Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Embrace the Dollar's Downfall
Banks might suffer if China stopped buying US debt, but the US economy as a whole would be much better off
The basic logic is simple. China's central bank has been buying up huge amounts of dollar-based assets for the last decade. Their purchases include short- and long-term government debt, mortgage-backed securities and, to a lesser extent, private assets.
The Chinese central bank's purchases have two effects. First, they help to keep interest rates low. This supports economic growth by keeping down the interest rates on mortgages, car loans and other borrowing that boosts demand.
The other effect of China's purchase of dollar-based assets is that it keeps down the value of its currency against the dollar. This is the famed currency "manipulation", that draws frequent complaints from politicians. Of course, it is not exactly manipulation. China has an explicit policy of keeping down the value of its currency against the dollar. It is not buying up hundreds of billions of dollars of US assets in the dark of night. It does it in broad daylight in order to keep its currency at the targeted rate.
Suppose China stopped buying up US government debt. Interest rates in the US would rise, which would have some negative impact on growth. Of course, the Fed could try to offset this rise in rates by simply buying more debt itself. It has already been buying debt, and it could simply buy enough to replace the lost demand from China. This would leave interest rates largely unchanged.
Suppose that the Fed doesn't intervene and lets interest rates rise. This will have some negative impact on growth, but there will also be a very positive side from China's decision to stop buying dollars. The dollar would fall in value against China's currency. This would make Chinese goods more expensive in the United States, leading US consumers to purchases fewer imports from China and more domestically produced goods.
A lower-valued dollar would also make our exports cheaper in China. That would allow us to export more to China.
The net effect would be an improvement in our trade balance, bringing back some of the 5.5 million jobs that we've lost in manufacturing over the last decade. In fact, since nearly all economists agree that the current trade deficit can't persist for long, China would be helping the country bring about a necessary adjustment if it stopped buying up dollars.
Even the rise in interest rates would have a positive effect since it would allow for the completion of the deflation of the housing bubble, with house prices finally settling back to their trend levels. This drop in house prices will be a painful adjustment, but there is no way to avoid it. Bubbles cannot be sustained indefinitely, and we are better off allowing the housing market to return to normal so we can get back to a path of sustainable growth.
While decision of the Chinese to stop buying dollars might be good for the economy, it is likely to be disastrous for Citigroup and the rest of the basket-case banks. If interest rates rose, then the value of the government bonds the banks hold would plummet. If the interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds goes from the current 3.5% to a still low 4.5%, then the banks will have lost 8% on their holdings. At a 5.5% interest rate, a rate that would still be far below the average for the 1990s, the loss would be 15%. Citi and the other basket cases could not endure these losses in their current financial state.
This could be why we see shrill pronouncements from the likes of Washington Post columnists and other "experts" who couldn't see an $8tn housing bubble that we need the Chinese government to keep buying up our debt. We absolutely do not need the Chinese government to keep buying US debt and would almost certainly be better off if it stopped tomorrow. Citigroup and the other big banks do need the Chinese government to keep the money flowing if they are to have a chance of getting back on their feet. And, we know where the sympathies of the Washington Post's editors and other "experts" lie.
- Posted in
96 Comments so far
Show AllThere is such a huge steaming pile of bs out there concerning economics. It is so wonderful for a breath of fresh air, like this article, from someone who has a reasonable degree of knowledge and clarity.
These two sites are great for non-Chicago style economics, I visit them daily.
http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/
http://www.newdeal20.org/
Economics 'textbooks' belong in the Sci-fi and Fantasy section of bookstores and libraries.
In fact, some sci-fi and fantasy books have better economic theories...
So true. And the reason is that sci-fi and fantasy writers are intelligent people with a genuine interest in finding solutions which benefit all of society rather than a select elite of haughty and arrogant crooks (i.e. Bernake, Geithner, Blankfein, Paulson, etc.).
"Economics 'textbooks' belong in the Sci-fi and Fantasy section of bookstores and libraries."
right up there with the 911 Commission Report.
Too bad a falling dollar brings about rising oil prices, unless that too is part of the plan. Couple that cost of living increase with falling wages and workers get hit harder, of course that too is part of the plan. And just what will rising fuel costs do to small farmers? Are not many of them facing market prices for their crops which are below the cost of production? All part of the plan to cripple the economy. Heckuva job...
