely. Today’s global financial system is bursting at the seams,
and growing concern is marked on the brow and voice of the Ben
Bernanke's and Alan Greenspan's of this world. How much longer until
there is a final crash? One year? Two years? Nobody knows for sure. We
do, however, know that the US Dollar can collapse virtually at any
moment if an unforeseen / unmanageable crisis were to explode. Hence,
plans to oust Saddam Hussein had to be accelerated back in 2003, when he
began selling oil in Euros to the European Union under the Oil for Food
Program, implicitly inviting other OPEC countries to do the same which
would have led to the world oil market quickly switching from Dollars
to Euros as its base currency, triggering a (hyper)inflationary
catastrophe for the US.
But the US also naively thought that invading Iraq would
be like a joyride, that the proud Iraqui people would welcome the US
invaders as liberators, and that a quickly subdued Iraq would serve as a
"Beacon for Democracy" whilst speeding up massive cheap oil flows from
their oil fields to US gas stations at a cost of not more than u$s 15
per barrel. That would have certainly eased the pressure on the US
economy. But things did not quite turn out that way and the “cheap oil”
objective was never reached. Today, Iraq is in civil war, the US has no
credible exit strategy and after peaking at almost u$s 80 a barrel, oil
prices today are over u$s 62, forcing the Bush Administration to take emergency
measures like opening up vast virgin natural reserves in Alaska to the
contaminating oil industry.
And
then along came the Euro…
Another key factor which helped trigger and speed up this
impending crisis was the launch in 2001 of the greatest challenge to the
Dollar so far, which is the Euro. As the monetary unit of the European
Union (EU), the Euro carries the economic might of an entire continent
with a combined GDP which is roughly the same as that of the United
States. Powerful stuff, indeed. If we project future growth of both
economies over the next twenty years, we find, however, that the EU
economy has far greater potential than the US economy, simply because
the countries surrounding the UE are anxiously asking to be allowed to
join this vast and sophisticated economic and monetary system which, in
the long run, will no doubt also include Russia. Each of the countries
still outside the UE – Ukraine, Belorussia, Moldova, Norway and others –
have great added value to contribute to the UE economy, both in terms of
the economy, as well as culturally and geopolitically. Organic growth
comes naturally in the European Union.
By comparison, the US can only expand its regional
economy into Central and South America, where all the countries in that
region resist the traditional aggressive Bad Neighbour policies of the
United States and resent its arbitrary military interventions,
invasions, cover actions, and repeated humiliations.
Quite a difference! Whilst the countries still to join
the UE wish to do so voluntarily and anxiously await their turn, the US
has no choice but to impose AFTA (American Free Trade Agreement) on
unwilling neighbours that will permanently resist the regional hegemon. More
importantly in the short term, there are a series of symmetries and
asymmetries between the present Dollar and the Euro worth pointing out:
Comparison between the US Dollar and the Euro
Structural
Strength
(Technical
Factor) |
Low
-
The Dollar is over-issued by a factor of 5 to 10 times (no
trustworthy data is available), because over the past years,
successive US Administrations have abused the Dollar’s high
prestige, and printing has gone out of control;
-
Growing evidence of this structural weakness generates
inflationary -even hyper-inflationary - risks which can be
triggered by internal or external political or financial crises
|
High
-
The Euro was launched recently (2001). The European Central Bank
in Frankfurt Germany issues clear public information showing that
the amount of currency placed in circulation since 2001 is
consistent with the size and productive capacity of the UE
economy. No doubt, the Euro runs no inflationary risks at the
present moment.
|
Cultural and Psychological Strength |
Very High
-
Intelligently,
the US has kept the same format (i.e., the same national leaders,
monuments and mottos) on its Dollar bills for more than a century.
-
The Dollar
thus has an aura of unmovable stability: the effigies of
Washington, Lincoln, Hamilton, Jackson, Grant and Franklin appear
on 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 Dollar 0
|
|
|