Going Bankrupt
Why the Debt Crisis Is Now the Greatest Threat to the American Republic
The military adventurers of the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups of men thought that they were the “smartest guys in the room,” the title of Alex Gibney’s prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron. The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.
As a result, going into 2008, the United States finds itself in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment. Its government no longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge standing armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars have destroyed or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer space against unknown adversaries. Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future generations to pay — or repudiate. This utter fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through many manipulative financial schemes (such as causing poorer countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching.
There are three broad aspects to our debt crisis. First, in the current fiscal year (2008) we are spending insane amounts of money on “defense” projects that bear no relationship to the national security of the United States. Simultaneously, we are keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segments of the American population at strikingly low levels.
Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our manufacturing base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military expenditures — so-called “military Keynesianism,” which I discuss in detail in my book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. By military Keynesianism, I mean the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true.
Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources), we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and other requirements for the long-term health of our country. These are what economists call “opportunity costs,” things not done because we spent our money on something else. Our public education system has deteriorated alarmingly. We have failed to provide health care to all our citizens and neglected our responsibilities as the world’s number one polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a manufacturer for civilian needs — an infinitely more efficient use of scarce resources than arms manufacturing. Let me discuss each of these.
The Current Fiscal Disaster
It is virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what our government spends on the military. The Department of Defense’s planned expenditures for fiscal year 2008 are larger than all other nations’ military budgets combined. The supplementary budget to pay for the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not part of the official defense budget, is itself larger than the combined military budgets of Russia and China. Defense-related spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history. The United States has become the largest single salesman of arms and munitions to other nations on Earth. Leaving out of account President Bush’s two on-going wars, defense spending has doubled since the mid-1990s. The defense budget for fiscal 2008 is the largest since World War II.
Before we try to break down and analyze this gargantuan sum, there is one important caveat. Figures on defense spending are notoriously unreliable. The numbers released by the Congressional Reference Service and the Congressional Budget Office do not agree with each other. Robert Higgs, senior fellow for political economy at the Independent Institute, says: “A well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon’s (always well publicized) basic budget total and double it.” Even a cursory reading of newspaper articles about the Department of Defense will turn up major differences in statistics about its expenses. Some 30-40% of the defense budget is “black,” meaning that these sections contain hidden expenditures for classified projects. There is no possible way to know what they include or whether their total amounts are accurate.
There are many reasons for this budgetary sleight-of-hand — including a desire for secrecy on the part of the president, the secretary of defense, and the military-industrial complex — but the chief one is that members of Congress, who profit enormously from defense jobs and pork-barrel projects in their districts, have a political interest in supporting the Department of Defense. In 1996, in an attempt to bring accounting standards within the executive branch somewhat closer to those of the civilian economy, Congress passed the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act. It required all federal agencies to hire outside auditors to review their books and release the results to the public. Neither the Department of Defense, nor the Department of Homeland Security has ever complied. Congress has complained, but not penalized either department for ignoring the law. The result is that all numbers released by the Pentagon should be regarded as suspect.
In discussing the fiscal 2008 defense budget, as released to the press on February 7, 2007, I have been guided by two experienced and reliable analysts: William D. Hartung of the New America Foundation’s Arms and Security Initiative and Fred Kaplan, defense correspondent for Slate.org. They agree that the Department of Defense requested $481.4 billion for salaries, operations (except in Iraq and Afghanistan), and equipment. They also agree on a figure of $141.7 billion for the “supplemental” budget to fight the “global war on terrorism” — that is, the two on-going wars that the general public may think are actually covered by the basic Pentagon budget. The Department of Defense also asked for an extra $93.4 billion to pay for hitherto unmentioned war costs in the remainder of 2007 and, most creatively, an additional “allowance” (a new term in defense budget documents) of $50 billion to be charged to fiscal year 2009. This comes to a total spending request by the Department of Defense of $766.5 billion.
But there is much more. In an attempt to disguise the true size of the American military empire, the government has long hidden major military-related expenditures in departments other than Defense. For example, $23.4 billion for the Department of Energy goes toward developing and maintaining nuclear warheads; and $25.3 billion in the Department of State budget is spent on foreign military assistance (primarily for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Republic, Egypt, and Pakistan). Another $1.03 billion outside the official Department of Defense budget is now needed for recruitment and reenlistment incentives for the overstretched U.S. military itself, up from a mere $174 million in 2003, the year the war in Iraq began. The Department of Veterans Affairs currently gets at least $75.7 billion, 50% of which goes for the long-term care of the grievously injured among the at least 28,870 soldiers so far wounded in Iraq and another 1,708 in Afghanistan. The amount is universally derided as inadequate. Another $46.4 billion goes to the Department of Homeland Security.
Missing as well from this compilation is $1.9 billion to the Department of Justice for the paramilitary activities of the FBI; $38.5 billion to the Department of the Treasury for the Military Retirement Fund; $7.6 billion for the military-related activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and well over $200 billion in interest for past debt-financed defense outlays. This brings U.S. spending for its military establishment during the current fiscal year (2008), conservatively calculated, to at least $1.1 trillion.
Military Keynesianism
Such expenditures are not only morally obscene, they are fiscally unsustainable. Many neoconservatives and poorly informed patriotic Americans believe that, even though our defense budget is huge, we can afford it because we are the richest country on Earth. Unfortunately, that statement is no longer true. The world’s richest political entity, according to the CIA’s “World Factbook,” is the European Union. The EU’s 2006 GDP (gross domestic product — all goods and services produced domestically) was estimated to be slightly larger than that of the U.S. However, China’s 2006 GDP was only slightly smaller than that of the U.S., and Japan was the world’s fourth richest nation.
A more telling comparison that reveals just how much worse we’re doing can be found among the “current accounts” of various nations. The current account measures the net trade surplus or deficit of a country plus cross-border payments of interest, royalties, dividends, capital gains, foreign aid, and other income. For example, in order for Japan to manufacture anything, it must import all required raw materials. Even after this incredible expense is met, it still has an $88 billion per year trade surplus with the United States and enjoys the world’s second highest current account balance. (China is number one.) The United States, by contrast, is number 163 — dead last on the list, worse than countries like Australia and the United Kingdom that also have large trade deficits. Its 2006 current account deficit was $811.5 billion; second worst was Spain at $106.4 billion. This is what is unsustainable.
It’s not just that our tastes for foreign goods, including imported oil, vastly exceed our ability to pay for them. We are financing them through massive borrowing. On November 7, 2007, the U.S. Treasury announced that the national debt had breached $9 trillion for the first time ever. This was just five weeks after Congress raised the so-called debt ceiling to $9.815 trillion. If you begin in 1789, at the moment the Constitution became the supreme law of the land, the debt accumulated by the federal government did not top $1 trillion until 1981. When George Bush became president in January 2001, it stood at approximately $5.7 trillion. Since then, it has increased by 45%. This huge debt can be largely explained by our defense expenditures in comparison with the rest of the world.
The world’s top 10 military spenders and the approximate amounts each country currently budgets for its military establishment are:
1. United States (FY08 budget), $623 billion
2. China (2004), $65 billion
3. Russia, $50 billion
4. France (2005), $45 billion
5. Japan (2007), $41.75 billion
6. Germany (2003), $35.1 billion
7. Italy (2003), $28.2 billion
8. South Korea (2003), $21.1 billion
9. India (2005 est.), $19 billion
10. Saudi Arabia (2005 est.), $18 billion
World total military expenditures (2004 est.), $1,100 billion
World total (minus the United States), $500 billion
Our excessive military expenditures did not occur over just a few short years or simply because of the Bush administration’s policies. They have been going on for a very long time in accordance with a superficially plausible ideology and have now become entrenched in our democratic political system where they are starting to wreak havoc. This ideology I call “military Keynesianism” — the determination to maintain a permanent war economy and to treat military output as an ordinary economic product, even though it makes no contribution to either production or consumption.
