The dollar is getting hammered almost daily now. It’s like watching the blood ooze from an open wound. In just one month the dollar has tumbled from $1.20 to $1.29 vs. the euro; an astonishing 7% retreat.
Can’t the American people see what is happening to their future? In just 6 years Bush has taken the world’s strongest currency and chopped it into finally ground hash. By the time people rouse from their stupor, the greenback will be eye to eye with the peso.
Bush has piled up more debt than all the other presidents combined. His tax cuts have fattened the bankrolls of his constituents but they’ve put the dollar on a downward slide. Since he took office the once-mighty greenback has plummeted a whopping 35%.
Meanwhile, at the Federal Reserve, new Fed-master Bernacke has the printing presses running at warp-speed. The soaring price of oil has soaked up more than a trillion dollars of freshly-minted fiat currency, but it’s the only thing that's kept the greenback from slipping beneath the waves. Unfortunately, that trick won’t last forever.
Now that Bernacke is hinting that interest hikes may slow down or stop entirely, central banks across the world are stealthily off-loading their dollar-stockpiles. The twin-deficits ($400 billion account deficit and $800 billion trade deficit) have finally come home to roost and are pushing the dollar to new lows.
Dick Cheney’s foolish axiom, “Deficits don’t matter” has turned into a funereal-dirge for the greenback. Deficits Do matter, and bankers around the world are proving that by hastily moving away from Uncle Sam’s washed-out script.
On Thursday the congress added another $70 billion to Washington’s mountain of debt, completely ignoring the fact that the dollar lost a full 2% against the euro in the same 24 hour period. Is it possible to be that obtuse?
Is anyone minding the store? The blinkered congress keeps writing bad checks on an overdrawn account and then patting themselves on the back for a hard day’s work. It’s incredible. What foreign country wants to be yoked to a currency that is underwritten by $8.4 trillion in debt and freefalling by the day?
The currency markets are as jittery as anyone can ever remember. The European Central Bank (ECB) and Japan are not prepared to take over as the world’s reserve currency, but they are equally reticent to keep shoring up the flaccid dollar. What they’d like to see is the Bush administration demonstrate that they can still be a responsible steward of the global economic system, a role the US has managed since World War 2.
Don’t expect maturity from this crowd.
Bush is simply carrying out a crackpot plan from his globalist friends at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) It is a strategy that Washington has executed many times via its surrogates in the World Bank and IMF. Corrupt politicians (Bush and co) plunge the nation into unsustainable debt, interest rates rise, the economy implodes, and the banks and corporations pick the carcass clean; privatizing what they can while destroying what's left of the social safety net. (John Perkins “Diary of an Economic Hit Man” provides a first rate account of how this method has been used repeatedly throughout Latin America) In fact, it is simply the corporate version of traditional colonialism.
The American public is too blind to see that the trap has now been set for them and that soon they'll be tottering off to the grocery store with wheelbarrows of cash for a loaf of bread and a head of lettuce.
The dollar-slaughter is the biggest part of this whacko scheme. It is the quickest way to crush the middle class by robbing them of their life-savings through hyper-inflation.
We often refer to Tom Friedman in this column as the unofficial spokesman for the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR is an amalgam of American elites from all professions who are committed to the creation of a “global government”. When Friedman preaches his “Flat-earth” theory of economics from his perch at the New York Times, he’s really offering his vision of what America will look like after labor laws and trade protections have been removed and workers are forced to compete head-on with the poorest paid workers in China or Guatemala. The falling dollar will trigger this scenario sooner than we think.
This view of unfettered capitalism is the Holy Grail of “free market” globalists. In fact, they invariably refer to it as “democracy”. It portends a world where industry overlords dictate policy to their political underlings and where society is entirely shaped to enhance corporate profits.
For the avatars of predatory capitalism, Friedman’s Flat-world is a “dreamscape”; the capitalist Valhalla. For the struggling middle class, it is a return to the law of the jungle; the fast-track to widespread destitution.
United States Public Debt The United States public debt, commonly called the national debt, gross federal debt or U.S. government debt, is the amount of money owed by the United States federal government to creditors who hold US Debt Instruments. This does not include the money owed by states, corporations, or individuals. As of April 18th, 2006, the total U.S. government debt was $8.4 trillion...
by
Amanda Lang (22 articles, 13579 quicklinks, 431 diaries, 577 comments)
on Sunday, May 14, 2006 at 12:15:27 PM
Thank God for Fox News -- that clarion of rationality when the country has become susceptibile to Enemies From Within.
FNC's "Your World" with Neil Cavuto -- with David Asman subbing for Cavuto (while Cavuto was out staking a honey-covered NSA employee to an anthill) -- had yet again scooped the MSM last Friday. Asman took the opportunity to decry the revelations about NSA wiretaps as having kept the Dow Jones from setting a record high the previous day:
"...Many thought this was the week the Dow would hit an all-time high. We seemed well on our way and it looked like Thursday could be the day. Well, guess what? Then came the headlines in yesterday's papers: a leak about national security. The President saying the country is less safe and stocks sell off big time. Coincidence?
So when national security is compromised how closely does Wall Street watch?
So, Mike (Norman), coincidence? I don't think so, huh?"
Tarot dealer Brenda Buttner -- who, by the way, hasn't gotten any in weeks -- chimed in about the NYSE's unanimous confidence in the way the neo-cons are making the country safer from terrorists. That is, unless terrorists start blowing up banks in the Cayman Islands:
"...Wall Street knows we are winning this war on terror. They are not afraid that we will win [sic]. They are so secure in President Bush's winning it, they are not going to let some puny little traitor, some leaker who went ahead and compromised our national security, take down our market. There is no way that is going to happen."
We can all take pride in the fact that Our Founding Fathers knew this would happen when the Supreme Court elects a wartime President.
In between, Charles Payne (of the Wall Street firm Payne, Entha, Kiester) opined:
"It is spooking people. There's an anti-American sentiment out there, particularly in America right now."
At least the economy has managed to keep something both at home -- and American-owned. It's our self-loathing for electing a bunch of saber-rattling fools who propel the world economy the way coke dealers propel the crack market.
Also on Friday, yet another unidentified leak-happy un-American know-it-all confirmed that several control rods bent -- then broke in two -- at the US Treasury in Washington. Even Wall Street analysts spying for China were caught off-guard that America would start to correct its current accounts balance with the PRC by having the economy reach critical mass -- then crash through the floor of the Treasury's containment building.
In another story reported by Fox on Saturday: Chinese economists were reporting on Friday in "The People's Daily" that they thought the US economy was now 'headed in the right direction.'
Fox -- as usual -- was right on top of things.
[Thanks to the NewsHounds' -- website: www.newshounds.us -- "they watch Fox so you don't have to."]
by
landisfarne2 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments)
on Sunday, May 14, 2006 at 10:08:38 PM
4 comments
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