World Economy: Gloom and Doom, or Blue Skies Ahead Delivered April 19, 2008, Gwangju Internatoinal Center, Gwangju, S. Korea

Web Sites worth looking at:  :www.chomsky.info www.michaelmoore.com  www.howardzinn.org

Since the World Trade Organization and the treaty that invented it, the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 2 (GATT 2), global pressures have been brought to bear that have pushed the value of labor lower and lower.  This gives multi-national corporations more and more power to make profits, and under the GATT 2 Treaty, great gobs of money have been made at the expense of labor.

Corporate abuses abound.  In Vietnam, since the 80s, factory workers, often women, get paid the equivalent of 14 cents per hour (Time Magazine) to make plastic toys!  Those toys are used as giveaways in children’s meals at Burger King and McDonald’s, to name two, and the toys promote movies that are not only aimed at children, but full of propaganda that promotes the “American Way,” which might be acceptable if 1) the movies themselves weren’t so packed with sugar-coated lies, and 2) the women in Vietnam were making more money than the cost of getting to work plus one bowl of rice per day.

Our global economy takes on the specter of forced wage-slavery when one considers the reason Vietnam was put into the mess it is in today: the war that the United States mounted in an attempt to “liberate” Vietnam from the evil communists in the north.  In reality, 80% of the United States’ bombs were dropped on South Vietnam, and the imperialist war between the United States and China that had started in Korea, simply spread to Vietnam, with Russia joining in at times, thus turning a war profit as well.

John F. Kennedy did not want the U.S. to be involved in Vietnam.  The war profiteers had him killed.

The United States and China are still in a struggle to see who will control human and natural resources throughout the world.  This struggle DOES in fact, affect the economies of smaller countries, and the most glaring example is the United States’ illegal war in Iraq.

When George W. Bush took office the average price of a gallon of 87 octane gasoline in the United States was $1.39.  It now sits at $3.49.  The reason this has happened is that when Saddam Hussein controlled the oil in Iraq, he pumped it out in order to pay off the debt he had from fighting the Iraq-Iran War in the middle of the 1980s.  In fact, he pumped it out so successfully, that he was causing the price of oil to be very low.  Thus, the United States used Hussein’s involvement in the attempted genocide of the Kurds, and his subsequent attack on Kuwait as an excuse for Desert Storm, a so-called war of airplanes and tanks against men with small arms and sticks.  That war also saw the United States drop spent-uranium coated bombs.  Those bombs are an intricate part of our world economy, as they caused newborns to develop cancer at an alarming rate. Most Non-Governmental Organizations agree that over one million unnecessary deaths occurred during the time that the U.S and its allies around the world put economic  sanctions  on Iraq. Those sanctions allowed a small amount of Iraqi oil to be sold. Oil prices went up, and U.S. domestic oil production could turn a profit again.  Public money into private profit via war.

But wait, now that we control Iraqi oil, which is the type of high quality oil needed to be refined into gasoline, shouldn’t the President and his cronies help support the U.S. economy by dumping oil on the market, thus lowering the price of gasoline, and putting more money in the pockets of the U.S. workers? This would allow those who still have jobs to buy products OTHER than gas for their cars, thus helping ALL the countries that sell goods in the U.S. make a better profit.

The answer has been a resounding NO.  Bush, and his Republican philosophical equals (my rating is dullard here) would much rather see higher oil prices, because this way they can extract a few dollars back form the Chinese, who are quickly gobbling up all the spare dollars the world has to offer.

This cat-and-mouse game, in which China is blackmailed into lending the U.S. money, even though the U.S. is so sunk in debt that no responsible entity, country, bank, or investment advisor would ever have the temerity to suggest buying U.S. bonds, is now responsible for bringing the world economy to the brink of ruin.

On March 6, 2006, Iran sold 30 Million Barrels of oil to China for Euros.  It was the first sizable trade of oil for Euros in history.  On March 8^th, 2006 Condoleezza Rice, our venerable Secretary of State, made a speech stating that the United States believed Iran was capable of building nuclear weapons.  Smart listeners will recall that it was a pack of lies about Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction that was used to sell the Iraq war.  Economy-watchers feared that the Rice speech of 2006 signaled a run-up to all-out war with Iran.  War in Iran would threaten China’s oil supply, and could cause World War III.

If the United States were to print up dollars and pay off its debt to China, there would be so many dollars floating around, that the currency would have no value.  Likewise, if oil starts trading in Euros rather than dollars, the dollar has no value, because everyone knows about our debt problem by now. War is the reason the U.S. is in such debt.  If our economy fails, everyone else goes down with us.  In order to prevent an economic meltdown I predict World War III. World War III would be a political decision.  The U.S. is politically set up to accommodate this, should it be necessary to avert economic collapse.  It would not be the first time the United States used foreign war to defeat economic problems at home.