This ideology goes back to the first years of the Cold War. During the late 1940s, the U.S. was haunted by economic anxieties. The Great Depression of the 1930s had been overcome only by the war production boom of World War II. With peace and demobilization, there was a pervasive fear that the Depression would return. During 1949, alarmed by the Soviet Union’s detonation of an atomic bomb, the looming communist victory in the Chinese civil war, a domestic recession, and the lowering of the Iron Curtain around the USSR’s European satellites, the U.S. sought to draft basic strategy for the emerging cold war. The result was the militaristic National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) drafted under the supervision of Paul Nitze, then head of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department. Dated April 14, 1950, and signed by President Harry S. Truman on September 30, 1950, it laid out the basic public economic policies that the United States pursues to the present day.
In its conclusions, NSC-68 asserted: “One of the most significant lessons of our World War II experience was that the American economy, when it operates at a level approaching full efficiency, can provide enormous resources for purposes other than civilian consumption while simultaneously providing a high standard of living.”
With this understanding, American strategists began to build up a massive munitions industry, both to counter the military might of the Soviet Union (which they consistently overstated) and also to maintain full employment as well as ward off a possible return of the Depression. The result was that, under Pentagon leadership, entire new industries were created to manufacture large aircraft, nuclear-powered submarines, nuclear warheads, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and surveillance and communications satellites. This led to what President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address of February 6, 1961: “The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience” — that is, the military-industrial complex.
By 1990, the value of the weapons, equipment, and factories devoted to the Department of Defense was 83% of the value of all plants and equipment in American manufacturing. From 1947 to 1990, the combined U.S. military budgets amounted to $8.7 trillion. Even though the Soviet Union no longer exists, U.S. reliance on military Keynesianism has, if anything, ratcheted up, thanks to the massive vested interests that have become entrenched around the military establishment. Over time, a commitment to both guns and butter has proven an unstable configuration. Military industries crowd out the civilian economy and lead to severe economic weaknesses. Devotion to military Keynesianism is, in fact, a form of slow economic suicide.
On May 1, 2007, the Center for Economic and Policy Research of Washington, D.C., released a study prepared by the global forecasting company Global Insight on the long-term economic impact of increased military spending. Guided by economist Dean Baker, this research showed that, after an initial demand stimulus, by about the sixth year the effect of increased military spending turns negative. Needless to say, the U.S. economy has had to cope with growing defense spending for more than 60 years. He found that, after 10 years of higher defense spending, there would be 464,000 fewer jobs than in a baseline scenario that involved lower defense spending.
Baker concluded:
“It is often believed that wars and military spending increases are good for the economy. In fact, most economic models show that military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment.”
These are only some of the many deleterious effects of military Keynesianism.
Hollowing Out the American Economy
It was believed that the U.S. could afford both a massive military establishment and a high standard of living, and that it needed both to maintain full employment. But it did not work out that way. By the 1960s, it was becoming apparent that turning over the nation’s largest manufacturing enterprises to the Department of Defense and producing goods without any investment or consumption value was starting to crowd out civilian economic activities. The historian Thomas E. Woods, Jr., observes that, during the 1950s and 1960s, between one-third and two-thirds of all American research talent was siphoned off into the military sector. It is, of course, impossible to know what innovations never appeared as a result of this diversion of resources and brainpower into the service of the military, but it was during the 1960s that we first began to notice Japan was outpacing us in the design and quality of a range of consumer goods, including household electronics and automobiles.
Nuclear weapons furnish a striking illustration of these anomalies. Between the 1940s and 1996, the United States spent at least $5.8 trillion on the development, testing, and construction of nuclear bombs. By 1967, the peak year of its nuclear stockpile, the United States possessed some 32,500 deliverable atomic and hydrogen bombs, none of which, thankfully, was ever used. They perfectly illustrate the Keynesian principle that the government can provide make-work jobs to keep people employed. Nuclear weapons were not just America’s secret weapon, but also its secret economic weapon. As of 2006, we still had 9,960 of them. There is today no sane use for them, while the trillions spent on them could have been used to solve the problems of social security and health care, quality education and access to higher education for all, not to speak of the retention of highly skilled jobs within the American economy.
The pioneer in analyzing what has been lost as a result of military Keynesianism was the late Seymour Melman (1917-2004), a professor of industrial engineering and operations research at Columbia University. His 1970 book, Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War, was a prescient analysis of the unintended consequences of the American preoccupation with its armed forces and their weaponry since the onset of the Cold War. Melman wrote (pp. 2-3):
“From 1946 to 1969, the United States government spent over $1,000 billion on the military, more than half of this under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations — the period during which the [Pentagon-dominated] state management was established as a formal institution. This sum of staggering size (try to visualize a billion of something) does not express the cost of the military establishment to the nation as a whole. The true cost is measured by what has been foregone, by the accumulated deterioration in many facets of life by the inability to alleviate human wretchedness of long duration.”
In an important exegesis on Melman’s relevance to the current American economic situation, Thomas Woods writes:
“According to the U.S. Department of Defense, during the four decades from 1947 through 1987 it used (in 1982 dollars) $7.62 trillion in capital resources. In 1985, the Department of Commerce estimated the value of the nation’s plant and equipment, and infrastructure, at just over $7.29 trillion. In other words, the amount spent over that period could have doubled the American capital stock or modernized and replaced its existing stock.”
The fact that we did not modernize or replace our capital assets is one of the main reasons why, by the turn of the twenty-first century, our manufacturing base had all but evaporated. Machine tools — an industry on which Melman was an authority — are a particularly important symptom. In November 1968, a five-year inventory disclosed (p. 186) “that 64 percent of the metalworking machine tools used in U.S. industry were ten years old or older. The age of this industrial equipment (drills, lathes, etc.) marks the United States’ machine tool stock as the oldest among all major industrial nations, and it marks the continuation of a deterioration process that began with the end of the Second World War. This deterioration at the base of the industrial system certifies to the continuous debilitating and depleting effect that the military use of capital and research and development talent has had on American industry.”
Nothing has been done in the period since 1968 to reverse these trends and it shows today in our massive imports of equipment — from medical machines like proton accelerators for radiological therapy (made primarily in Belgium, Germany, and Japan) to cars and trucks.
Our short tenure as the world’s “lone superpower” has come to an end. As Harvard economics professor Benjamin Friedman has written:
“Again and again it has always been the world’s leading lending country that has been the premier country in terms of political influence, diplomatic influence, and cultural influence. It’s no accident that we took over the role from the British at the same time that we took over… the job of being the world’s leading lending country. Today we are no longer the world’s leading lending country. In fact we are now the world’s biggest debtor country, and we are continuing to wield influence on the basis of military prowess alone.”
Some of the damage done can never be rectified. There are, however, some steps that this country urgently needs to take. These include reversing Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthy, beginning to liquidate our global empire of over 800 military bases, cutting from the defense budget all projects that bear no relationship to the national security of the United States, and ceasing to use the defense budget as a Keynesian jobs program. If we do these things we have a chance of squeaking by. If we don’t, we face probable national insolvency and a long depression.
Chalmers Johnson is the author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, just published in paperback. It is the final volume of his Blowback Trilogy, which also includes Blowback (2000) and The Sorrows of Empire (2004).