This collapse has been engineered ever since it was realized by the Corporate Powers That Be that the single resource driving the world economy was starting to get scarcer and more difficult to extract.
The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan (and soon Iran) are the last grasp to control that resource.
But there isn't enough for everybody. So there has to be a 'population correction'. And mass starvation, a 'convenient' pandemic with mandatory inoculation with live virus vaccine, and deaths due to wars, riots and civil unrest fit the bill nicely.
Why do you think the Pittsburgh Police were so blatant in their use of force against unarmed and unresisting protesters? Why do you think Obama was selected by the Corporate masters to be the face of government to stage manage this collapse?
The more this spirals down, the tighter those in the wealthiest one percent are going to clamp down on the rest of the population.
Excellent analysis.
Well said.
clarence Beeks--------"to cripple the economy"Hate to break it to you Clarence but the economy was wiped out awhile back and is on failed life support,deliberately so.The one per cent of the elite, who intentionally siphoned off the remainder of the debt ridden country,s hard earned money (the majority of the population),absconded off shore with their loot.Economic shysters aided and abetted by cohort lobbyists/corporate government and mighty tightly controlled propaganda media pimpsters.Thus pulled off the mother of all coups.The wealth carefully secreted away in safe and complicit foreign banks,never to be seen again.The country left in shambles,a contagious economic crime wave,spread rapidly around the planet.
Not by chance that the Fed (privately owned)IMF also private, became a gang of trillionaires. Specifically Rochefellows,Rothschilds,several other global controllers,the untouchable families.Divied up among the greediest HUMAN BEINGS with their getaway plans in place,as usual pulled off their diabolical practice. WAR being their main moneymaker.
I think between the lines this article is sayin no-matter what China does, we are fucked!
A light dawns...
I agree!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;) Make the best of what we do have left, which isn't much.
When this happens, the banks will turn to their Sugar Daddy, aka whoever happens to be in the White House, and will demand and get the remainder of our national treasure to "bail them out." This most definitely won't help our capitalist economy in its present form, but it may help the planet as most of us will be forced to return to simple subsistence lifestyles, since we won't have any money to buy much of anything.
Yes, bring back the real economy and production to the U.S. economy....
Arrest and imprison every corporate crook out there and free the prisons of those petty criminals....
Put the real thieves in prison--the corporate criminals and put the real murderers in organge jump suits such as the war criminals in both political parties and every official and war profiteer from the last 40 years....
The war mongerers have put America into this financial mess and they all need to go to prison for life.....this includes any media figure as well who has benefited from war and misled the public with lies, deceit and propaganda.
Yes, bring American jobs back as soon as possible. Let the corporate criminals fail and then put them in prison where they all belong....
And this is not an ad hominem attack. I am quite serious here about what should be done to all these scum corporate Americans who have looted the country including raiding the Social Security Trust Funds into the military spending aspect of the budgets for the past 30 Years and attacking Medicare little by little as well for the past 30 Years!!!
Great, yet another piece cheering for the depreciation of our currency. It's important to know that if the Chinese stopped buying dollars and dollar-denominated Treasurys, the value of the dollar wouldn't just go down -- it would collapse. Read about what happened in Argentina a few years back if you want to see what that would feel like.
"This would make Chinese goods more expensive in the United States, leading US consumers to purchases fewer imports from China and more domestically produced goods.
A lower-valued dollar would also make our exports cheaper in China. That would allow us to export more to China."
Yes, it would make Chinese goods more expensive and American goods cheaper. But would it lead to a rise in domestic demand for domestic products? Probably not, and here's why: We don't make a lot of the things we buy on a daily basis -- aside from food -- on our own. We import most of them because we've long since outsourced manufacturing to countries like China.
There's no guarantee that killing the dollar would lead to a renaissance of manufacturing in this country. The most likely scenario is that Chinese companies would buy American-owned factories and American companies at bargain basement prices and then move factories over there.
