When you live by the sword, you die by it. Those who salute our worldwide aggression won't be surprised when it is returned. It will be returned shortly, and not by al Qaeda. The world is almost fed up with us, and that includes "enemies" like most of the European Union, Mexico, Canada, Russia, and China.
For decades, we've been using economic sanctions on nations like Cuba, and strangling countries economically. Now, it's happening to the United States. We might be 10 years from its fruition - but the cows will most likely be coming home in 10 months.
I believe the Saudis are moving to secure $60 a barrel oil, and will cut production to assure it. That's $60 for oil in 2000 dollars, which is now $70 and heading to $100. I also believe that the Chinese are about to flood world currency markets with an excess of U.S. dollars, and that just the threat of that has brought the dollar equivalent to 0.75 Euro and 0.51 British pounds, in recent weeks, the former being an historic all-time low.
Since oil is still traded in U.S. dollars, and since our dollar has lost much of its value vs. the Euro, the British pound and the Canadian dollar over the last few years, we are paying a lot more for oil and a much higher increase in the cost of oil and its products than those in other nations. My memory tells me that gasoline has gone up 100 percent here but only 20 percent in most other places on Earth.
Unlike stock market moves, where the executive branch can thank or blame the Fed, these above things are directly attached to U.S. foreign policy and, you guessed it, President Bush and his cabal.
Let's put this another way: Five more years of the current excesses in spending and warmongering and the United States of America will have to sell property or Fort Knox gold, the same as the Russians and the British had to do in the 1990s, to pay off debts. We cannot spend over $400 billion a year on interest, which is what we paid in 2006. I don't care what proportion of our GDP that represents.
Furthermore, Americans are not willing to deny our elderly by cutting emergency social programs to pay interest payments on nation building and international civil war creation.
Has it struck anyone that not a single G-8 nation (the UK is throwing out its Prime Minister) is interested in or concerned with Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, etc?
They are just sitting back and enjoying the slow bleeding of the American national treasury.
www.writesight.com/writers/misterwriter111
My career in journalism began as a stringer at the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner before making my way east to write at the Washington Star. I toiled for more than a decade as a columnist for Gannett, the world's largest newspaper chain.
As executive-producer and host of "Dusty Nathan's Winner's Circle," heard on a Philadelphia 50,000-watt radio station, and a CBS affiliate, I covered the worlds of sports and entertainment. I was proud to have several exclusives - most notably, one of Johnny Cash's last appearances, and also world-famous jockey Eddie Arcaro. Eagles head coach Ray Rhodes often played co-host on the show.
My words have appeared in Rolling Stone, Time Magazine, and New York's Village Voice, as well.
Many of my short stories and poems are published in anthologies. Recently, some have been selected and published internationally in university literary journals.