[Note: For those interested, click here to view a clip from a new film, “Chalmers Johnson on American Hegemony,” in Cinema Libre Studios’ Speaking Freely series in which he discusses “military Keynesianism” and imperial bankruptcy. For sources on global military spending, please see: (1) Global Security Organization, “World Wide Military Expenditures” as well as Glenn Greenwald, “The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending”; (2) Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “Report: China biggest Asian military spender.”]
Copyright 2008 Chalmers Johnson
Yup.
This article is the “real thing” regarding American economics. America is in real trouble, and Chalmers doesn’t beat around the bush about the causes. Chalmers Johnson is an important voice in America today. His books are well worth reading.
FOLLOW THE MONEY,
Three Strikes policy on WHITE COLLAR crime. We have done this to ourselves, for stupid greedy cowardly reasons. This is why we are about to “first strike” someone innocent with our precious nukes.
Also why your kids will not get the dental work they need. goodbye stupid world.
“One of the most significant lessons of our World War II experience was that the American economy, when it operates at a level approaching full efficiency, can provide enormous resources for purposes other than civilian consumption while simultaneously providing a high standard of living.”
Well, the standard of living was higher than the Great Depression thanks to FDR and HST, Democrats all. During that time America had a government that cared for it’s citizens above it’s corporations. We had a myth we could believe in. But, no more. Alas.
Military Keynesianism. Hmm, I’ve read this a few times trying to figure out how the heck he came up with a name like that. I got a new Keynes quote for today:
“If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer.”
John Maynard Keynes,
The Economic Consequences of the Peace,
1920, page 240
So how’s an upstanding fellow like Keynes get his name besmurched by using it to describe some mad scheme to build H-Bombs or Easter Island Heads and devastate the economy? How does supply, or demand, factor into the squandering of a nation’s wealth on non-productive enterprises simply to stimulate cash flow? I see what Chalmers is saying in his details, but blaming Keynes for the philosophy that causes it, is sort of like blaming the inventors of penicillin for the onset of diseases that penicillin can treat.
Another item not mentioned are the negative consequences—bad karma—from devoting resources to the creation of death and destruction. Ever wonder why the US has more people behind bars than any other land?
Daddy Chicken, the next president of the Confederacy of Bankrupt States of Amerika, addressed this problem at the recent CBSABCNBC deabte by replying: “Bend over and grab your ankles. If you are not limber enough, then take the $800 I am about to graciously give you and hire a personal trainer.”
And we have become the largest debtor nation in the world in order to finance empire and American hegemony.
Right on Chalmers. It makes it easier to understand why Bush & Co. are finding boogeymen under every bed within the US and all kinds of evil doers that have to be eliminated outside their borders - how else can you justify such massive investment into “security”? It also helps to put the current economic meltdown into context. For so long the social, economic and ecological infrastructure of the US has been neglected and it is impossible to cover up. It also makes it impossible to repay the debt - so anyone holding a promissory note had better have some serious muscle because the boots are really going to start stomping around the globe soon.
“i play too hard when i ought to go to sleep
they pick on me because i really got the beat
some people give me the creeps
every other week i need a new address
landlord landlord landlord
cleaning up the mess
our whole fcking life is a wreck
*we’re deperate get used to it*
its kiss or kill
coca-cola and a motorola kitchen
nauga-hyde and a tie-dye t-shirt
last night everything broke “
Make love, not war.
Like a foolish adolescent who thinks she’s invincible and can live wildly without consequence, the very young America is now finding out she’s hit a brick wall of her own making, and has no one else to blame but herself.
moonbeam highlights the secret to Republican Party success…boogeyman politics.
The Republicans create one boogeyman after another and the US electorate keeps falling for it. The quote “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” has obviously not been absorbed by the US electorate…aren’t we about a quarter century beyond “fool me twice” ?
Mr. Johnson appears to have made an embarrassing omission. The UK is usually pretty close to France in military expenditures, and it is unfathomable that the UK would not be in the top 10. Wikipedia has the UK just above France in the latest figures.
Other than that, a fantastic contribution!
Hi Big_Money, The quote you cite was made prior to Keynes arriving at his General Theory, which stated very generally that government should use deficit spending to mitigate the negative affects of the business cycle. So, governmental management of Fiscal Policy became known as Keynesianism, as opposed to Monetarism as proposed by Milton Friedman, et al. In the year Keynes died, 1948, Truman first used the boogyman–the USSR threat–to invoke a “War Scare” that was used to bailout the US’s airplane manufacturing industry, even though the general economic situation didn’t require any deficit spending by government. The “War Scare” also served to eliminate Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party presidential camnpaign. Thus was born the Military-Industrial-Congressional-University-Complex, as Eisenhower initially and correctly described our great internal enemy.
We are now at the end of the line. Our Imperial System is clearly eating itself, as this item says in so many words, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JA24Dj01.html
The “Stimulus Package” we so very much need involves reducing “defense” appropriations 95% as the only way to finance the decarbonizing of our economy. But with the inertia present in BAU, this will not happen until we are truely and perhaps hopelessly bankrupt.
In his last paragraph, the author prescribes reversing the 2001 and 2003 (”Bush”) tax cuts for the wealthy.
Do you believe a Republican government would do that?
Do you know this is one of the many reasons you need wall-to-wall Democrats in Washington?
Keynesian economics, as i understand it, is the policy of stimulating capitalism with government spending to put more money into the economy in an attempt to make up for the inability of capitalism to provide for everyone’s needs.
Military Keynesian is a perversion of this, but it worked out for American imperialism for fifty years.
No one talks like Chalmers Johnson and Ike Eisenhower anymore:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. […] Is there no other way the world may live? -Dwight David Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953.
Will America switch to a sustainable economy, with necessities provided for all? Or will she take everyone down with her?
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/22/6529/
If you didn’t read this article yet, I suggest you read it now. One unbelievable quote: “The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction”.
Say what?? How is using WMDs stopping the use of WMDS? We must destroy the world in order to save it? Well, if you can destroy villages, I guess you can destroy the world. But how sick is that? And why are they ruling us?
Much like Charles Darwin, who discovered immutable truths regarding of the origins and evolution of life, Karl Marx was a pioneering scientist. He guided humanity through the reasons capitalism was born, why it would thrive and dominate for a time, and how its inherent contradictions condemn it to death. Marx forecast capitalism, once dead and buried, would be replaced by a superior economic system. Under socialism the shots would no longer be called by a wealthy few but by all the productive people in society in a genuine democracy. For the sake of human survival, sharing rather than competition would be at the foundation of the new system.
History up to Marx’s day and time recorded the transition from feudalism to capitalism as a bloody mess. So Marx well knew that it was likely to be just so when capitalism was forced to make way for socialism. One thing he could not gauge was the scientific and technical advance capitalism would make before it reached its dying days.
So the problem humanity faces is that capitalism in its last throes, rotting internally, irrational and increasingly insane, is now armed with doomsday weapons and has amassed the technology to create the Orwellian state. The system infects culture and controls the mass media and education across a growing part of the world. It places its servants in seats of political and military power, and creates philosophy and myth to glorify its own existence. It is complete amoral. It has now evolved into a system that would not bat an eye before killing every single human being on the planet.
In the near term, capitalism will take increasing advantage of war, disaster, disease, terror, and slavery to feed itself. Wholesale destruction and regime change will be visited on the oil producing states like Iraq, Iran and Venezuela and other resource-rich areas. Left unchecked, eventually the United States, China, India and the European Union will fight wars for control of world markets and access to resources.
There is absolutely nothing to contradict Chalmers Johnson on the facts of where things stand today. There is absolutely nothing in what Chalmers Johnson says to contradict where Marx said things would ultimately get to. The only question left is will the dying economic system abandon all pretense to finance and trade. Will the ruling class play its last card and use its military might to scavenge the earth for resources to sustain their tiny group of men through at least their wretched lifetimes.