A related problem is that when the dollar goes down, the price of oil goes up. The increase in the price of energy leads to increases in the prices of everything else -- including food and the manufacturing and transportation of goods. These price increases, of course, would be passed to the American consumer. This, in turn, would require huge increases in wages and salaries or make the average person poorer, either way canceling out any benefits.
Obviously, the rise in the price of oil would affect personal transportation. High-speed trains and light rail? Those are wonderful ideas, but unfortunately, we no longer have the engineering capacity to design that technology ourselves, which means we would have to buy it from Europe and Japan. Of course, with a worthless currency, bullet trains would be pretty pricey, and budget deficits even bigger than the ones we already have would make it pretty hard to muster the political will. And besides, those things take years to complete anyway.
The bottom line is, trying to save our economy by devaluing our currency is a path to high inflation and second-rate nationhood. But at least there might be a few more factory jobs...that pay in a currency that doesn't buy anything.
If we want to revive manufacturing -- which we have to do -- our best bet is to do it the more complicated but more sustainable way: Give companies incentives to invest in research, engineering and industrial design and manufacture the resulting products here while giving them disincentives to offshore manufacturing.
yep, I see no difference in the fast falling Dollar and hyper-inflation.
Sioux Rose
LARDE: Thank you for this explanation. The times are utterly confusing. Does one save and put aside a little nest egg? Buy another currency? Buy gold at a pawn shop? I try to live on a small amount but lately I have been hit with costs: dental work, insurance, property taxes, repairs, and everything seems to be going up ($)faster than I can keep up.
SiouxRose - buy into emerging country currencies, or when they open up - those "baskets of currencies"...i presume there is such a thing in investing. also of course gold, as I always said for many, many years, including to my sister's husband in canada, telling them to get rid of portfolios that are attached to the dollar. the South Korean economy is extremely rugged now . and poised to be even better - especially as the relationship with north koreans who are their own kin INEVITABLY will come around to warming up..and surely china will want to ensure that THAT is successful for the over-all prosperity in the asian region to which china's OWN prosperity is tied. it can not afford to let North Korea remain a pariah and will certainly use its clout to encourage improvements..which the south deeply wants and the north deeply NEEDS.
so that means the South Korean CURRENCY is also going to be a very good investment vehicle. as well as their CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY...especially in futuristic technologies, construction, energy saving/efficiency, "green communities" development (of which South Korea already has a 38 Billion Dollar "supercity" in the works to become the Largest such venture in History) - so you can imagine there are SO many fine investment opportunities for the future based on ecologically , socially sound plans being launched all over the world. ESPECIALLY in emerging economies.
I wonder - just a suggestion:
if you ever considered selling your property while the price still has NOT bottomed out - making sure you have the buyer committed and able - and making sure you have the next "house" or property already lined up that is comparable but less in price elsewhere where insurance costs and all that are less, but also where you can easily have it rented out, just like florida?
I know that, similar to the USA or anywhere really,
CANADA is VERY keen nowadays on getting "more immigrants" - particularly in cities and towns that canada wants to populate more and have businesses open (of which property ownership is one, of course to fill demand for housing as they increase their non-big city populations).
and I read (because I get a regular newsletter from a canadian immigration law firm) that canada places a great deal of "points" to people who are willing to relocate and invest in canada - say: by BUYING property, or opening a small business , as well as of course having other "professional skills".
and from what I understand - to prospective, interested immigrants who are willing to invest IN canada (such as I mentioned with property) they are giving a LOT of incentives, lower taxes, even federal subsidies, job placement for skilled workers, AND "accelerated immigration process" - usually, i read , within a mere 6 months.
they give more "points" (they have a "point system" : big points if you speak french or willing to learn and improve it, big points if you "check" Quebec, big points if you "check" willing to relocate to a less-populated area or province, like manitoba, yukon, )...and of course their health system is superior and that alone makes the move worthwhile for anyone able to manage it.
things like that.
All i know is, IF *I* had property like you had, i woudl do everything i can to unload it, and buy somewhere ELSE, and relocate and start all over again...where "i'm wanted".