Since the United States Government, its consumer borrowers and its corporate borrowers now owe just over $17,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s trillion) dollars to domestic and foreign creditors, isn’t it insane to think that we would spend more money on a very large war?  But war is the quickest way to turn public money (borrowed or taxed from the workers) into private profit.

Indeed, anyone who buys U.S. treasury bonds is supporting the slaughter of innocent women and children just so American oil companies can make more money.  Yet, China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Germany, Holland, and many individual and institutional investors around the world  keep buying up these tainted, immoral and foul investment instruments.  Continuing to feed money to a country already drowning in debt is ridiculous on the face of it, but let’s look closer.

The United States, if you count consumer debt, mortgages on homes, corporate debt and governmental borrowing, takes loans of $1.6 Billion per day.  With the Iraq war already costing $17 Billion per month, one can imagine a war that spread into Iran costing $30-40 Billion per month, easily. Why?  Because Iraq had a measly 10,000 soldiers when we attacked, and, six years later, we still haven’t won.  Iran has 280,000 soldiers, a well-equipped air force and hundreds of anti-aircraft missile sites throughout its sizeable land mass.  But, I believe Mr. Bush and his junta are after the Iranian oil for two reasons: they need the world to continue to trade oil for Dollars, not Euros, and by controlling Iranian oil, the United States would control nearly 40% of the oil China imports.  Bush sees the need for a trump card against China because of the multitude of ways China already controls the United States.  The day Rice made her comments about Iran, thus beating the war drum, one Euro cost $1.19.  A recent quote (Korean Times, March 15-16, 2008) has the Euro costing $1.56.  This separation of the Euro and the Dollar has dire consequences for Europe in the short term, and the United States in the long term.  The reason the Euro is worth more is that somebody, somewhere is causing this separation in order to benefit the U.S.  Somebody with more economic clout than all of Europe combined.  That somebody is probably going by the name of Saudi Arabia.  Or Saudi Arabia plus U.S. institutional investors who keep widening the Euro-Dollar gap, thus squeezing Europe’s profits, thus making U.S. investments still somewhat attractive.  Thanks to sub-prime loans, US Debt, and squeezed profits due to higher energy costs, the U.S. stock market, along with many others is poised to crash.  More on that subject later.

Note that the Won is somehow losing value against the dollar, while the Dollar sinks like a rock against all other major and minor currencies.  Canadians are jumping for joy, as, instead of $1.40 in Canadian money to buy a U.S. Dollar, they could, for a little while recently, get a U.S. dollar for, dig this, 97 cents!  Yes indeed, for a short time there, the Canadian dollar was worth more than the greenback.  You’ll hear more about the Won/Dollar relationship later too.

So, as multi-national companies in Europe are reeling due to the profits they can no longer extract out of the U.S., smaller European businesses, like hotels, restaurants, tour busses, churches that make you pay to light up a painting, museums, coffee shops, tourist attractions, beer pubs, whiskey bars, marijuana dens, and whore houses are all suffering because Americans are simply not going to be around at an exchange rate of $1.56 per Euro. That would be a $12.00 cup of coffee in Paris, or a $200 train ride from Frankfurt to Berlin.  No thanks.

The old method of protecting American laborers (tariffs) has been traded for a new method of terrorizing foreigners into continuing to lend us money.  Before the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the second Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT 2) taxes were levied on all goods coming into the United States from countries that paid laborers less.  Thus, a broom manufacturer in Mexico that could make a broom for 50 cents was taxed to the extent that the American broom manufacturer in Ohio could still compete, even though his broom cost $2.00 to manufacture. Thus, a tariff (import tax) of $1.50 per broom was put onto the Mexican manufacturer so that American labor could still have a job, and not be undercut by those willing to work so hard for so little.

The idea to scrap these tariffs made labor leaders and members of the Democratic party very upset, because lowering or abolishing these tariffs would mean many Americans would lose there jobs.  Thus, any time a Republican brought up the idea of NAFTA, the idea was shot down in congress immediately.  In the election of 1992, Bill Clinton, a Republican in Democrats clothing, pushed the NAFTA idea as a way for laborers in the United States to make more money. He said (he knew it was a fat lie) that when Mexicans made more money, we could sell more goods to Mexico, thus creating more American jobs.

He somehow got the U.S. labor vote, and a lot of conservative Democrats voted for him.  Plenty of Republicans were not upset when he won.  After all, he had stolen all their ideas in order to win, and with a Democrat pushing NAFTA, maybe, just maybe, it would pass.  Clinton then went about handing out political favors, job projects and other perks to Democratic lawmakers who, once they had their own pockets sufficiently lined, voted for NAFTA.  Once the jobs moved away, Clinton reduced government help for poor people with a very draconian Welfare Reform Act that has caused U.S. Prisons to overflow.