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” — Mario Savio, Berkeley Free Speech Movement
Ditto mountaineer !
Mr. Johnson has done America a great service by writing Blowback, The Sorrows Of Empire and Nemesis.
I spent part of last summer hiding from the heat in the basement reading all three. While a person might be aware of some of the general ideas in Johnson’s books, it is another step to have all the information presented by a seasoned scholar who has actually worked for the C.I.A.
The bankruptcy of our nation through insane levels of military support for American oil corporations seeking hegemony over Middle East and Central Asian resources is a topic that is simply off limits in the corporate media.
But this economic catastrophe is a strong argument for peaceful solutions. Even those who care little about the morality of aggression will pay attention if they understand that their pocket is being picked.
Our nation has been hijacked by war criminals from the Military Industrial Big Oil Media Complex !
The “peace movement” needs to come up with something better than “Support The Troops” and start to organize economic boycotts against the offending corporations. Etc.
This is what comes of empire building. The money is easy at first (Steal land from the Gauls or the Apaches, and presto instant capital), then you need to guard it, and unless things continue to expand indefinitely, the need for more resources bumps up against the fact that there aren’t any more.
From there, it’s Humpty-Dumpty time.
When the country is in financial crisis, the Republicans are quick to blame it on welfare (meaning taking care of poor people), government health care (meaning Medicare and Medicaid), and Social Security. They always omit the gorilla in the room which is defence spending (which will be 1 Tr this year). How convenient to omit this massive military welfare, dictator welfare (propping up and bribing dictators who accept our bases, or fly-overs, or keep oil flowing for us), and corporate welfare (subsidizing oil and gas and defense industries). The Republicans support more welfare than the world combined. They just won’t admit that this is what it is.
You can ‘Quo Bono’ (”follow the money”) reading this article and ‘think’ our Policies have been ruinous — and most-will.
However, none of these trillions ‘wasted’ since WW-II (in today’s-dollars, 35-trillion — and climbing-rapidly) actually ‘matter’. After all, the FedReserve just printed-it, a fiat-currency they jokingly print “Note” upon. [A “Note”, legally, isn’t even fiat-currency or an ‘IOU’ — it is, in fact, “meaningless”] The US has an abundance of scruff-trees still available and cheap to slurry-into making yet-more paper, and ink (in quantity) is still relatively-cheap (even though ‘imported’) — so the Fed could print another 35-trillion in a fortnight, and double our current “military expenditures”.
As THE World “Reserve Currency” (and the ‘Currency’ we eagerly War to insure it remains the ‘Oil/Energy-Currency’ choice), many-more trillions of our useless/valueless “Notes” are now in foreign-treasuries…never to be presented to our government/Treasury with any demand for ‘real wealth’ or ‘payment’ [and even if, say, China were ever to do such a thing, the USTreasury could laugh, and point to the word “Note” — suggesting that they go down the street and talk to the private-bank that printed those “Notes”].
Do you think Bush would have actually doubled that now-huge Deficit if we EVER intended to actually ‘honor’ it — with REAL currency/Wealth, instead of more-”Notes”?
Since before WW-II, all our ‘money’ was Monopoly-Money — ‘worth’ only what some idiot would trade for it (but ‘worthless’ if presented for payment/trade/demand from the ‘Issuer’). If you were that Issuer, you too could be Alfred E, Neuman and say: “What, me Worry?”
Since 1871, the USofA has been an incorporated-Entity in-Law (not a ‘government/country’)…one that could easily be Bankrupted and re-Instituted over and over, if need-be — freed from its Debts/Obligations. You, also, are a fictitious/Virtual ‘Corporation’ these banks and the Dept. of Commerce ‘owns’ and Trustee’s-for (if you think-otherwise, examine the fine-print that composes the ‘line’ you sign-upon on ‘your’ cheques/mortgages — but you’ll need a good magnifying-glass or a loupe!).
Our ‘money’ is issued by the FedReserve, a private-concern composed of several foreign-Banks (most of them controlled/owned by a single-family — the same family that controls/owns every country’s ‘Central-Bank’, with 4-or-5 exceptions like Libya/Cuba/N.Korea).
All that useless-paper bought the finest/most-powerful Military and Nuclear Arsenal the world has ever seen. ‘Who’, exactly, is capable of ‘demanding payment/value’ for our funny-Money? And ‘Who’ would want-to?
And ‘Why’, do you suppose, we sent plane-loads of crisp/new American hundred-dollar-bills to Iraq recently — and then threw ‘football’ packages of them around, and towards ‘contractors’ who didn’t do-anything and Iraqi’s willing to ‘hush’ (AND never even bothered to have anyone Sign for Anything, or count how many billions were so-wasted)?
‘Cash’ is Trash.
One small thing that strikes me about our vocabulary of the last half century is the use of the word ‘defence’.
Before the early 1940s we all had Ministers of War, or Secretaries of War…but after WWII, we seemed to lose any ‘War’ bigshots, and acquired Ministers of Defence, and Secretaries of Defence. Production of weapons (pretty well of which have been meant for, and have used for attacking others) is now called ‘defence spending,’ and ‘defence production.’ We have a ‘defence’ budget…but it is being used to fund attacking people on the other side of the globe; it is used to fund military bases in all kinds of other peoples communities.
The word used now,’security,’ seems to have the same feel as ‘defence.’
Maybe if we were to call it what it is, then we could think more clearly about it.
(I wonder, do the expenditures include what is used to fund various secret police organizations?)
Defense workers have the last decently-paid industrial jobs in the US. What happens when we throw them out of work?
I live in a county where half the population works at “the base” or in a business that sells something to the military. They’ve been re-electing our bobble-head Republican Congressman to office for last TWENTY YEARS because he “kept the jobs at the base” during each round of cutbacks.
Just how am I suppose to convince my neighbors to vote for a Democrat who wants to wean the economy away from defense spending?
We need to cut off funding to the base gradually, and crank up investment in better-paying civilian jobs at the same time. Perhaps ordering the Pentagon to convert all stateside installations to run on renewable energy would be a good start.
The current North American republic called the “United States” and it’s economic system needs to be ended - put out of it’s misery - and relegated to the pages of history. It must then be an example to be carefully taught to all the worlds children for perpetuity.
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Note - _please_ don’t confuse a republic or a regime with a people (as the Ahmadinejad detractors do) wiping a republic off a map does not mean killing anyone - except perhaps, if they resist, a few so-called-leaders at the top.
We’re in big trouble. Congress is full of Democratic sellouts, and as I read on another post, only McCain would even attempt to slow down the MIC juggernaut. Those who think more Democrats are the solution don’t understand what’s going on. Democrats are part of the problem. More Democrats are still part of the problem.
I wasn’t fully aware of the numbers, although I had heard that we spend more on “defense” than the rest of the world, but ALL of it combined? And I know even more has been left out. I’ve read that the Defense Dept has gotten it’s hands on Education Dept money, and who knows what else?
There are many stories today about our fiscal disaster on CD, and they add up to a portrait of bedlam. Takes me back to Robin Williams’ phrase (more or less) “It’s like being on a psychotic horse racing toward a burning stable”. Of course, in our case, we’re strapped to the horse.
kathyodat
jjohnjj
When a military has a big chunk of the common wealth coming its way, and is a powerful part of a nation, it is very difficult to change that situation. Militaries have a tendency to carry out coups when their privileged positions are threatened.
And, as you suggest, they have a lot of backers on civvie street…especially in a militaristic society.
reason number umteen hundred and ninety twelve why I don’t regret moving to Europe.
Yes to mountaineer and JCondrad!
Let me add my two cents to what they have already said so well.
