China’s call today for a new global reserve currency to replace the dollar spells the beginning of the end of the American Empire. China holds most of the dollar credit in the world, and that of course gave China a powerful incentive to maintain dollar hegemony. That China now views the risks to world trade from the US’ indebtedness, to outweigh the potential loss in value of its own dollar reserves, is the tipping point that spells the inevitable beginning of the end of the US empire.
The reserve currency system has since 1795 allowed empires to be built on the economic output of weaker powers. If you achieve sufficient economic power and control of resources that yours is the currency everyone holds, you can print as much of it for yourself as you like and the devaluation effects are spread around not just your economy, but everyone else who holds your deposits. Being the reserve currency is a license to print money. Both the British and the Americans used this position to build military forces which could dominate both formal and informal empires. Both eventually experienced overreach, with military expenditure pushing deficit finance to the point of implosion. Then you lose reserve currency status.
It happened to the British and now it is happening to the Americans.
The colossal 4.7% a year of its wealth the US throws away on defence and security expenditure (broadly defined) – more than double the European average – is a huge factor in US indebtedness. There is an extraordinary failure to mention this in the mainstream media. It seems to be an Emperor’s New Clothes thing. It is the one area of expenditure the xenophobic hatemongers of the Tea Party want to see increased, and the existence of Empire causes all career politicians to compete in public displays of patriotism. That has been a political fact since the dawn of time. Defence spending is a sacred cow, unmentionable in the United States. They probably have a couple of decades to come fully to terms with the fact that they will no longer be in a position to invade who they will in order to control their mineral and other commodity resources. As with the British empire, the beetle on its back will kick its legs a while yet. It will be painful for them.
I shall enjoy it. I never claimed to be a good person!
The Tehran Times repeatedly publishes “911 inside job” silliness. This includes featuring Christopher Bollyn, a Holocaust denier from whom even the craziest 911 truthers in the 911 have distanced themselves.
By the way, did anyone see the way the Chinese government reacted to the head-on collision between two bullet trains a week or two ago? Much of that story was probably obscured by the Breivik shooting in Norway (Shurely no coincidence [/tinf]). The Chinese government’s first instinct was to try to bury the train under the railway tracks so that it couldn’t be properly investigated!!!1! Then the train was dug up again and spirited away.
“What war talk? You people have been saying that the U.S. will attack Iran the next month for at least five years now!”
Larry, I never thought I’d find myself saying this, but I agree with you. Nevertheless, Iran’s oil bourse is a serious challenge to the dollar’s hegemony. Gadaffi was/is proposing something similar (though he wanted to be paid in gold), as was Saddam. It could be argued that the US has been protecting the dollar’s reserve status through the barrel of a gun for a few years now. It’s just that, unlike Iraq and Libya, Iran is a well-defended country with sophisticated weaponry.
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But I digress: you were going to tell us more about Ahmadinejad’s “wipe off the map” comment, weren’t you?
Your own end-game Larry (not from St Louis):
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIOC1J44RYw
[Mod: deleted, abusive]
Having now clicked on to the story that Craig Murray linked to I think that some of his sensationalism is a little, er… sensationalistic. Of course it is in China’s interest for the US to pay back its debts and for China to want a new reserve currency such as the Euro (*tee hee!*), the pound (*guffaw!*) or the yen (*ufufufufu!*) would surely be quite irresponsible for China as much as for anyone else.
I get it Yugo, human right abuses in other countries by American are OK, because there are check and balances in place that nothing like that could happen on American soil!
Human Right abuses has many faces and forms, and just because demonstration are allowed in a country does not make it necessary a Human Rights heaven.
“The Chinese government’s first instinct was to try to bury the train under the railway tracks so that it couldn’t be properly investigated!!!1! Then the train was dug up again and spirited away”
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Hey angry, I think you’ve been reading too many 911 conspiracy sites.
MJ: “Hey angry, I think you’ve been reading too many 911 conspiracy sites.”
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Do you deny that the Chinese buried the train?
Angrysoba,
I think what the Chinese want is a trade weighted currency basket – an idea which is pretty mainstream economic thinking nowadays. The massive advantages of being the reserve currency, and the value to the US of the Eurodollar, is economic orthodoxy. I attended a compulsory residential course on the subject at the UK Civil Service College at Sunningdale – as have all relevant British public servants. I am afraid, Yugostiglitz, if you lose reserve currency status the effects really will be very substantial indeed. That in no way indicates I am a fan of Chinese internal or foreign policy. It is just true.
I have no intention of getting into one of Larry’s wrangles. They are pointless, usually offensive and off topic. Suffice to say I resent the ‘Jew hater’ slur. I do not hate anyone let alone an amorphous grouping. I just have sorrow in my heart for the Palestinians who have been oppressed and denied justice for 63 years. End of.
‘Israel is hated by all decent people.’ That kind of comment is precisely one aspect of this whole problem. It proceeds by definition; ergo no decent person can not hate Israel. I do worry about where that kind of belief will lead, and also it has got to be factually incorrect, as I regard many people that I know to be decent, even though they don’t hate Israel, some of them might not even know or care where it is.
On your wider point, I am not suggesting that the US has not been responsible for war crimes, there will be many examples, and recent examples. But the solution to this is not to wish upon the country, its people, innocent and guilty, some unspecified indiscriminate punishment, which merely gives vent to a feeling of rage; even supposing it were true, which it is not, that the miseries of, say, Iran, to use one of your examples, were all the fault of the Americans, which is to blatantly ignore the widespread horrific abuse of the Iranian people of its own government, which DOES NOT happen in the US in anything like the same way.
