← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Sertorius
Thread ID: 20379 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2005-09-24
2005-09-24 18:27 | User Profile
VDARE.COM - [url]http://www.vdare.com/roberts/050923_america.htm[/url]
September 23, 2005 America is running out of time
By Paul Craig Roberts
George W. Bush will go down in history as the president who fiddled while America lost its superpower status.
Bush used deceit and hysteria to lead America into a war that is bleeding the US economically, militarily, and diplomatically. The war is being fought with hundreds of billions of dollars borrowed from foreigners. The war is bleeding the military of troops and commitments. The war has ended the US claim to moral leadership and exposed the US as a reckless and aggressive power.
Focused on a concocted "war on terrorism," the Bush administration [url=http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/columnists/s_372545.html]diverted money from the New Orleans levees[/url] to Iraq, with the consequence that the US now has a $100 billion rebuild bill on top of the war bill.
The US is so short of troops that neoconservatives are [url=http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/19/foreign.legion/]advocating[/url] the use of [url=http://www.vdare.com/fulford/foreign_legions.htm]foreign mercenaries[/url] paid with US citizenship.
US efforts to isolate Iran have been blocked by Russia and China, nuclear powers that Bush cannot bully.
The Iraqi war has three beneficiaries: (1) al Qaeda, (2) Iran and (3) US war industries and Bush-Cheney cronies who receive no-bid contracts.
Everyone else is a loser.
The war has bestowed on al Qaeda recruits, prestige, and a training ground.
The war has allied Iran with Iraqââ¬â¢s Shiââ¬â¢ite majority.
The war has brought soaring profits to the military industries and the firms with reconstruction contracts at the expense of 20,000 US military casualties and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties.
The Republican Party is a loser, because its hidebound support for the war is isolating the party from public opinion.
The Democratic Party is a loser, because its cowardly acquiescence in a war that is opposed by the majority of its members is making the party irrelevant.
The latest polls show that a majority of Americans believe the US cannot win against the Iraq insurgency. The majority support withdrawal and the redirection of war spending to rebuilding New Orleans. Despite the clarity of the publicââ¬â¢s wishes, the Republican Party continues to support the unpopular war.
With the exceptions of Reps. Cynthia McKinney and John Conyers, Democrats [url=http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/news/world/12719254.htm]fled the scene[/url] of the Sept. 24 antiwar rally in Washington DC. The cynical Democrats are apparently owned by the same interest groups that own the Republicans and are refusing the mantle of majority party that the electorate is offering to the party that will end the war.
The Bush administration is churning out red ink in excess of $1 trillion annually. The federal budget deficit is approaching $500 billion. The US trade deficit is approaching $700 billion.
The budget deficit is being financed by foreigners, primarily Asians who now hold enough US government debt to exercise power over US interest rates and the value of the dollar whenever they decide to use the power that Bush has placed in their hands.
The trade deficit is being financed by turning over the ownership of US assets and future income streams to foreigners, making Americans forever poorer from the loss of accumulated wealth.
For the time being, China is willing to accumulate US assets as a way of taking over our consumer markets, attracting US manufacturing industry with cheap labor subsidized by artificial currency values, and gaining our technology. Chinaââ¬â¢s strategy is to over-value the US dollar in order to encourage the transfer of US economic capabilities to China. Chinaââ¬â¢s strategy gives artificial value to the dollar and keeps US interest rates at an artificial low.
The values of US stocks, bonds, and real estate depend on the support that Asiansââ¬â¢ economic strategies provide the dollar and US interest rates. As Asia achieves its goal of preeminence in manufacturing, innovation, and product development, the strategy will change. Once China completes its acquisition of US capabilities, it will no longer have a reason to support the dollar.
When the dollar goes, it will affect costs, profits, interest rates and living standards in dramatic ways. Costs and interest rates will soar, and profits, living standards, equity values, bond prices and real estate will plummet.
These unpleasant events await only Asiaââ¬â¢s decision to curtail its support for US red ink. That will happen when this support no longer serves Asiaââ¬â¢s interest.
When Asia pulls the plug on the dollar, the US government will find that monetary and fiscal policy are powerless to offset the consequences.