Chalmers Johnson’s trilogy (Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis) is “must” reading for anyone who even dimly senses that the empire of U.S. military bases and their role in the world are one of the central problems of our time and one of the main threats to the continuation of life on Earth.
Johnson cooly and collectedly exposes the sheer nastiness and the extremely dangerous character (to all earthlings, including U.S. citizens) of the U.S. military-industrial-Congressional complex, as few have done or even are able to do.
The speficity of the course of his life and career (an ex-cold warrior, a military man, an academic steeped in political science and political sociology, an Asia specialist, etc.) make him keenly and unusually able to see past and through the massive ideological constructions behind which the military-industrial-Congressional complex conceals its real objectives. Johnson tears down the facade of lies, disinformation, obfuscation, and secrecy which the Empire secretes on a daily basis through the corporate media, its think tanks, and its numerous intellectual mouthpieces (unversity professors, lawyers, journalists, etc).
The Empire can only be exposed and its machinations laid bare to the light of day through historical and conceptual analysis, and this can be only be done discursively: hence the books and the articles. No getting around that. The ideological vestments must be torn away through the mediated work of discourse.
GREENER THAN THOU, MALCOLM MARTIN, IWHUNT: Great postings.
JJJOHNJJ: You raise a significant point. The very fact the military-industrial complex has woven its tentacles into communities as “work projects” makes it all the more difficult to deconstruct.
This article substantiates the point I’ve made in many CD venues, that MARS, god of war, is what this nation truly worship. I wonder if this data was actually read in all those mega-churches that support Bush, while a visual showing of broken bodies (children among them) aired in the background, if any of them could remotely connect the name of JESUS with their voting for this nemesis?
Maybe Bush is the final cancer that proves so arrogant in its hubris as to draw the DISEASE of American fiscal priorities to the surface, so that perhaps healing might begin?
RUSS: I totally agree with you about the role of karma for all this investment in death and willful destruction of a shared planet, an intended GARDEN of Eden (rather than land mine field of dismemberment)… but the prison numbers are hardly an apt proof of this? LOTS of people in prison are guilty of what, smoking the same joints most of us in this forum have smoked from time to time? A better image of that karma erupting on a small scale would be the California fires or the kids whose parents work in defense, being the ones who drew weapons on their classmates.
Actually the real karma is the world watching as the big giant falls on its own sword. What I mean by that is the gross over-expenditure of this focus on mars/death/militarism is exactly what is causing the nation’s financial ruin. Mars alone cannot make or sustain life. An economy focused on killing can produce nothing of substance; as now the collapse of so much of our nation’s infrastructure, a growing debacle that NADER pointed out at least 7 years ago, adds to a probable collapse of the glory days of “being # 1.” So much for “force first.” It does show by example the ultimate impotence of this basis for proving (or maintaining) the illusion of strength. As the world’s enlightened peace makers have sought to teach, real strength comes from unity, respect for human rights, integrity, decency, and balance… this bullying bull shit perhaps will run its course in the debacle that is America today, a giant warrior that looks about for its next target, when its own home is under seige.
anybody who’s ever played “Age of Empires” or other strategy-based game, KNOW that these people have not the slightest clue about what it takes to run a govt. all they know is that cash goes into the pocket-goes into the bank.
seriously. it’s the level of intelligence that is a direct result of a shrinking gene pool.
SIOUXROSE Thank you, well said.
When Raygun “overspent” and caused the collapse of our justification for the war machine, the USSR, there was a hollow ring and then silence.
It was all illusionary before, during, and after that event - but little was noticed of the change in the military band’s tune:
¿ Guess what ?
When one takes the $ off of $PEND,
Eliminate the Federal Reserve and publicly execute all of its traitorous owners, and their families. Seize all of their assets to pay off the debt and start fixing American infrastructure.
Chalmers Johnson is one of my favorite authors. I’ve read his “Sorrows of Empire” and “Nemesis.” Both books, in my opinion, are “must reads.”
Having said that, however, I’m afraid even Chalmers has missed the boat with his “military Keynesianism.” To me, calling the explosion of defense spending an “ideology” intended to build the American economy badly fails to understand the motivations of the corporate state. Is the goal of the corporate rulers to create more jobs via public-sector spending? I think, since Reagan’s firing of the air traffic controllers, a very different “ideology” is at work (no pun intended) here.
When we look at the long-term suffering and disempowerment of American workers, arguing that the goal of massive defense spending is to work towards full employment is just not credible. America’s ruling class has sought to disembowel workers’ unions. It has exported our manufacturing sector. It has even “globalized” many skilled, white-collar jobs. Perhaps at its inception, the intent of BIG DEFENSE was some form of Keynesian ideology; today’s description would be better labeled as “treasonous greed.”
The greatest tragedy is that the dangers posed by uncontrolled defense spending are not even being discussed by the “leading” presidential candidates. This goes for the so called “leading” Democrats every bit as much as the Republicans. Are we hearing a call for massive cuts in the defense budget from Obama or Hillary or even Edwards? Have any of them called for shutting down America’s more than 730 foreign military bases? Do they cite the linkage between massive defense industry lobbying and our national policies and budgets? Have they all voted “YES” on the out-of-control defense spending bills?
The danger we face will NOT be addressed by either of the two major parties until it is far too late. While there are differences between the two major parties, both are fiddling while Rome burns. In the end, the differences will mean very little and the damage they’ve both caused will be very great. In spite of the very obvious threat overspending on defense poses to the nation, both parties and their “leading” candidates remain entrenched in the “macho game” for political reasons and in the “greed game” to serve those who fund their campaigns. While they’re busy convincing us how tough they are on defense, they’re destroying the country. As some have so astutely observed, the lesser of the evils is still evil.
You cannot spend as much as the world combined on unproductive military machines and expect to do well, unless the machines produce. Where is the oil? Where is the influence? Where are the new very favorable contracts for american companies? What ever happened to exploitation? Don’t we know how to do that anymore? What’s the army for then? When a thief can no longer sustain himself through crime, he has to go out and get a job. Unless this is fixed soon, America will have to do just that. America will have to make products people want at prices they are willing to pay. This will require a depreciation of the dollar and lowered standard of living for all americans. This is not because of a sudden screwup, it is the inevitable outcome of having lived a criminal life, running into debt, getting too old to go on, and having saved nothing for a rainy day.
We were warned by Ike
We were warned about Vietnam but went on anyway.
We were warned about the wasteful arms race but we pushed harder.
We were warned by Jimmy Carter so we threw him out
We were warned about reaganomics but we voted overwhelmingly for it.
We were warned about Iraq and see what that gave us….
We have been warned repeatedly about debt, but we will accept that rebate won’t we?
If every american were to refuse to accept the rebate, the administration would interpret it as a vote to bomb Iran.
karlof, greener, welsh, thanks much for connecting them dots, particularily that historical snapshot of 1948. I’ve read that the MIC is by now the source of 1/3 of the employment and 1/2 of the university research in the US. That is some stimulus! Imagine the cycles that could have gone on without that!
Part of the entrenchment seems to me to be that there’s someone in every extended family dependant on their paychecks from the MIC. They tend to be ample paychecks. It skews the debate in almost any family away from bluntness. Too many people seem to reluctantly acknowledge that if they oppose war and succeed, it could “harm” them or their loved ones. That’s an ugly mess.
UG - LY.
The Supreme Crime
Why is it were walkin in time
to the beat of the predator’s bottom line?
From a republic to an empire spinning it’s spine
to the high society dream looking mighty fine
We do shock and awe as we dine
on pork, apple pie and wine
while the media spin
keeps us from looking within
The supreme International crime
Hey buddy it’s all on your dime
Essentially, the US armed services are paid to make a product/provide a service that no one is willing to buy. This, in effect, increases demand for stuff without increasing the supply of anything. How can that NOT be a receipe for inflation?