I can only say that - years ago - when my own dear sister and her husband and their 2 young teen boys traveled after their early retirements from good jobs in the philippines..they "shopped" between the USA and Canada - and then went home to save some more - and with their children decided :which one do we REALLY want to relocate and try a new life IN?
and they decided Canada. the children themselves were adamant.
and I was SO RELIEVED when they made that decision.
they now just finished paying for their house - after only 5 years or so . they are not rich, but they are very happy. and when they come "down" south across the border to do some "weekend shopping" for cheap, house and yard sales and flea markets in Buffalo city or niagara city - sometimes once a month..or weekends...they say they feel so sorry for americans...
THE USA , the way it is, doesn't really WANT anyone - unless they can fleece you to death!
I am only a stranger - and have nothing to offer but what I think might be good suggestions, which i would certainly follow myself if i was in the position...but I feel it's right to let you know that I wish for your best welfare - so that you can free yourself more in writing the wonderful books with which you wish to share your thoughts and experience and knowledge and hopes with others.
economics is definitely not my forte. that said, i would appreciate some input on this question. Is the downfall of the dollar pretty much inevitable? It seems to me that the people who say the economy will 'recover' are basing their prediction on the idea of returning to the very practices that created this mess in the first place.
Personally I don't see how we get a "real recovery" for the middle class. Think about it, for about 20 years or more middle class wages have been pretty much flat as prices of most things kept going up. The work around for this gap was heavy borrowing, mostly against the inflated values of peoples homes.
So where we are now? Peoples wages have not risen and housing prices are way down, so people have less equity to borrow against, plus banks are still reluctant to loan. There is nothing to fill the gap between wages and the cost of buying lots of "stuff". So where is a "real recovery" going to come from? Where is the money going to come from so millions of people can go back to buying all kinds of crap to get the "consumer economy" going again?
Oh yea and "Too Big To Fail", what has been done to fix that? Nothing, and the big banksters are back to some of their old tricks again. So if they get into trouble again they will "have" to be bailed out again. Where will that money come from?
IMHO we are so screwed that it is not even funny.
Economics is not my forte either, particularly as it concerns currency valuations. But I think devaluation of the dollar is inevitable for two reasons.
First, a broad international coalition seems to be forming up (China, Russia, India, Japan, Iran, OPEC, the EEU) to cease using the US dollar as the petrodollar, and instead buy and sell oil and natural gas in the future using a basket of other currencies as the new common coin of the global realm. That will mean the end of the Bretton Woods era. Such a coalescing of oil producers and oil consumers is basically an act of multinational political will - chickens coming home to roost in response to years of US high handedness. It's in the works. It will be messy. I hope somebody like Dean Baker gets a seat at inner circle decisionmaking table in Washington when it comes to putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Second (and anecdotally), a close friend of mine just came back from serving a lengthy tour in occupied Iraq. Among the other goodies he returned with, were a cache of Iraqi dinars and euros. If the officer corps of the US Army is already getting sage, insider economic advice to hedge against the US dollar by engaging in currency investment speculation such as this, that development speaks volumes to me.
Bill from Saginaw
sirios333--------economics is simple.If you make $5 per week but your weekly expenses are $50 per week = Tough week(nervous breakdown/starvation/violence etc.)USSA has been spending one million dollars per minute on war war,here a war,there a war,everywhere a war war+The 865 plus military bases cost $3.5 BILLION each per year, PROTECTING US.Thus USSA is bankrupt.blah blah blah.The boohoo economy heist, to enrich the already enriched was diversionary with complicit media horsemanure,facilitating filthy rich gangland.Economy puzzle/GREED
I know for a fact that the fifty million flex cars sold in Brazil alone by GM were made in Australia and GM stockholders came out smelling like a flthy puddle of pig dung, then went off to OBOMBA LAND TO GET THEIR BAILOUT REWARD MONEY!Pretty simple stuff.
"This would make Chinese goods more expensive in the United States, leading US consumers to purchases fewer imports from China and more domestically produced goods."
But are we still making enough things that US people need and want? For example are there any textile mills or clothing manufacturers still in business in America?
Just wondering.
Very damn few.
Not really, no. I saw a statistic recently that 95% of the clothes Americans wear are produced outside the country. And as I said, there's no guarantee that devaluing the dollar would bring those textile mills back to this country in a timely, orderly fashion.