When NAFTA passed, currency traders cut the value of the Mexican Peso almost in half within a week.  It went from 5 to 9 Pesos to buy a U.S. dollar.  That made Mexican labor so much CHEPAER than it already was for American industrialists to take advantage of.  It was no coincidence that the devaluation of the Mexican Peso happened so quickly after NAFTA passed.  Immediately, two sub-groups of American industry starting moving factories to Mexico. One was the group that could no longer pass strict pollution laws in California and Colorado, the other was any company that wanted to make a bigger profit by using cheaper labor.  This included companies like General Motors, which had heavy products to move, and for whom setting up shop in China for the U.S. market was not feasible due to higher transportation costs.

The area known as the Maquilladoras was booming with new industry.  Mexicans flocked to the area for a chance to earn between $1.00 and $3.00 per hour, but other socio-economic problems sprung up. As Altha Cravey points out in “The Working Women of the Maquilladoras” Mexican workers in these factories live in dormitories that resemble single-sex barracks.  If a woman becomes pregnant she is fired.  If a couple starts dating openly, they are both fired.  Worst of all, the pollution in this zone is horrific. Thus, anencephaly, a condition in which a baby is born dead, due to having no brain, has skyrocketed to levels 2000 times greater than the rest of the world.  These workers are never raised out of poverty, and, except for goods made in China and sold at Wal-Mart, are never going to be buying anything that increases the profits of any U.S. company.   So, U.S. companies that used to pay a living wage, say $12 to $30 per hour in the U.S., now had workers who worked hard, and for longer hours, and at $1 to $3 per hour.

In a similar, yet even-more-stunning sequence of totalitarian capitalism, Fleet Bank and JP Morgan Bank managed to team up to PURCHASE the central bank of Argentina.  Yes, they bought it from the Argentine government, in 2003.  Argentina was the site of MANY bad loans those banks had made, and they wanted to get their money back out of there somehow.  At the time, Argentina was undergoing an economic meltdown, and the value of the Argentine Peso was dropping rapidly.  Thus, any loans made to Argentina would be paid back in Pesos so valueless that the banks would lose a lot of money, even if the loans were paid back.

So, after they bought the central bank of Argentina, they got their friends at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to put pressure on the Argentine government by saying that unless the government put into effect “austerity” measures, the IMF and World Bank would no longer lend them any money.  These austerity measures meant that Argentina could not spend its way into a better economy the way Ronald Reagan had in the United States in the 1980s.  Indeed, the IMF demanded that Argentina CUT BACK on government support of poor and unemployed people.  And for this, Argentina would be paid back with a Peso that traded one-for-one with the U.S. dollar.  But, honestly folks, did this currency trading breakthrough help any of the unemployed Argentines?

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It also meant that Argentina’s economy worsened quicker.  In the end, many cities faced 70% unemployment, and that’s when the currency traders went to work, and revalued the Peso at one-to-one with the U.S. Dollar.  With a peso so valuable, how could the U.S. profit?  Well, because the Argentine unemployed were willing to work for so little.  President Bush then pushed for the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. This meant that American industries in Argentina could bring their products back into the United States without tariffs.  Thus, the profits made in Argentina, to this day, are massive. So, through currency manipulation, war, and holding foreign economies blackmail by forcing their countries to continue to lend us money, the United States is playing a very severe game of RISK.  And the RISK is that one day these other economic zones in the world will not care about what happens to the United States. They won’t care how much money they can make in the United States, and, they will cut us off:  not only refusing to lend us more money, but also selling the bonds they already own.  Boy, you wouldn’t want to be the second or third country to start selling U.S. bonds once that market collapses!  It’s well within the bounds of history to foresee the U.S. Treasury Bond market collapsing in a time frame of two or three days.  The only remaining question is, WHICH two or three days.

In 2006 South Korea thought about changing its reserve money from Dollars to Euros. After all, Iran had started selling oil for Euros. The New York Stock Exchange dropped 600 points the day this was announced.  Many phone calls and meetings were put together to stop the Korean Central Bank from changing its Dollars into Euros. Korea, smartly realized that the American national debt would, at some point, make the Dollar worthless, or very less valuable than it is now.  Thus, an orderly change from Dollars to Euros, while the dollar was still worth something made sense.

South Korea holds the fifth largest amount of Dollars in the world. Only China, Saudi Arabia, Japan and England hold more. If South Korea sold its dollars to buy Euros, the dollar would go down and the Euro would go up.  Well, South Korea may not have sold dollars and bought Euros, but the dollar continues to go down and the Euro is going up anyway.  The price of gold has gone up from $280 to $970. This indicates that many investors don’t have faith in ANY currency.

How then is the Won losing value against the U.S. Dollar?  One business administration student of mine at Chonnam National University suggested that investors, large and small, are cashing in their Won-based investments to run to the safety of U.S. Treasury Bills, and they must have dollars in order to buy them.  Thus, Won were being sold and dollars bought, in order to purchase U.S. Treasury Bonds.  I hope, for the sake of Korea, that he is wrong.  My belief is that the central bank of Korea is pushing the dollar up in value in order to save the profits of Korean multi-nationals who do business in the United States.  The Korean Central Bank has the power to do this, because Korea still has so many US dollars.

