This whole Working Group thing was originally set up as a fallback, ad-hoc, if-then defense to deal with possible economic emergencies, but now they are routinely meeting every 6 weeks. He has even ordered Jim Wilkinson, his chief of staff, to ‘oversee the creation of a Treasury Command Center to track markets world-wide and serve as an operations base in a crisis”! (Wall Street Journal) World-wide!!
The American government is moving to take control of the world-wide economy as the result of an anticipated crisis? Yikes!”
Now let’s fast-forward to the present, well after this widely foreseen crisis erupted. As oil prices climb, the public is angry. And who do they mostly blame? The oil companies and the oil producing states, of course. They have no clue that this crisis was the consequence of decisions made by the Bush Administration to devalue the dollar with its “crisis manager” Jim Wilkinson playing a central role.
Political writer Jerry Policoff questioned the “politicized polls” on who is responsible for the oil hikes. He noted that most people and pollsters don’t realize that the fall of the dollar precipitated all of this.
I asked him if he thought this squeeze had been orchestrated.
His response: “I don’t think there is any doubt about that, and the Saudis said as much when Bush asked them to rev up production to bring down the price. Their reaction was pretty much that the U.S. should stop undermining the value of its own dollar before asking other countries to take a financial hit on oil.”
And sure enough, once again, as AP reported last Friday, President Bush “failed to win the help he sought from Saudi Arabia to relieve skyrocketing American gas prices.”
The President’s own bombast was also faulted for driving oil prices higher, as Bill Scher noted, “Bush’s saber-rattling with Iran raises concerns of war and more disruption of oil supplies, which prompts speculators to raise prices.”
A day later, Treasury Secretary Paulson was asked what he was going to do to strengthen the dollar. He waffled, claiming a “strong dollar” is important but then changing the subject to “market fundamentals” in a speech to pump up CONfidence. (The first three letters of that word gave the real mission away.) He avoided a straight answer with a flurry of “uh, uh, uh,” halting phrases and contradictory assertions. The speech was characterized as “optimistically pessimistic.”
Ach so, so maybe there’s more to this than meets the eye and the wallet. In Europe the press is already blaming the banks for their role in the continuing economic collapse.
On May 13th, the President of Germany, Horst Kohler, a former head of the International Monetary Fund lashed out at bankers, calling them, get this, MONSTERS.
It takes one to know one.
In a page one story in the Financial Times, he said global financial markets have become a “monster” that must be “put back in place” for their “massive destruction of assets.” He called for tougher and more efficient regulation.
This is the strongest criticism of bankers by a European leader since 2005, when German Vice-Chancellor Franz Muntefering attacked Hedge Funds as “SWARMS OF LOCUSTS” whose profit maximization strategies… “posed a danger to democracy.”
No one was listening then. Is anyone listening now?
Crises just don’t happen out of the blue, unless there is a natural disaster, and even they are made worse by a deranged military junta like the one in Burma, inadequate preparations, and flawed building standards thanks to corruption.
When I was in China visiting the Three Gorges Dam, for example, I was told about a major revolt in the National People’s Assembly against the dam because it was in a known earthquake zone. The leadership then imposed its will. So far, the big Dam is safe, but 400 others aren’t. 50,000 people are not alive either.
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