The thing is, we've so thoroughly undermined manufacturing in this country that it would probably take years or even decades to regain our footing, and that all depends. And even when that happened, it would likely be Americans working for low wages in factories owned by foreign companies -- hardly a recipe for creating a broad-based prosperity.
If we want to become a manufacturing power again, then we need to figure out some things we can do that others can't do and invest in the design and manufacture of those things. For example, the Germans, French and Japanese have cornered the design and manufacture of high-speed rail vehicles and systems, so most of the new systems being built (none of which are here, of course) use ICE, TGV or Shinkansen technology. For us, this means encouraging fields like engineering and industrial design and maybe investing in something similar to Bell Labs.
Next, give U.S. companies incentives to build factories here and disincentives to build them in other countries. This can be done with a federal reduction of the corporate income tax (paid for by getting rid of Bush's tax cuts for the rich and reductions in military spending) and levying taxes against companies that build factories overseas when they could build them here.
You need to goggle Saipan to learn about "made in the USA" these days.
Doesn't it mean the *label* was made in the US before being applied at the overseas sweatshop?
greatwhite---------The dollar being the new Peso of the USSA, salvation army/goodwill/any used anything store are all packed these days.I wonder why.
Do we have a real economy in the US? Is there hope for good jobs at decent wages? What's the deal?
China is the new "New Deal." Sadly, the US economy is going down tubes--you really can't make a living from flipping houses and buying/selling credit default swaps. And manufacturing is not in the cards. Manufacture what? Green technology? China does it better, cheaper. Autos--see Japan. The stuff Wal-Mart sells--China.
Harvard and Yale now have a majority of business majors--these potential greedsters/fraudsters invariably go to Wall street. seeking their fortunes and bonuses as hedge fund people, commodity speculators, bubble creators, etc. In other words, our best are brightest are creating SHIT! Try living on that!
Harvard lost $500 million on its investments. Correct?
Best and brightest? No, just the best connected to the power class.
Crush their empty skulls.
My goodness, the doom n gloomers are out in force today. Look here, Baker, Krugman and Bernanke are all a hell of a lot smarter about economic matters than I or anyone else who has thus far commented on this article. They all agree that a weaker dollar would benefit America and if China would quit buying dollars this would be great. Yes, oil and Chinese imports that we buy at our favorite store, WalMart, would go up. But, we would have more jobs. We would export more products to other nations. We could move away from being the world's largest debtor nation. We could learn to live with less oil and energy. Our nation's farmers would export more and generally receive better prices because of better demand.
I agree with your comment. 'The system is the problem'? What kind of talk is that? I can't long read and post to a website that encourages REVOLUTION as a solution. For 30 years, the younger generation has been SET UP for failure, MULTIPLE failure. They've been economically farmed out, ecologically raped, and I half expect pretty soon our magnificent military machine will reveal itself as having been constructed for the sole purpose of our own enslavement. Granted, these ARE pretty dire conditions. CHANGE is needed. But the dark forces that have manipulated America into this place are just ITCHING for someone to take violent action.
Americans on the left need to ORGANIZE and take action to flex our political muscle. We need to do it without listening to the FOX confusion-inducing chaos appeals on 'death panels', 'abortion', 'creationism', 'gay marriage', and half a dozen 'litmus test' other issues. A moratorium on 'litmus test' issues should be promoted in Congress: NO VOTING ON LITMUS TEST ISSUES, until Congress acts OUR political will to solve the problems of healthcare, global warming, and the finance sector ripoff. The economy is bleeding and the environment will be soon behind it.
But Violence will just give the right exactly what they want.
Yeah.
You *DID* see what happened to the demonstrators in Pittsburgh during the G-20 meeting, right?
The denial of Constitutional Rights. Phone taps and e-mail intercepts. Intimidation. Arrest of a man for using Twitter to warn friends the police and military security forces were looking for trouble. The activities of police 'agent provocateurs'. The indiscriminate use of truncheons, tear gas, pepper spray, bean bags rounds, rubber bullets and LRAD sound cannons by the authorities on trapped and surrounded unarmed protesters.
All of these despotic acts by a 'democratically' elected 'civilian' government committed on it's own citizens, at the behest of the elite.