The Korean dependency on foreign oil, rice and water is counterbalanced by profits made by large corporations.  Should those corporations falter, many Koreans would starve, were it not for the reserves of dollars the Korean Central Bank has.  But, if the dollar loses value, those holdings will also be valueless.

If things look bad for the U.S. economy vis-à-vis Korea, imagine the giant bag of poop the Chinese have been handed.  The U.S. and Chinese economies are linked, nay welded together in so many ways, that, in order to keep the two economies afloat, China lends back to the U.S. many of the Dollars it extracts by selling products at Wal-Mart, etcetera.  So, Trillions of dollars worth of those soon-to-be-worthless U.S. Treasury Bonds are owned by China, because they don’t want the U.S. economy to fail. If the U.S. economy fails, the otherwise rich “communist” leaders who own shares in the factories, or run the prison labor, or help build the dams that give Chinese farmers electricity they never wanted or needed would become poor quickly. The Chinese aren’t just lending our government money, they’re also scooping up billions of dollars worth of our credit card debt, corporate debt and (ha ha) sub-prime housing mortgages.

Any economic historian (I wrote a 30-page paper about the causes of the U.S. Great Depression in 1985) will remind you, these days, of the 1923 German Mark fiasco, and 1930 hyperinflation that hit the Yuan in China.  Back then, the approximate cost of, say, a loaf of bread, went from $1.00 to $300,000 in Germany, and from $1.00 to $400,000 in China. In these circumstances, even the richest man was brought to begging. A quick glimpse at the U.S. trade deficit, national, consumer, and corporate debt load, sub-prime lending practices (who was the idiot that thought up this scheme?), soaring commodities prices, in part, or in whole, due to the soaring price of oil, finds us on the brink of world-wide economic collapse.  The declining value of the dollar DIRECTLY causes oil prices to go up, in addition to the accelerating price due to demand outstripping supply.  This in turn exacerbates the United States’ debt, which we are NOT going to be able to pay off ANY TIME SOON. You can see that there is very little room left for an expanding Gross Domestic Product in the United States.  The main reason is that any and all taxes are being taken up to pay back the interest on money we already owe, leaving little left for domestic issues.

This is the bag of doo-doo I refer to, that China is now holding.  Bear-Stearns, the second-oldest investment banking firm in the United States went belly-up a few weeks ago.  The stock went from $38 to $2 per share when it was learned that the company, in a foolishly greedy and stupid move, failed to sell off its sub-prime loans, and was hoping to reap huge profits from the bad loans by keeping them for themselves.  They held these terrible loans even in the face of Countrywide, Thornburg and many other mortgage lending firms biting the dust in 2007 and earlier in 2008.  Even Citigroup, the fourth largest bank in the United States, is spinning off its home-mortgage division in order to save the rest of the bank.  I sure wouldn’t buy shares in the home mortgage division of Citigroup, as its main purpose for this spin-off is to have a place for the bank to dump its losses.  Short that stock on day one, if you’re a trader.

Bear-Stearns was bought up by JP Morgan thanks to a whopper of a loan from the Federal Reserve.  Never since the great Depression has the Federal Reserve Bank had to step in to buy a bank to keep it from failing. Had Bear-Stearns been allowed to simply fold, the ripple effect of defaulted loans would have sunk the entire United States Banking industry in less than a month.  OK, so who on earth thought up these loans to people who could never afford to pay them back?  Well, greedy bankers did.  These loans kept the U.S. housing market humming along at massive profits, while consumers were lured into buying mansions they could not afford because the first three years were of monthly payments were kept ridiculously low.  An example would be a mortgage loan that cost only $700 per month to pay back in the first three years, and then jumped to $2000 per month for years four and five, and then to $4500 per month for the next 25 years.  This, on a million dollar home, and to a borrower who could barely afford the $700 per month in the first place, and who showed NO evidence of income in order to get the loan.  This had a chance of working out when home prices kept soaring, but now that 2000 families PER DAY are losing their homes in the United States, house prices are dropping like a rock.

Ah, but many banks did NOT hang on to these pitiful loans.  They bundled them into billion-dollar securities and sold them to China.   Yes, China, the same country that lends our government hundreds of millions of dollars per day, and lends our corporations tens of millions of dollars per day, and buys up our stinking, rotten, no-good credit card debt, now also owns a good hunk of the American houses that are hard to sell because they were just foreclosed upon by CHINESE BANKS. Not only are the Chinese going to fail to make a profit from the interest gained by borrowers paying the loans back, they also paid MORE than the value of the homes to get the loans, because a loan of $1 million at 6% interest would pay back over $2 million in a 30-year stretch.  Now that these homes are impossible to sell, China is out the $1.3 million profit, for which they probably paid about $1.2 million (paying $1.2 million for a 30 year mortgage of $1 million is actually a good deal if the housing market is strong) they also won’t be able to get anywhere near $1 million for the house they now own, having kicked out its residents. Thus the same bankers who have convinced China to continue to loan us money, also sold Chinese investors these bundled house loans, which, any day now, will be worth even less, as the U.S. housing market continues its freefall.

