The LEAP report squarely accuses the major world's government of misleading the public (as they do in Iraq and Afghanistan in giving a relatively rosy view of their "military success") by promoting the legend of a budding recovery in order to push the citizens who still can, to invest in bank and other stocks while trying to convince emerging country governments such as China, India, Russia, the Arab oil exporters and others to continue to buy their debt and invest in their economies. However, it appears that this sales pitch is not working well with the foreign states that are seeing through the ploy and are staying away from the "rescued" but still insolvent major western banks. The Chinese Government in particular is very clear about the real status of American public and private finance and is apparently not afraid to openly challenge its irresponsible fiscal and industrial policies while making alternative arrangements insofar as it can without hurting itself too much. The main victims of this deception are small investors and the average citizens of the nations in question who are lulled into trusting stock markets and banks once again.
The unraveling of the US-British economic engine has not gone unnoticed in the EU either and leaders reputed for their staunch "Atlantic" credentials and pro-American sentiments, such as Nicolas Sarkozy in France, Angela Merkel in Germany and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy are concerned about the fate of their own countries that remain within the tight Anglo-American embrace. While moving closer to Russia, Asia and other emerging regions of the world, they are openly talking about multi-polarity and needed alternatives to the Dollar-based system. So far, they have thrown their support behind the proposal discussed at the last G-20 summit in London to adopt the FMI's SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) as a new reserve currency which would be based on the "gang of four" (US Dollar, Euro, Japanese Yen and Pound Sterling).
The obvious feature of this arrangement is that would preserve the leadership status of the Euro-American alliance, with Japan as a long-standing junior partner as the IMF, notes Michel Chossudovsky in an article of July 23, 2009, in "Global Research". However, this reform does nothing to solve the debt crisis. In reality, the new SDR regime would be based on a virtual merger of the Euro with the Dollar, or a successor to the latter that might take the form of the mythical "Amero", reportedly on the drawing boards of the US Federal system. The British pound may be on its last leg as, in the wake of the collapse of the City in 2007-2008, the UK's financial center has been taken under the custody of the EU, as described in an article by John Lanchester in the London Review of Books of May 28th, 2009, tellingly entitled: "It's finished".
Though the banks of the major continental economies, Germany and France, may not be as badly indebted as their counterparts across the Atlantic and the Channel, those countries are still facing the prospects of massive and painful bankruptcies amongst some of their "crown jewels". As soon as the September national elections are over in Germany, the extent of the losses and the proportion of toxic assets held in the largest financial institutions will be mad apparent while joblessness will surge.
As could be expected, Russia has balked at the West's "reserve currency reform" proposal and demanded that the SDRs include the Chinese Yuan as well as commodities and gold in the supporting "basket". President Medvedev went so far at the July G-8 meeting in Italy as to flourish a gold ruble as a future anchor of the global monetary system ""denominated a "United Future World Currency". Beijing was more muted but, while promoting the adoption of the SDR to replace the Dollar, it is clearly making its own arrangements to transact more and more business with its trading partners in Yuan and their own respective monetary units. It is likely that a rival system to the West's IMF-based regime will emerge within the SCO (China-Russia and four Central Asian Republics) or amongst IBRIC members (Indonesia-Brazil-Russia-India-China) as a tangible demonstration that the world has become multi-polar, or bi-polar at least. Indeed, that new Eurasian system might provide the impetus to revive world trade which is rapidly dwindling or even collapsing.
The fact that countries and regional blocs are going their own way to deal with the crisis is adding to the uncertainty and instability and it fuels the dire predictions of an increasing number of experts, from the aforesaid JEAP/GEAB team to Bob Chapman (internationalforecaster.com) and Jim Sinclair (jsminaset.com) who both reported in June that the US State Department has instructed embassies to stock up a year's worth of local currency in anticipation of the Dollar's collapse by the end of September. Similarly John Morley warned (thetrumpet.com) on July 21st that "the world prepares to dump the US Dollar" and that Japan might be about to jump the not-so-good US ship, especially if the Opposition wins the upcoming elections, as its economic spokesman Masaharu Nakayama has stated that if elected, his party would not longer purchase US Treasuries unless they are denominated in Yen. A large part of the US ability to generate funds over the last decades has been tied to the "Yen carry trade" which in turn is largely responsible for the prolonged Japanese economic recession, Thus such a radical change in Japan's financial policy , Morley points out "would break the US bond market", while Benjamin Fulford, Forbes's Magazine former correspondent in Tokyo predicted that "chaos will prevail within several months, a year at most" in America when the US has to endure the effects of its insolvency and its inability to borrow abroad. Back in 2000, also in the Trumpet, Tim Thompson had predicted that America's irresponsible debt-accumulation would result in the "greatest fall in mankind's history".
Jim Willis (goldenjackass.com) notes that the Fed is currently fighting disclosure to Congress of the way it has used the hundreds of billions that were disbursed to banks within the TARP program. Willis wrote in his 321gold report of July 17th of the "imminent erosion of the US Dollar Seawall" which would lead by the end of summer to "Quantum drop devaluation" of the greenback when the world becomes aware of the hidden monetization that the Fed and the Treasury are resorting to. He also discusses the increasingly desperate and dubious measures being resorted to by states like California which is now paying many of its public servants in IOUs that, though not a valid currency, are in turn used in some cases to pay taxes by the recipients. The accumulation of many ad hoc uncoordinated measures and steps of this kind is likely to result in economic (and social) anarchy in the relatively near future.
Chapman sees a first bank shutdown taking place in September and lasting three or four days as a parting shot for subsequent, much longer bank holidays taking place within the next two or three years while a drastic and painful reorganization of the currency and economy takes place, probably under a regime akin to martial law, de facto or de jure and justified by convenient international emergencies such as the Iranian or North Korean nuclear threats or a global pandemic. Many concur that these dramatic events are set to being in the autumn of 2009 (when, coincidentally, both Israel and the US announced that they would have to act against Iran if Tehran does not agree to their demands regarding its nuclear development program) as the Federal Reserve will no longer be able to prevent interest rates from rising nor to resort to other subterfuges such as loaning to foreign reserve banks the Dollars to acquire its own debt, as it is widely believed to be doing so far from secret offshore accounts where it has accumulated trillions of "vanished" US currency. Willis points out the billions "gone missing" from a number of US Federal programs such as the Iraq Reconstruction Fund, the Pentagon's general budget, the Katrina Relief Fund or TARP and ventures to say that those Dollars have been stashed abroad in preparation for the expected emergency.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
2