And you honestly think that the Left would be able to organize a functional resistance or rebellion, given the provisions of the Patriot Act and the continued telecom corporation intelligence gathering in collusion with the government?
The Right, and it's Corporate masters are deliberately GOADING the Left into a violent confrontation. It's the only thing they understand. This is desirable to them.
Then they will drop the mask, and enact even more draconian measures of control. Bet on it.
You live in a dictatorial police state. It just has really good PR.
Correct. We now need the ability to demonstrate MASSIVELY, and to direct our politicians formally on the most important issues of the day. We need organization, but cannot organize (the organizers will be arrested). We especially need a way to neuter campaign television commercials. We need to get out the message to Americans to TURN AWAY FROM THEIR TV (and turn down the sound), whenever a TV campaign commercial comes on. This will help neuter the effect of corporate donations. This would actually be a public service. I voted for Obama, but every time he came up to the podium to speak, I turned off the TV (well, most of the time), so at least I can claim to have voted on the issues (and on the availability of candidates: he was the least bad in each case). Politicians want you to listen to their speeches, and thats why you need to turn the other way, and read about it later.
Its a sad day, when to preserve your democracy you need to tell people to turn off their sources of information. But, we are there now. Trusted sources, written sources, these are what will correct what has happened.
In organizing the mass protests, the authorities will use every trick in their black book to infiltrate and suborn the movement, using their best undercover agents or informers to pose as radicals who espouse direct, destructive confrontation.
That way, when the protest moves into action, the agent provocateurs smash a few Starb***ks and fast food chain windows to give the police probable cause to move in, guns blazing as it were.
The time for organization of mass protest has passed. The OBAMA government has already shown it tolerates dissent as much as the Bush Junta did.
What is needed now is for small groups of people to drop off the grid and out of the system, living close to the ground in intentional communities with as little impact as possible, staying out of the path of the juggernaut as it careens to its doom.
The Corporations and their trained attack dogs of the Right know only conflict.
A head-on confrontation is suicide. What is needed now is a guerilla war of ideas, spread by word of mouth.
"The possible does not pre-exist, it is created by the event. The event itself creates a new existence." –(Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guattari)
Society must be capable of forming collective agencies of enunciation, that match a new consciousness, in such a way that desires its own mutation.
Revolutionary suicide in America–for the near future– is more suicide than revolution. Then there is patience. Chou Enlai, Prime minister of the Chinese Communist Party was asked in 1954, what he thought of the French Revolution: He answered, "It is still too early to tell."
Yes, this is something like "a guerilla war of ideas, spread by word of mouth." Or as Lenin did after the catastrophe in Russia in 1914: He went to Switzerland. There he advised young people to "Learn, learn and learn." What must be learned now is that Progressivism no longer serves the needs of the future and must be jettisoned: It is a failed intellectual state that rationalizes the very system it protests against.
In all exigent historical phenomena such as the French Revolution of 1789, the Paris Commune of 1848, and the Russian Revolution of 1917, there is always one part of these events that was not reducible to causality. Historians do not like to admit this as they are determined to impose a chain of causality–usually after the fact– so that the event itself may be 'controlled' by explaining it away.
Yet these events are really a splitting off from, a breaking from causality; it is a bifurcation, a lawless deviation, an unstable condition that opens up a new field of the possible. What counted in these events were the cumulative accretions and inter-resonations of independent phenomena which culminated in a visionary intransigence. It was the point where a society saw what was intolerable in itself, enough to prepare the gallows.
But the gallows cannot be avoided. That is what all the 'learning' is for. To know that implicitly. I leave you with the following for your "war of ideas, spread by word of mouth." A little 'meditation' on 'their morals, and ours.'
"If the spring of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the springs of popular government in revolution are at once virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing but prompt, severe inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue..." –(Maximilien Robespierre) and,
"To punish the oppressors of humanity: that is clemency; to forgive them is barbarity." –(Maximilien Robespierre)
Yes, its in the preparation. There can only be creative solutions. Perhaps, the tyranny of the 21st Century, as we are now seeing in America, will be called 'Democracy.' –(Jill Bains)
AMFORTAS:
Chou Enlai, Prime minister of the Chinese Communist Party was asked in 1954, what he thought of the French Revolution: He answered, "It is still too early to tell."