Since so many employees of Bear-Stearns, General Motors, IBM, Ford, Eastman Kodak, Xerox, Citigroup, Thornburg, Countrywide Mortgage, Chrysler, Northern Telecom, Corning, Enron, US Steel, Northrop-Grumman, Proctor & Gamble, A T & T, Cooper-Lufkin, and others have been fired, once their jobs moved overseas, or simply due to mismanagement, who on earth is going to buy these homes?

So, as wages stay stable or decline (stagnant) and price go up (inflate) we have stagflation.  Stagflation hurts the middle class, lower middle class and poor the hardest. These workers have already seen all their jobs disappear to overseas cheaper labor, so that even in the United States many people are willing to work for $6.00 per hour at McDonalds, rather than starve.  These are women and men who used to make $20.00 per hour or more.  They too have already lost their homes and are now renting small apartments, or, they can’t find work at all and are living in the streets.  What can such a debt-laden U.S. government do for them?  So far, jail has been one answer.  That’s because we spend all our borrowed money on war.

War, war, war, the quickest way to turn public money into private profit is war.  That’s why John F. Kennedy was shot.  He wanted the U.S. OUT of Vietnam.  Well, that would have cut off a massive profit machine, thus, that profit machine got rid of him. Dick Cheney was the president and CEO of a company called Halliburton.  It is in the business of protecting oil reserves around the world.   In other words, it’s a cover for the C.I.A.  Cheney himself was responsible for an accounting fraud even larger than that at Enron while C.E.O of Halliburton and that fraud had seen the stock of that company go from $56 to $20.  Just as he was about to be put into jail for this, he was elected Vice President, and as such, he set about a way for Halliburton to make up, in profit, that which he had cooked up on its accounting books.  What was his method?  Have Halliburton and its subsidiaries be the main contracting and logistics firm in the Iraq war.  Bingo, Bango, Bongo, no more accounting problems or jail time for Cheney. OOOOPS, 1.3 million innocent Iraqis dead, and another 2 million as refugees, but still, at least Cheney wasn’t in trouble.

But the rest of us are.  Anyone who eats should be aware that twenty (20) percent of the world's fuel is spent moving food.  Hence, wheat prices have doubled, fruit prices have tripled, and those heavy watermelons, well, the price has quadrupled: sad day for Suba lovers! Have wages gone up?  Not for those laid off from Ford and GM, I can assure you.  And not for the average South Korean worker either.

My thesis:  Either the U.S. pays off its debt, and retires Treasury Bonds, or the weight of the debt will cause deflation. According to the economic forum of Duke University and UNC, which meets quarterly, fully 22% of the money we borrow is used to PAY THE INTEREST on the money we already owe! Deflation is what hit the U.S. during its Great Depression from 1929 to 1941. Of course paying off our debt by printing $100 notes and crating them up for shipment to all the foreign creditors we owe would cause a type of hyperinflation because THERE WOULD BE SO MANY DOLLARS FLOATING AROUND.  Thus, both scenarios (do nothing, and watch our debt grow, which has been in practice since 1980) or pay off the debt quickly (what I refer to as "hyper-inflation AHOY!") are losing scenarios.

How then can there be a case for blue skies ahead?  Well, just as Ronald Reagan pointed out, we GROW our way out of our debt.  Ah yes, we grow our way out of it.  Uh, let's see, we can't grow our way out of it through the manufacturing sector because we've moved most of that sector to countries that offer cheap human labor (note the man who worked building Disney toys in Shanghai, at about $2.00 per DAY, working a 14-16 hour day. He complained about never getting any overtime pay, and Disney said "we cannot possibly supervise all of our vendor-manufacturers because we have 4000 of them all over the world."  Ooops, bad Public relations, as Disney has about 25 cents in those $20.00 toys we buy, and 18 of those cents are the price of MOVING the toy!)  But less people are going to Disneyland now too!

OK we could “expand our way out of the debt" by erasing the trade deficit.  Oops, that may be hard to do, since our own companies are the ones responsible for 40%, give-or-take, of the trade deficit. (When manufacturing moves overseas, the products then have to move back to the U.S., and count as a trade deficit since the wages are paid to FOREIGN workers).