“If ya got it, flaunt it”. ~Diamond Jim Brady~
If ya don’t got it, borrow it. ~Kem Patrick~
BIG MONEY — Yes (the family), all the while the big bloody T-MIC-Rex scrambles “unnoticed” in the center of the family room, while eating live babies (but not white ones).
The direct financial damage of every minute of 6 decades of this, is somehow not seen? Along with the deaths of 100s of millions, and suffering of nearly all of the Earth’s population?
I guess I have a strong bias about this bloody mess having ALL the tickets to ride the BIG MIC-Gravy train and never having gotten on. But I’ve eyed them across the river of blood, and wondered if I could ever live with myself “over there”.
Well, that was while I was employed, and today the reverse situation places me into the beast’s brink and finding out how to ignore the T-rex’s choice of non-vegetarian meals.
¿ How can we choose our family’s (and self) survival, while risking the fall of what is left of democracy and the planet ? I do not know yet, but may find out soon.
Banker one to banker two: “I see that your have $187 billion in assets”.
Banker two: “Well, on paper we do.”
Banker one: ” We only have $89 billion in paper assets. How much actual cash do you have in reserve if I may be so bold to ask.” ?
Banker two: “Actual cash”? “Uhhhh, I dunno, we never bother to check that”.
Bamker one: “That’s how we oprerate too.”
What if this is EXACTLY what the Richfilth set out to accomplish - gut the country, off-shore the money (in any currency but $$), and piss on everyone from a great height. If their corporations refuse to take the Oath of Allegiance to the US, would the Richfilth who own them have ANY loyalty to the US, or only to their wealth? Just ask Prescott Bush.
Would it change anything for you if it were deliberate? Not just a class war on us to create their corporate feudalism - but the actual destruction of the Republic - for profit. Just asking.
Pieces of 8.
The party is over. But we can’t leave. Because the party was at our house. The food has been eaten. The wine has been consumed. There is a big mess to clean up. let’s call the caterer. And order some more food and drink. Surely someone else will clean up the mess for us.
The sad truth is that the problem will not be fixed. We have corporate media, and Americans are willfully ignorant. Willfully. For Christ sake, they voted W in again in 04, how much dumber can you be?
Yes the MIC is bankrupting this country, is this news to anyone paying attention? the problem is that no one is, and MSM is worthless except to sell soap.
Sad, but I am now told that the bush antidote is Obama and Hillary? Both bough and paid for by MIC and MSM, sorry, but it is too late. And AMericans get what they deserve because they keep voting for it.
It is hard not to feel sorry for a wounded vet that gets poor medical care. But, if he, in fact, voted for W did he not create this problem? Are there not consequences to our votes? If you vote from ignorance, than you get what you deserve.
I dare say that there is no greater act of willful ignorance than a military person voting for W. He gladly uses you as a pawn, and could not care less if you are wounded, killed or have inadequate health care when you return.
jimmydore said: “It is hard not to feel sorry for a wounded vet that gets poor medical care. But, if he, in fact, voted for W did he not create this problem? Are there not consequences to our votes?”
No, not personal ones. Soldiers wounded in battle repeatedly mention the same thing, that the thing that kept them at duty was not Bush, or country, but the soldier standing next to them. That kind of visceral choice is not offered to many of us, thank God, but to those who’ve had to make it, and stayed at their duty, I say they deserve good treatment when they get home. Our presence in Iraq is the fault of the American citizen, not its soldiers. God forbid we should ever be placed in that position, however we felt about it as citizens.
Chalmers Johnson is what Noam Chomsky could have been if he just had a sense of humor and personality. As usual Chalmers does a great job and writes with wit, precision, and interdisciplinary rigor.
The problem is that the tribute that is extracted from our military adventures abroad goes into the pockets of corporations who keep the profits overseas to avoid paying taxes on it. Much of our wealth is sitting in the Cayman Islands and used in the great casino of derivatives trading and is also hiding profits from non-military ventures and import/export trading.
The other problem is that we borrow our money from bankers and other countries since we have a privately owned central bank when all we have to do is have the government issue it debt free, greenbacks style, which would eliminate the income tax.
People talk about Weimer hyperinflation that resulted in Gernamny in the 20’s because the bank printed too much money. The Reichsbank was a private bank overseen by government appointed officials like the Fed is. Men of integrity like Sir Bubbles Greenspan. Also, there were speculative traders that were shorting the mark, which was made possible by the debt bubble created by the Reichsbank.
When Hitler came to power, the situation was under some control inflationwise as a result of strict government regulation, something that does not exist today in the US, but growth was not strong. He was able to build up his military machine by issuing Feder money, which were Greenbacks issued by government, strengthening the “real” economy and not the financial oz economy that is our own, and this was not inflationary.
The solution to the problem is there. But for whatever reason (think one world government), they may want it to blow it up.
Thank you, ubrew. How many Americans were all for this invasion when they thought we were winning? And how many Americans care enough about our wounded vets to contact their Congressperson and demand they be taken care of?
kathyodat
jimmydore,
yes, some people actually voted for Bush on purpose, but the last two presidential elections were clearly fraudulent.
besides that, the US was only a democracy for a short while in its infancy. The acts of its government are only loosely related to the will of its people.
Having said that, yes there is an utterly astounding amount of ignorance in this country and I can’t wait to find a more enlightened country to inhabit.
Good Luck in your Migration greensolutions,
I left a few years ago, since I was disgusted with the state of this corporate monopoly society and of the horrible pollution cesspools we live in every day. We ate Genetically Modified Frankenfoods, which have been found to cause chromosome damage in mice, we trudged around breathing cancerous corporate air freshener blended into everything, and are constantly abused in a police state spouting mercury choked coal smokestacks everywhere you turn; now it’s going to be nuke plants in every state!
No one’s privacy is sacred anymore, no one’s free speech is allowed anymore (except in caged “free speech” zones) and not if it offends the department of Fatherland Security. No one can get anything but corporate spun news unless it’s on the internet.
When are we going to start burning books I wonder?
When are we going to require papers to travel (I forgot, we require I.D. to get on planes now.)
When are we going to start the trains to the 800 federal fema prisons (each complete with incinerators)?
.
Look on the bright side. If you cant manufacture machine tools anymore, the country will finally have to go metric.
The Saudi’s hold the key to the Dollars survival. When they choose to accept Euro’s instead of Dollars for oil the American Economy collapses. Our purpose fighting in the Middle East appears to be to protect the interests of the Saudi’s and by extension those of the American economic elites. Can we really withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan under these conditions without Saudi approval? Maybe the Saudi’s told Pelosi to leave Bush alone. We seem to be living in a house of Doom, the only question remaining is when it will fall. This is not idle talk. Today we are dancing to a different tune.
Since it appears to be impossible to elect even one Senator or Congressman who is interested in this subject, how are we ever going to improve this situation? Give Joe Congress from Keokuk a few million in pork, and that’s all he wants to know about misspent taxpayer dollars.
- it’s not actually the ‘debt crisis’ that is the problem - it’s that almost nobody seems to understand that the whole thing is a huge scame, based on allowing private individuals to create the money supply for a nation and charging ’service’ charges or ‘interest’ for that privilege. So they create a thousand dollars (for example) - but you have to pay them back that thousand plus another hundred - and where is that hundred coming from? Hmmmmm.
Deal with that question honestly and correctly, and you will have the basis of freeing your country. There is more about this whole thing in a book called They’re Building a Box - and You’re In It - http://www.rudemacedon.ca/dlp/box/box-intro.html - it’s a blue pill not a magic pill, but knowledge is always the first step to freedom …..