=============
that was quite a response. it reminds me of a report also from long ago - where a western reporter asked Mahatma Gandhi :
"Mister Gandhi - what do you think of Western civilization?"
Gandhi: "....it would be a good idea".
hehe.
I am with you on this Galenwainwright! After careful analysis of all my options....and projecting that onto the general public, I have come to the conclusion that your idea is the best one. Permacultures, small communities with their own food and water source, off the grid as much as possible, and using little currency....is the way to go. This may sound trite to some, but creating a new reality of Peace by creating Peace within seems to be the best answer. We are living in an unbelievable time. We all need to keep our heads on straight and remember who we are.....human beings with good hearts, compassion, love for our planet, a desire to live in peace and cooperate with each other and the world.
The fact that the dollar was doomed and our economy with it has been forseen for many years now. We should not be shocked by this. It was inevitable. When China calls in the debt the U.S. owes, we will be effectively neutralized. But remember, we are a young Nation. We will come back in some form or other. How we come back is the crucial choice. We need to begin now to start formulating that vision.
Any more economic growth is sure to kill us off. The system is the problem not the BS about the Chinese. The stupid bastards are following the capitalist's lead. Look where that got us. . . the brink of self extinction.
How about that for a successful ploy?
Sorry it's time for us to give up the old and start thinking out of the "box".
We have to think for ourselves. Does any one out there, remember how to do that?
Let me know if you do.
There's little evidense of it in these parts.
Have a nice day.
May I suggest this person:
http://ranprieur.com/index.html
They seem to be doing a pretty good job of independent thought.
solartopia - good plans are being made by good people - check it out.
Galenwainwright,
That ranprieur site is fascinating. Thanks for bringing it up.
I've been thinking of moving to Oroville, Washington. The housing prices have dropped there. What do you think of Oroville?
I live in BC, Canada. So I honestly wouldn't know.
Okay,thanks anyway. I live in Vermont and was just thinking about selling high here and buying low in Oroville. It's right on the Canadian border just south of Osoyoos.
Go for it.
And the good beer is on *our* side of the border, just so ya know.
And didn't Vermont consider leaving the Union a while back in favor of joining Canada?
"And the good beer is on *our* side of the border, just so ya know." –(Galenwainwright)
–'Beer chauvinism' is just that, chauvinism.
I'm not a beer drinker, but I will take the time to inform you that you have many 'traitors' in your midst when it comes to beer.
I honestly cannot tell you how many Canadians tell us how they like American beer better than Canadian beer. Not the American 'lawnmower' swill that is, but the craft brews.
And that is the ONLY thing they like better, and for good reason.
Whatever that means? –(Jill Bains)
Real hot there in the summer. That lake there runs from Osoyoos down over the US Border and that town is One of the two or three hottest in BC.
Its dry and not very green. In fact it considered a desert.
Eastern Washington State is very Conservative. Not quite as bad as Idaho but getting there.
Very pretty country though.
A friend directed me to this site as it seems to have a cult following of sorts among white hipsters.
After reading through some of the essays I found the corpus as a whole solipsistic, if not 'post collegiate,' albeit with a veneer of self-impressed sophistication and quirky, 'hipsterish' polish.
Ultimately unreadable. And I tried.
There was a vulgar 'look at me' sensibility which hollowed out any of the peripherally interesting things he had to say. Maybe the problem was that the thinking was indeed 'independent' in the worst sense of that word. Like 'Indie' pop music.
Eminently avoidable and essentially apolitical. More fashion statement than anything else.
Perhaps this guy was named after the great American jazz pianist, Ran Blake?
To each his own tastes. That's just my 'two cents.'–(Jill Bains)
"bringing back some of the 5.5 million jobs that we've lost in manufacturing over the last decade"
Thank you. I love a good joke. What manufacturing jobs do you think are coming back? The people who owned the factories in the U.S. closed them so they could move to Asia and take advantage of the slave labor there. The only reason they would consider moving any jobs back is with a guarantee that Americans, and their children, would be willing to work at the same wages as those paid in Bangladesh.
Make the exchange rate anything you want. Good jobs are not coming back.