Aha, we could expand our service sector (sending people out to companies to teach their secretaries how to use Microsoft Vista)  But those phone centers that answer questions about your credit card bill, have, for the most part already been shipped to cheaper labor in India, or U.S. jails.  Yup, the man talking to you about your credit card bill, after pulling it up on his computer may NOT be from India but could be from a U.S. prison (MasterCard and Visa both use U.S. prisoners for cheap labor).  All but about six teams of IBM's programmers are now based in India. Kevin Johnson (the drummer in Skinny Atlas, the last band I played in) is the leader of the VERY top team that "puts out fires" for IBM's TOP corporate clients.  His team remains in the U.S., but he's got six years left until he qualifies for a full retirement, and he's worried that after five years, he'll get the can, so IBM can save money on his pension, which would be cut in half unless he makes it to the finish line.  He already pulls an 80 to100-hour week to help his chances.

So, gains in manufacturing or service, or trade deficit erasure are pretty much ruled out as ways to grow our way out of the debt, because they are unrealistic.  That leaves inventing new products everyone will love (see the I-Pod and I-Phone from Apple) as the United States' best way to clear this "economic blip" currently referred to as a recession, and more accurately described as stagflation.  Again, stagflation hits the middle class, lower middle class, working poor, fixed income retirees and impoverished the hardest.  Those groups combine to make up 85% of the United States.  Thus, because people in those groups are already paying huge utility bills for their rising energy costs, link-ups to the internet, and cell phones, we cannot expect them to be buying too many more $400 I-Phones in the near future, because, if they drive to work, or eat, then their cost-of-living has soared lately, while their quality-of-life has plummeted.

Therefore, because our national debt has soared from $one trillion in 1980 to somewhere in the $teens of trillions now, and because the price of food has doubled, and the price of transportation has tripled in the last seven years alone, stagflation will see to it that even innovative products that "everyone will love" are going to have to be products that retail for $1.00 or less, like the quality $1.00 DVD movies you can buy in the bargain movie bin at Wal-Mart.

This can be proven by the fact that food, shelter and clothing are the three basic necessities, and, when it comes to clothing, no one is buying much anymore.  Just ask Macy's or even Wal-Mart, or the owners of malls whose stores can't pay the rent anymore.  In the shelter department there is an even larger collapse, in three areas:  the number of foreclosures on family homes is now OVER 2000 per day (including Saturday, Sunday and Holidays).  The number of people qualifying to own a home is deceasing due to tightening lending standards, lay-offs, lack of good jobs, and lack of vocational job-training programs, because, the Reagan administration and the U.S. Congress in the 1980s saw fit to end federal support of vocational schools.  At no time during the 1929-1941 U.S. depression did Americans face foreclosures at the rate of 2000 per day.  It was never that bad then.  Still for reasons that are complex, the U.S. stock market has declined in an orderly way, rather than a full-blown crash.

So, if food (the price of most foods have doubled), clothing and shelter are MORE than some Americans can afford, uh, who is going to buy these new innovative products that will "help us grow our way out of our debt?"  Maybe the top 15% of the money earner/owners will.  But maybe they won't   Maybe they too are trying to find ways to save money now.

AH, but, Doug, what about the Blue Skies Ahead part of your thesis?  By blue skies, I had a double meaning.  It means that a major downfall could be prevented (or at least postponed) via war, and also refers to bluer skies once the oil runs out entirely.  So the blue skies can be a profit center.  Not in the peaceful ways, like airlines, or Boeing, or Airbus profits, but in the old fashioned way:  war.  Note that the blue skies have opened up for U.S. Air force support for the first time during "Shock and Awe," in Iraq, the last week in March, 2008.It is a tragic irony that the war hit this new level of destruction during Easter.

Long ago it was discovered that the quickest way to turn public money into private profit is war.  Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller set the standard with a triple dip into the Russian Revolution.  Indeed, he 1) sold arms to Czar Nicholas, 2) leant money to the Bolsheviks and 3) sold arms to the Bolsheviks with the money he leant them.  The triple dip occurred when the winning side was also the group who had to borrow money.  Thus, JDR also earned interest on the money he leant the Bolsheviks because THEY WON.  Recently a double-dip occurred in the middle 1980s when the United States sold arms to both sides of the Iran-Iraq war (a necessary precursor to our being able to control the oil in that region).

Thus, the blue skies full of fighter jets over Iraq are a warning that the U.S. may soon attack Iran, no matter who wins the next Presidential election.

The other blue skies are the ones that will occur when the oil finally does run out.  Again, take the BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India and China, and add their demand to the already stressed oil supply, and it is not a stretch to imagine the earth running out of oil inside 100 years.  Although alternative energies like Wind and Solar power continue to be refined, we are not using enough of these power sources and the technology needs to be made more efficient.  Plus, neither is excellent as a solution for moving products form one area of the world (where cheap labor is cheapest) to another area of the world (where rich people are the richest).

Thus, when the oil runs out, the earth runs the very strong risk of being able to support only the same number of humans it supported before the oil economy took over.  Two billion.  If the earth is about to move from nine billion people back to two billion people, certain strategies come to mind.