“Eliminate the Federal Reserve and publicly execute all of its traitorous owners, and their families. Seize all of their assets…”
That not-only is treasonous/terroristic to say, but impossible to acheive without that same Military doing it for-you, elsewhere.
“…we have a privately owned central bank when all we have to do is have the government issue it debt free, greenbacks style…”
We tried that and ‘more than once’, but Gore’s new-best-friend’s [Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild, the ‘environmentalist’ pro-Nuke/pro-Carbon-Tax Brit] Family and cohorts had Britain invade/abuse US in 1776 [Mayer profited from the Hessians], again in 1812 [his namesake for that-one and Nappy’s downfall, as well as Hamilton/Adams-treachery], again (post-Jackson) with our ‘Civil-War’, again by assassinating Lincoln, and again and finally by blackmailing Wilson in 1913 [and somewhat-later, for US entry into the ‘Balfour-War-I’, after the sacrifice of the Lusitania].
These Banker-fingerprints are all-over the Tea-Party, Appomattox, the 14th-Amendment, the Maine and Philippines, two-other Presidential-assassinations (if not three-and-a-half), all Depressions, Jekyll-Island, the Reichstag-fire, Pearl-Harbor-I, Balfour-War-II and subsequent sacrifice/Founding, the earlier French/Russian&now-Islamic-’revolutions’, China, Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Columbia, Argentina, Lebanon (more-than-once, and yet-to-come), even Panama/Grenada…and you well-know our History since Carter in Afghanistan, Reagan in CA/ME, Bush after Russia ‘quit’, and all since Pearl-Harbor-II and this ridiculous ‘GWofT’?
We ‘have’ nothing, and can ‘do’ nothing.
Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed »
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — ML King
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer had as a guest an author of an article in the current Atlantic Monthly about the debt we owe to China. It works out to several thousand dollars per American and is growing daily. According to him, it’s advantageous for both parties to continue this state of relationship albeit a highly unstable equilibrium. Personally, I think it’s insane for our fearless leaders to stake everything on unstable equilibriums and security systems that must be flawless to keep the “bad guys” from destroying us. Isn’t the philosophy employed by the U.S. government another example of engineering an unstable political equilibrium among Shiites, Sunnis, Baathists, et. al. ? No competent professional, doctors, engineeres, therapists would work on that basis? Why do we think it’ll work on a grand scale? The hubris of western civilized man.
The system doesn’t work. It has been tinkered with like an old car to keep it running, with spit and promises.
It didn’t work before 1913. That is why they turned the money supply over to the Federal Reserve. It still doesn’t work.
The military industrial complex was funded to make the system work. It still doesn’t work.
But real people work in these structures. Real people; as pointed out; who make good money, unlike the rest of us. And they want to keep it going. And it doesn’t matter if it’s temporary. Just like the rest of us, they’ll take what they can get. Just like the folks who bought homes they couldn’t afford. Hey, they got to live better than they had before for 2 or 3 years. That’s how the people on top are.
So, the very rich will borrow and steal to keep their sweet lives going, and those who work in the war industry will vote to keep their blood jobs going. That’s how real people work when the system is set up to profit from stealing and killing.
Somebody told Nancy to leave Bush alone. She ran on a housecleaning platform. That disappeared in a big hurry. I read that his eavesdropping on House members paid off. And she does have a look of panic about her. Conyers also acts a bit on the hysterical side. Will we ever know the truth? Maybe not in my lifetime considering how long it’s taken for the truth to come out about JFK.
kathyodat
Malcolm Martin. Well said. Every word, the truth. Thank you. Too bad the American masses are always the last to know….
So what’s safe for the individual now? Gold? I’m into 100% gov bonds in my little 401K because I’ve lost faith in the stock market since half the mortgage debt has not even come home to roost yet, and most of it is on dishonest “off-book” financial “vehicles” just like the infamous round-robin Raptors at Enron. This means lots of banks may fail in the coming years since nobody knows where all that bad debt is hiding. The risk of a world-wide depression is very real. This is why, imho, the powers that be are pushing for very profitable world war.
Only a fool holds US dollars right now or keeps a high balance in savings. But many employer plans won’t let you buy gold. They have you boxed into either cash (which has lost over 40% of it’s value in the last 12 months) or flakey funds that don’t really divulge how much exposure you’re into.
I know darn little about finance. Somebody wanna tell me how inflation-protection bonds are going to fare when Black Monday hits? I mean, unlike corporate bonds, the government can just keep issuing new ones right? Government Bonds only become worthless when China starts dumping them, right?
Anybody have an opinion?
It’s absolutely mind boggling of how many different things are our __ “GREATEST”__ threat.
It was DU one month. That threat died. The next month it’s the acidity of our oceans’. __ Another dead issue. Then it’s global warming, burning coal and use of atomic power plants, deforestation and loss of topsoil,__ those are still “sort” of an issue, as is the release of the methange gas in the Arctic.
The big ice melt and that eight hundred mile long crack in the ice in Anarctica was a most serious issue for two whole days, it must have gotten cold there again. Now it’s the pending recession and posible depression. __
What happened to Bush declaring martial law, Blackwater soldiers and Fema prisons? Haven’t heard anyone mention those, or the potential atomic war in Iran recently, as our GREATEST threat. Lets not forget the Arctic’s polar bears. Oh, never mind that one, that one wasn’t one of our “greatest” threats.
Now of course, Kucinich has dropped out of the presidential race, says he isn’t endorsing anyone and Hillary and Obama are still slinging shit. That may turn out to be our most “delerious” threat, which is not as bad as “greatest”.
Of course Hillary has a relief pitcher, the one time impeached guy, who insured oral sex was an acceptable subject. No wonder he’s still very popular. Sex is 70% imagination, and perhaps many imagine him in action. NO “greatest” threat there though.
Yep, if we don’t have somethhing threating us, wait a day and read the news. The next GREATEST threat is right around the corner, Dougwagener or one of his loyal flock may show up here.
Or worse KEM, Mark Abrams.
(naaw, we’d have to mention GMO food is deadly for him to show up on this thread.)
Damn! Now look what you made me do!
Hi Pacplayer, I have an opinion. (Lots of em)
If I had the money, I’d take it all out of the banks and have a Chinese junk built, about a 120 footer. Those actually are excellent boats, or the huge ones were magnificent ships. I’d have ultra deluxe cabins in it for me and my crew.
I’d stock that baby with plenty of food, fishing gear and nets,two water purification systems, carpenter tools, have sea charts and learn how to navigate without the use of satelite global positioning. I’d have seeds of every type of tropical plant and head out to sea and look for an uninhabitied island that had terra ferma, that was more than 600 feet above sea level.
There I’d build a nice big hut for me and my crew. All gals of course. I’d want a good Belgium made 20mm anti-tank rifle and some 12 gage street sweeper shotguns for home protection. Oh, and some snake hooks too. Gotta beware of those snakes.
Hey Pac, scroll up and read that Sheppard Bliss article, lots scarier than this one about the economy.
First a little levity : http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30472
Although I agree with the Marxian analysis - the undeniable evidence of humanity being able to suffer to accept serfdom, slavery, monarchy and numb their mind to equality, a cooperative society etc only means that we are nowhere near the abyss that Marx predicted nor will there be for a few centuries to any true movement that will obviate or destroy capitalism. It is at best a an infant in terms of how long monarchies stood or any other societal form of transaction. As erudite, comprehensive and precise as Marx’s analysis was of the capitalist system - he left nothing similar in scope for what would/should follow after.
