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America begins slide into third world status
By Len Hart (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)
For OpEdNews: Len Hart - Writer ---The Economist, The Dollar Heads for a Tumble - Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; See also: Edward Gibbon: General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West
The sum of all three trends equals the loss of US empire. The policies of three GOP administrations have not merely failed to reverse the trends, they birthed them and made them worse with ideology, bigotry and incompetence. Those who called a new Bush regime a "banana republic" during the 2000 election debacle could not have known how prescient they had been. All has come true. The "empire" is lost.
The dollar has dropped 12 percent since the start of the year. My own sources --European bankers --tell me the dollar will continue to fall until the US has what they have termed a "credible" regime and credible leadership. Smart money all over the world is dumping the dollar for the Euro. Until Bush is retired, the American people will continue to pay for his incompetence and his lawlessness. Bush is content to finance the trade deficit on the backs of American consumers.
At the very root of the problem is the fact that in 2004, the US topped the list of oil importing nations with imports of 11.8 million barrels of oil per day. That's more than the next three --China, German, and North Korea --combined. The problem is not only oil. The US Department of Commerce reports that the US "trade deficit" --our total exports vs our total imports --has increased 18% from 2004 to a record $726 billion in 2005. US dependence on oil is responsible, says the US commerce department, for some two-thirds of the increase in the US trade deficit in 2005.
Technically, price hikes due to trade imbalance is not inflation but to a consumer trying to make ends meet with a dollar that buys less and less, what difference does it make? There are two sides to any exchange rate: Europe's prospects matter as well as America's. In 2006 the Euro area looks likely to grow at its fastest pace for six years. That its GDP growth is modest by American standards, largely because of its slower population growth, is not the point: what matters is that this year it has surprised the soothsayers time and again. That has lifted its currency, and not just against the dollar. A euro now buys more yen than at any time since the single currency was created.
So --when a European financial expert tells me that more and more people are dumping dollars for Euros, Americans would be well-advised to pay attention. It was not so long ago, after all, that the American right wing was advocating a boycott of French wines and "French Fries". What a ludicrous and pathetic spectacle that was! There is a sick, sophomoric mentality in America that likes to coin stupid terms like Islamo-fascism and Euro-trash. Both terms are "designer" red flag terms chosen by the GOP for their appeal to bigotry and jingoism. The US was even at that time a net importing nation of almost everything, in no position to terrify other nations with comic opera threats based upon the misconception that the US had not yet embarked upon an inexorable slide into third world status.
The unkindest cut of all is the Democratic sell out to the GOP! The result is the GOP has now "auctioned off" the office of President of the United States, an eventuality embodied in Mussolini's term: corporatism. Let's put it another way: the apparatus of the US government is now "owned" by rich, elite corporate interests who pay for the campaigns (bread and circuses), pay for the candidates, pay for the legislation they want and need to rape the environment, dominate the world's natural resources to include oil while enslaving the middle and lower classes.
Something similar occurred on March 28th, 193 AD, when the Praetorian guards, literally, sold the Roman empire to the wealthy senator Didius Julianus for the bargain price of 6250 drachmas. I haven't tried to buy drachmas (lately) but it sounds like a bargain compared to the absurdly high prices that are paid by US corporations for control of the US Presidency, indeed, the US government. Our modern day "Didius" has fared better than Julianus. A magnificent feast was prepared by his order, and he amused himself until a very late hour, with dice, and the performances of Pylades, a celebrated dancer. Yet it was observed that after the crowd of flatterers dispersed, and left him to darkness, solitude, and terrible reflection, he passed a sleepless night; revolving most probably in his mind his own rash folly, the fate of his virtuous predecessor, and the doubtful and dangerous tenure of an empire, which had not been acquired by merit, but purchased by money.
An important point must be made here. Gibbon reports that Julianus paid for the Roman Empire in "drachmas". "Drachmas" denotes Greek currency. At that time, the basic unit of currency in Ancient Rome was a bronze coin called an as or aes. A sestertius, another bronze coin, was worth four asses. A silver coin, the denarius, was worth 16 asses. [I will not go there!]
If Gibbon is correct, it is an indication that Rome, by that time in decline, had suffered a catastrophic devaluation of its coinage. Even now "real" money is considered by some to be "gold" if anything at all has intrinsic value. That Didius Julianus would pay in Greek currency, not Roman, indicates to me that the smart money had already dumped the as, the asses, and the sestertius for drachmas. At last, bronze would seem to have little intrinsic value as "real" money unless you had enough of it to melt down for public statuary. I would wager that only very wealthy Roman aristocracy possessed denarius, which they might have held against the complete collapse of bronze coins.
Kucinich Believes We MUST Impeach. He's right!
Part Deaux
Most economists will tell you that for most of some 50 years, the US enjoyed an economic pre-eminence if not dominance characterized by strong domestic industries, notably steel and automobile manufacturing. Since important discoveries in Southeast Texas and, later, West Texas, the US was, for awhile, the world's leading oil producing nation.
As US dominance of world supplies began to slip, "terrorism" grew worse. [ See chart at this link. ] I recently provoked the ire of the Heritage Foundation by stating and proving --to the foundation's chagrin --the simple truth: Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes. More than enough stats make an equally compelling case about crime: crime is always worse under GOP regimes. That this should turn out to be the case may have something to do with the fact that since 1980, unemployment, as well as terrorism, is always worse under GOP regimes. Job Growth Per Year Under Most Recent Presidents
Johnson 3.8%
Carter 3.1
Clinton 2.4
Kennedy 2.3
Nixon 2.3
Reagan 2.1
Bush 0.6
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