The way I’m trying to save my family is to clear out of the stock market and put 50% of our money into farm land, and 50% into money market funds that are extremely liquid, in case the U.S. Dollar DOES go into hyperinflation.  If deflation, hyperinflation or oil price pressures continue to drive 3-10% annual inflation, growing your own food will be the only salvation.

South Korea is a very dependent country.  It imports rice and fresh water at a huge rate.  The business section of the March 15-16 Korean times (albeit a propagandist rag) points out the upward pressures on commodities, like steel, and food, are not likely to abate, and Brazil is poised to sell its iron ore to steel companies everywhere, thus continuing the march toward a more-developed world.  This means a world that sucks more energy. Much of Korea’s energy needs, including all the oil used here, is imported.  If Korean companies can’t turn a profit in the United States, the ability to buy the rice and water needed to sustain its people will evaporate.  Outside of wind and solar power, all energy causes very bad pollution.  Nuclear energy being the worst polluter, as the radioactive spent fuel rods remain radioactive for thousands of years, not to mention the specter of disasters like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

Some communities in the United States, like Ithaca, New York, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina have found a way to ensure that their economies stay strong, and as free as possible from the influence of macroeconomic malaise.  They print their own currencies.  It’s perfectly legal in the United States, and these “Plentys” as they are called in Chapel Hill, are accepted by local merchants at par, or equal to dollars.  Since the only place to GET the currency and USE the currency is in Chapel Hill, all the “Plenty’s” stay within the community to help support local farmers and local shop owners.  None can be used to help support the milt-nationals that have brought us to the precipice of worldwide economic collapse, because their local outlets refuse to take the currency.

 Does anyone know if Gwangju is allowed, under Korean law, to print its own currency?  If so, and if enough merchants accepted them at an equal value to Won, all the money those merchants make from shoppers using this local currency would have to be spent by those local merchants HERE IN GWANGJU.  Thus, in some small way, the multinational companies from the United States, Seoul Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo and elsewhere would not be able to suck Won from Gwangju to line their already fat and blackened wallets in cities that are rich beyond belief.  If this local currency movement were able to get 40% of the merchants to accept the local currency, the average Gwangju worker would be a lot better off, as her hard-earned money that she buy things with would have to stay here to buy other things in Gwangju, thus stopping the drain of money away from the city.  Eventually, if Chapel Hill is a good example, more and more merchants would accept this local money.

As economic growth slows due to energy sucking up profits, which blue sky will prevail, the blue skies filled with war planes, or the blue skies over farmers, working hard to preserve human life even after the oil runs out?  My university students are always asking: what is the best major to make sure I get a great job and a wonderful life.  Even though I teach English, these days my answer is AGRICULTURE.  As the oil economy grinds to its death, the happiest, wealthiest human beings will be the farmers, just as it was 250 years ago.  They will be stocked full of human wealth, not monetary wealth.  Their children will be part of the few who survive the end of the oil economy.  The blue sky will switch from corporate greed to food production, and humanity will be better for it.  We already have proof in countries like New Zealand.

A small bit of history to see what influenced American Politics from 1980 to 2007.

The United States was founded on Genocide, made rich by Slavery, and continues to pursue human and natural resources worldwide in order to service $Trillions of dollars in debt, notably to China.  This tendency, begun by Christian Europeans shortly after Christopher Columbus’ conquest of the “New World” continued the Christian tradition of creating war and enslaving foreigners that began during the “Crusades” against the peoples of the Middle East over 900 years ago.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan took office, and within an hour the 53 American hostages that were taken by either Syrian or Iranians were released.  At that time, American Politics was evenly split between Democrats, who had fought for a better living for those who labor hardest for the least wages, had created the Environmental Protection Agency, had signed civil rights laws, and whose policies were continued by Republican Richard Nixon, who ended the Vietnam War, put on price and wage controls to fight inflation, and created over 50 new environmental laws that attempted to slow pollution being created by automobiles, energy producers, and industry, and Republicans, who openly worked for higher profits for big business, and that’s all.

Reagan, under direct orders from conservatives (meaning large corporations, the religiously duped, hard-working country dwellers who hate that anyone would get government help for not working, and white racists) kept the U.S. economy moving forward by helping corporations reduce labor costs, and spending more money than the government was taking in. This is called deficit spending, and it caused the United States to go from $1 Trillion to $3 Trillion in debt in eight short years.

Wars in Grenada, a defenseless Island country, and Nicaragua, and the continued “threat” of Communist Russia, allowed Reagan to insist on huge military spending increases. These military expenses were used to continue United States’ control in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Columbia, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.  He also used his political power to create the “Stars Wars Defense System,” a system that not only wasted a lot of money, but was never going to work.

This continued massive spending caused Russia to keep spending money, and that, in effect, made it impossible for them to recover from World War II, as any extra money Russia had was spent trying to keep up with the US military spending.  During this time, whenever President Reagan or Gorbachev faced problems at home, they met with each other, and distracted domestic issues via a series of summits.

