The American Empire Is Bankrupt
Posted on Jun 14, 2009
By Chris Hedges
This week marks the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful.
Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America’s imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze.
There are meetings being held Monday and Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia, (formerly Sverdlovsk) among Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance. Watch what happens there carefully. The gathering is, in the words of economist Michael Hudson, “the most important meeting of the 21st century so far.”
It is the first formal step by our major trading partners to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If they succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value, the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket, interest rates will climb and jobs will hemorrhage at a rate that will make the last few months look like boom times. State and federal services will be reduced or shut down for lack of funds. The United States will begin to resemble the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe. Obama, endowed by many with the qualities of a savior, will suddenly look pitiful, inept and weak. And the rage that has kindled a handful of shootings and hate crimes in the past few weeks will engulf vast segments of a disenfranchised and bewildered working and middle class. The people of this class will demand vengeance, radical change, order and moral renewal, which an array of proto-fascists, from the Christian right to the goons who disseminate hate talk on Fox News, will assure the country they will impose.
continue reading: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090614_the_american_em...
Derivatives
brought us down. The rest was bogus. The elites are not just Americans. What was the reason for the US being excluded?
No kidding
Whem the world financers pull all their money out all at one time, what do you expect ? CRISIS ?
you-no
Obama should be there.
After all, he's just as interested in wrecking the little that's left of the dollar as any of them.
I agree with the statement
I agree with the statement about BRIC being the most important meeting. All the BRIC countries advised their finance ministries to devise plans for new reserve currencies. It wasn't a dog and pony show, this is the real thing. Our mainstream media may have kept out objectivity of the US but other countries have a different perspective and have already realized what our corrupt Federal Reserve has done and is doing.
http://www.meetup.com/RP2012GrandJunctionCO
I actually like it, but
I'm odd. :):) I didn't, of course, agree completely with the last line in the article about us paying the price for the "gross malfeasance of our power elite". It's only half true. Were it not for the pathetic solipsism and covetousness of the average "American", coupled with his/her gross ignorance of what it means and what it takes to live in a republic, it would be far less likely that we would find ourselves in the position we're in, but at this point, I think Hodges is pretty close to being spot on. Just a matter of time...
Not dead yet...
The dollar is still going strong, despite best efforts by the Fed and Treasury. The fact is, governments around the world are in deep debt, or in they're in the black but holding onto tons of basically-worthless paper (IOU's.)
As of today, the dollar is still the most liquid currency around the world, and when the SHTF, everyone runs to it. This won't last forever though - they've created at least $2 trillion this year alone.
We must stop importing so much and start rebuilding our manufacturing base. We have the technology and lots of unemployed workers to do it.
Once again, we must
Once again, we must understand the vast differences between the U.S. Dollar's strength on FOREX markets verses the purchasing value of the currency itself. The U.S. Federal Reserve Note (dollar) is nothing more than an empty shell retaining a few percent of its original purchasing power. The dollar is crumbling, having been eroded by 96 years of consistent inflation.
http://www.1776solution.blogspot.com
“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”-Adams
http://militantjeffersonian.com
"Men do not willingly read unpalatable truths of themselves. The People like those best who fool them most, by pandering to their vices and flattering their foibles" Raphael Semmes
Well that is depressing,
especially his last words to his idea of what it will be like. I like Republicae's posts better. I need hope.