Anyway - I will stick to the present. Crisis as Marx pointed out are an integral part of the capitalist system. Ultimately all sophisticated capitalism becomes is and has been a covert reductionism to primitive premise of resource allocation and or control. Colonialism was the first expression of this - because despite all ‘invention’ of engines, guns, banking and its various instruments- ultimately the truth that the medium of exchange is not a resource always surfaces- and can only be suppressed by the perception and or reality of controlling resources.
Hitler’s labor certificates, greenback’s gold or silver can only go so far- because despite the medium one chooses - it is still symbolic in value. The value of an amazon or fruited plains or endless orchards or oil, timber etc dwarf any ‘medium’ of exchange. So at some point - wars are a necessity and controlled war by a cabal of countries (Europe) to dominant resources can aptly be called Colonialism (Lenin is brilliantly succinct on this in his Imperialism).
The United States has accepted the realization that it was bankrupt at the highest level is 1997 (when serious debate told it seriously it was already to late) since at the time the national debt was already 5 trillion dollars- this is not including future liabilities like pensions, social security, Medicare etc). The seminal event to mark this recognition was the failure to pass the balanced budget bill/amendment. (http://www.limitedgovernment.org/publications/pubs/briefs/pdfs/brf4-7.pdf)
Since that time -we have had two wars in Iraq-the first to primarily secure bases in the richest oil countries of the world primarily Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE (hence Centcom). The euphoria of technology averted the plan for a decade as there was a false hope nurtured that operating system, networks, chips etc would give the US reprieve -but we all know that this was an illusion that magnified an oasis of respite into an ocean of projected income.
When the realization was made by central bankers that the debt they hold is actually untenable for even the ‘richest’ countries in the world- there was the looming specter that trillions of dollars/euros /francs /deutchemarks of ‘debt’ would be worthless. However- there was a vine to cling to and hopefully pull oneself up from the abyss. Here Mexico and Canada was added to the list of countries ‘incorporated in to the hegemony of oil - via V. Fox and a fraudulent election of Calderon over Obrador) and support for ‘closer’ ties with Canada.
That vine was the dollar hegemony on oil. A second war was enacted with desperate speed and no concern for truth. This second war had bought the US and its European allies together in concert for the sole purpose of propping up currencies that have no values as far into the future as possible. It has forced the rest of the world to continue its dependence on the use of a handful of currencies as a medium of exchange. The short term result is control of 70 percent of the worlds oil, to keep in abeyance the trillions of dollars of fiat currency denominated in dollars, pounds, euros, etc in Asian/Latin American and African countries by increasing precipitously the value of oil.
For example - China had reserves of close to 800 billion dollars - they would require say 7,000 barrels a day - at $30/barrel thats $76,650,000- leaving a lot of excess currency to potentially flow back to the west and causing MASSIVE inflation. However - if it is now 255,500,000 - quite a difference- and all of a sudden the 800 billion dollar surplus is reduced dramatically!!
In addition - what people forget is that although the US may be a net importer of oil: we are the third largest producer of oil. It is not an accident that there are plans to stay in Iraq indefinitely - nor is accidental that there is increased and desperate funneling of resources in to the military and an increasing pace. With out this military might - to maintain oil hegemony the damage to the western world would be beyond any apocalypse imagined.
‘Thud”
Me tu, _____THUDDDDDDDDD!!!!! Owwwwwwwwwww!
~ IYAMWUTIAM~ YUIZWATYUIZ.
lol- more like ITIZWUTITIZ
Sorry for the off topic comment but -
It’s official, Kucinich is dropping out of the race! He says that he is not endorsing anyone, but he needs to endorse Edwards, and he needs to do it NOW, while it can still make a difference!
If you were a Kucinich supporter, tell him to endorse Edwards NOW!
EDWARDS ‘08
KEM, I’ll read it right now. We just had a power outage so I was cut off. For a second I thought it was the thought police, but when I checked outside no black helicopters or republicans in raincoats ….. Whew!
Your idea is grrrrrrreeeaaatt!
Problem is, I’m so darn broke I can’t even afford a canoe right now. And you gotta go sails from now on. A boat like that would cost at least a grand to fill up the tanks. Either that or turn your gorgeous crew into neocon galley slaves: “ROW, ROW, ROW….”
Actually, once we hit “Waterworld” it’s going to be like that anyway…. might as well start practicing!
RE: expatincebu January 23rd, 2008 7:20 pm
“Eliminate the Federal Reserve and publicly execute all of its traitorous owners, and their families. Seize all of their assets to pay off the debt and start fixing American infrastructure.”
Thanks, ex, you said a mouthful there. With a 9 trillion national debt, and the FED printing/creating (actually they buy the printed notes from the Treasury/Mint)money in amount now secret, we don’t really know how much these sleazebag private bankers are soaking us for. Estimates in the $200-400 billion a year range are not out of the question. The MIC is also soaking us for about $500 billion a year (it could likely be trimmed that much without hurting our excessive military capability or the civilian economies that depend on it). To add further insult to injury, most of the $100 billion in tax cuts Bush & the idiot Republicans keep socking to us (in the middle of a war no less) goes to the people who need it least, or not at all.
So there we have it, $200-400 billion PER YEAR from climbing out from under the odious weight of the FED usury, $500 billion PER YEAR by making the military fiscally accountable, and around $100 billion PER YEAR by taking back from the wealthy what they have stolen from the majority of our citizens since the failed ‘voodoo econmics’ policies ushered in under the warmongering misguided basket case known as Reagan. That’s $.8 to 1.2 TRILLION EACH YEAR, let me repeat EACH YEAR that Americans would have as a REAL tax cut, instead of this fantasy the Republicans were talking about in the debate. In ten years that’s almost (or over) TEN TRILLION DOLLARS, that could be spent on worthy needs instead of foolishly wasted.
If we had just BOUGHT oil from countries in the middle east, instead of trying to STEAL it, and had looked at cleaning up our own messy backyard, instead of sticking our spoiled noses in everyone else’s business, the whole world would be better off. This doesn’t go along with the PNAC, NWO, AIPAC, Zionist, Skull & Bones, Carlyle Group, Rothschilds,CFR, plan to reduce world population to about 500,000,000, though, does it? Kissinger stated it explicitly in 1973, when he said in the National Security Council that America’s highest priority should be to reduce world population by 2 BILLION people, especially in the Middle East because there were vital resources there America needed (meaning oil not sand).
expatincebu, the problem is not what needs to be done, but how to go about accomplishing the necessary task. Behind me, on the TV, Mayor Ghoul is saying we need to increase the size of the military. Isn’t repeating failed behavior and expecting different results the classic definition of insanity? I shudder to think McNut, Mutt, Ghoul, or Huckleberry Hound might sit in the Oval Office next. As long as they are on the side of the desk nearest the door, with white coated attendants on either side grasping their arms, I might be able to live with it. What a bunch of losers, but if they steal their way in we are the REAL losers.
Yes Paul, doing away with the Fed would go a long way toward solving our economic woes. No more appointed hacks like Greenspan and Bernanke, to act as the technical wizard, reading the tea leaves, checking economic wind direction, speed, temperature and relative humidity, before making a decision that is ALWAYS in the best interest of the markets and big money.
Thanks, MikeBinSC,
In case you haven’t seen this link, and for others who might like to read a history of how the FED got rammed down our collective throats:
http://iamthewitness.com/doc/RothschildsTimeline-filer/frame.htm
WARNING!!! To completely read this timeline of dirty deeds done very expensively for a couple centuries now it will take a couple hours (and you might want to have a barf bag handy).
Paul,
That’s a pretty shocking website.
And I’m not easily shocked.
I’m going to have to go have a drink after that…..
opps, wrong posting