Compared to US budget and trade deficits, terrorists are a minor concern. The greatest danger that the US faces is the dollarââ¬â¢s loss of reserve currency role. This would be an impoverishing event, one from which the US would not recover.
An intelligent government sincerely concerned with homeland security would find a way to halt the global labor arbitrage that is stripping the American economy of high value-added jobs and manufacturing capability, thereby causing the US trade deficit to explode. The loss of tax base that results when US companies outsource jobs and relocate production abroad makes it ever more difficult to balance a budget strained by war, natural disasters, and demographic impact on Social Security and Medicare.
[url=http://www.vdare.com/roberts/labor_arbitrage.htm]Global labor arbitrage[/url] is rapidly dismantling the [url=http://www.vdare.com/roberts/050822_hegemony.htm]ladders of upward mobility[/url] and thereby endangering American political stability. This threat is far greater than any Osama bin Laden can mount.
Time is running out for Republicans and Democrats to escape from the distraction of a pointless war and to focus on the real threats that endanger the United States of America.
Dr. Roberts, a former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former Contributing Editor of National Review, was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan administration. He is the author of The Supply-Side Revolution and, with Lawrence M. Stratton, of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelowââ¬â¢s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
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2005-09-24 18:54 | User Profile
The US is so short of troops that neoconservatives are advocating the use of foreign mercenaries paid with US citizenship. That would certainly kill two birds with one stone for the Jews, wouldn't it? They'd water down the white majority in this country even more while acquiring much-needed personnel for their insane wars. All paid for by our tax dollars, of course.
And who knows? Maybe someday those same mercenaries will be used against the American people -- to suppress political dissent, say, or to collect our weapons. (If that happens, it will be every American's responsibility to greet them with hails of rifle fire.)
The Iraqi war has three beneficiaries: (1) al Qaeda, (2) Iran and (3) US war industries and Bush-Cheney cronies who receive no-bid contracts.
Everyone else is a loser. I'd add "Israel" to the list. At least Israel was the intended beneficiary.
Apart from the above omission, PCR has once again hit the nail squarely on the head. He and Ron Paul are two voices crying out in the wilderness, desperate for the American sheep to come to their senses and end this madness. But it's not going to end. We're going over the cliff.
2005-09-24 19:15 | User Profile
[font=Times New Roman][size=3]I see a cliff but it draws no closer.
The madness of the current regime and those which preceded it spins ever onward, and the day of reckoning one would expect never seems to arrive. The debt piles up, the dollar goes down, the jobs go away, our boys in uniform keep getting killed and dismembered for nothing, and the beaners keep pouring in and bleeding the public coffer.
And what is ever done about any of it? Why, nothing at all. Day after day, year after year, the debacle just goes on and on and on.
The only "cures" for what ails this land would seem to be a massive WMD attack from our enemies abroad, or an economic collapse, or both. Until the housing bubble pops people will spend imaginary money like mad and spicks will still find greedy Americans who hire them. As long as tax money pours in the traitors in DC will waste it on foreign aid, wars of empire, and again, the beaners leaving their beer cans and stolen shopping carts in your driveway will get handsome government handouts.
I used to think CW2 would resolve these crises, post-disaster (see above), but am beginning to think there will be no CW2, and America will become a permanent version of George Orwell's authoritarian Hell.[/size][/font]
2005-09-25 02:34 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Hivemindgammahydra7]I see a cliff but it draws no closer. ...[/QUOTE] We're getting closer all the time but the public isn't going to do anything until their wallet starts getting pinched. I for one am awaiting how the new banckruptcy laws are going to effect things come October. From what I've read the minimum payments should double on credit cards. If true, that bill is going to slap a lot of people out of their stupor.
2005-09-26 19:44 | User Profile
I finally agree with Mr Roberts. :clap:
[QUOTE=Sertorius]VDARE.COM - [url="http://www.vdare.com/roberts/050923_america.htm"]http://www.vdare.com/roberts/050923_america.htm[/url]
September 23, 2005 America is running out of time
By Paul Craig Roberts ==snip== The Iraqi war has three beneficiaries: (1) al Qaeda, (2) Iran and (3) US war industries and Bush-Cheney cronies who receive no-bid contracts.
Everyone else is a loser. ==snip== Copyright é 1999 - 2005 VDARE.[/QUOTE] Yep.
AE