The discourse of anti this and anti that is a tired one, and it is one that replicates many of the faults of its enemies. I believe that it fulfills a need in some people to identify a figure of hate and an explanation, a simple one, for the problems of the world.
That being said, I think that Mark G qnd Craig sometimes say interesting and informative things; that is why I generqlly read the blog, but only comment when I feel that enough is enough.
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Wake up folks, the whole world is in the shit. There’s no point fighting over the crumbs.
“Do you deny that the Chinese buried the train?”
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Not at all. Do you deny that the rubble of the towers was spirited away and disposed of so that it couldn’t be properly investigated? Why do you think the Chinese did it? Why do think the US did it?
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[Wrong thread I know, these are rhetorical questions only for the sake of board rules and decorum].
You see Jaded can only make his points though abuse: that should tell you something about the strengths of his arguments and the nature of his character; his on-line character.
Danj, who said this: “Israel is hated by all decent people”?
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Unfortunately it doesn’t surprise me to see such a statement on this blog but I can’t find the original author.
Everyone knows you are cointelpro. What do you expect you stupid idiot? Roses and adulation? Just relax buddy. It will all be over for your department soon. No pensions for you guys. Ha ha ha. 🙂
AZRAE above ‘… Israel is hated by all decent people.’
I forgot to add that though I might sometimes disagree with Clark above, he is also worth reading, and he doesn’t call people names.
Jaded, bad luck, I am already retired and currently sipping wine in the south of France. Oh, I suppose that too makes me one of the bad guys.
MJ: “Wrong thread I know”.
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Then off you go to the correct one – – – >
Jaded, your previous post was deleted for being abusive.
Thanks Danj. It’s amazing that a statement like that can be made by no “decent” person about any other country. I wonder what it is about Israel that brings out so much hostility.
Lol, what’s wrong with abusing cointelpro? Enough, anyway, they are fighting a losing battle and everyone can see them. I have done my job. You can get ready to start deleting the neverending stream of tosh they will post for as long as this therad runs. Whetehr I do or don’t make another comment will matter not. That is their M.O. and only someone with amoebaesque intelligence couldn’t see that. Peace all. 🙂
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[Mod: post non offensive stuff with evidence and it will not be deleted.]
@Danji, I concede. I should have said” Israel policies are hated by all decent people”
Angrysoba, I really think you’re making too much fuss about what appears to be an impulsive comment.
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“What it is about Israel that brings out so much hostility” is that Israel is in a position to behave much better than it does. People rightly expect better of “the only democracy in the Middle East”.
Well said Azra.
There is massive rift between ultra zionists who are behind the current discourse in israel and peace loving jews who are led by fear and loathing, just as the palestinians are.
What many here reject is the ignorance and outright lawlessness against global norms, for example the insistence that the law of the sea does not matter, forever twisting realities, laws and facts os they exist.
Thats not what was envisaged, when the UN agreed to allow israel to be formed and founded, not many then knew of the insistence on militarisation of the public, the plans to drive out those who lived there for generations.
Sharon’s words are the words of a mass murderer, Sabra and Shatilla will never be forgotten, his words
count for nothing anymore, he made his bed and now he’s laying in it, god has humour after all.
Yugo has brought assistance, what fun.
Angrysoba, regarding your comment about the “Wicked Witch of the East”: It isn’t like some switch is going to flip, and China is suddenly going to be deposing democracies and smashing oil-rich countries. People can be glad of a decrease in US power without wishing for China to suddenly take the place of the US.
Danji, I think you are purposefully forgetting the history and the role USA played in politics of Iran. I believe Iran is in a mess now, due to USA policies. Are you denying the role CIA played in bringing down the democratically nationalists government of Dr Mosadaq in 1952?? USA is not denying it any longer..All because he did not want to let UK and USA steal its oil, and pay them pittance for it. Iran had many years under a brutal dictator (and I know that first hand, few of my friends disappeared during his reign, never to be heard from again). Had USA let them be, by now Iran would be possibly a secular democracy. As it is they have exchanged a crowned cannibal for a turbaned one.
“What it is about Israel that brings out so much hostility” is that Israel is in a position to behave much better than it does. People rightly expect better of “the only democracy in the Middle East”.
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Assuming this isn’t an impulsive comment it would appear to be a retread of “We hold Israel to a higher standard than others”. I am not quite sure what makes its position so priveleged. Couldn’t you equally say that given its position, people could rightly expect it to be far worse than it is. Far less democratic. Far less *gasp* socialist than it is. But no, apparently its achievements in the face of existential adversity mean that people expect Israel to be better than it is.
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I might say, given Saudi Arabia’s vast oil wealth and given Iran’s oil wealth and cultured civilization I might expect things to be better in those countries. Unfortunately, of course, we know that theocratic medeivalist rule keeps both of those countries back.
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China, by contrast, has made sterling and laudatory progress and I long to see the day of a prosperous LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC China. But I can’t cheer on China in its present form and probably you shouldn’t either. I asked you before about why Israel/Palestine was such a major issue for you but Diego Garcia wasn’t. I also asked you about East Turkestan, otherwise known as Xinjiang and I think your answer was something along the lines of there only being enough time in the world. Have you ever heard of, say, Rebiyah Qadeer?
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Do we judge China or Iran or Saudi Arabia by lower standards because they already have a worse political system or because we expect less of them to begin with?