Meanwhile, less and less legislation was passed that favored the working class, education, or any other important domestic issues, barring new roads.  Reagan won re-

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election with ease in 1984, and the Democrats that were able to win seats in Congress, had to bend more to the conservative side to do so.

Reagan continued his conservative ways when he signed legislation bailing out dozens of savings and loan banks mostly located in the American west.  These savings and loans were a scam from the beginning.  They were set up by land developers who then borrowed millions from their own banks, and then went “bankrupt,” and with existing laws, never paid the money back.  The banks then went bankrupt, and the American taxpayers paid the banks back, thus letting the land developers off the hook for all the money they borrowed.  Ah, but what happened to the land they bought?

Not surprisingly, NEW development companies were started up, and the homes were built, and massive profits were made, without ever having to pay back the original money that bought up the land. One of the largest banks in this scheme was Silverado Savings and Loan.  Both Jeb and George Bush sat on the Board of this bank, yet, went on to become Governors (Jeb in Florida, and George in Texas) and, George is our current President. GW Bush was an executive in 13 failed multi-million dollar companies.  Still, Republicans voted for him in 2000.  “Big Media” squelched this.

Reagan was able to pass legislation that took money away from vocational training schools, education programs for poor children aged four and five years old, and tried to push health care for the poor onto the states’ budgets, rather than the federal budget. All these were ways to cut money for US citizens in favor of spending more money on defense.  His answer to the US drug problem was “just say no.”

Worse yet, it was discovered that Oliver North and many others, were mixed up in a deal that sold arms to Iran, and took the profits to buy arms for the Contras in Nicaragua.  At this point the U.S. Congress had voted to DISALLOW any more money for the Contras in Nicaragua in the Boland Amendment, because it was obvious that innocent people were being killed for no purpose other than to protect wealthy coffee and banana plantation owners (often American companies).

Many more Reagan appointees and CIA officials were about to be implicated in the Iran Contra affair, and, since Iran was an enemy of the United States, all who were involved should have seen jail time.  The man who knew the details was CIA Director William J. Casey. Hours before he was to testify to congress, it was reported he was unable to speak.  This inability to speak came from brain cancer he had never been diagnosed with.  Before he could testify, he died, thus, Oliver North took all the blame for the Iran Contra scandal, and all others involved were pardoned and reinstated by President Reagan. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Casey)

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Remember, the United States was funding and selling arms to Saddam Hussein in Iraq since 1983.  He was strongly supported by GHW Bush, in Bush’s capacity as CIA chief, because Iraq was involved in a war with Iran that would end up killing 800,000 Iranians and 600,000 Iraqis.  But isn’t it immoral to sell arms to BOTH sides of a war?  Apparently Reagan’s objectives in Nicaragua trumped any concern for morality.  Oliver North did jail time for his involvement in this, but later ran for US Senate, backed by ultra conservative religious leader Jerry Falwell, and almost won!

So one would think that the Republicans would have a hard time winning in 1988, after such disregard for national debt, and wasting so much tax money to fund their friends’ house-building schemes, and being involved in such dastardly wars around the globe; but no, they ran George Herbert Walker Bush, the former Head of the Central Intelligence Agency against Democrat Michael Dukakis, of Massachusetts, the same fairly liberal state, that John F. Kennedy was from.  Dukakis ran a pitiful campaign.  In one city, Norfolk, Virginia, where the US Navy Ships are manufactured, he spoke saying that he was going to cut military spending on ship-building. 

Meanwhile, George HW Bush was running a campaign commercial on television that talked about Willie Horton, an African American who had been released from jail in Massachusetts while Dukakis was governor.  Horton, who had been put in jail for murder, was released under state laws, and NOT under the direct supervision of Dukakis, but still, after he was released, he committed another murder.  This advertising campaign was very effective.  It swayed voters to believe that Dukakis was soft on crime, soft on defense, and would make a terrible President.  Even though Dukakis had done an amazing job turning around the Massachusetts government’s debt problem, and created a surplus of tax money, he lost 49 states, only winning in Massachusetts.  The race card scared voters, to the disgrace of the US Constitution.

This style of negative campaign advertising had always been in play in the United States, but had never been so effective.

George HW Bush had problems as President.  On June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square, in China erupted after weeks of student protests, and many protesters, who were seeking democratic reforms, were killed.  Not as many as in Gwangju in May of 1980, but certainly enough so that the United States should have put sanctions onto China.  Uh, George HW Bush reacted by pleading with the US Congress to pass MOST FAVORED NATION TRADING STATUS for China, which it DID, and which has been made permanent.  HUH?  Why would we be helping to make rich a country that continually puts down Democracy?  Answer:  We always have.  Better answer:

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The number one importer from China to the United States is WILLIAM BUSH, Papa Bush’s brother.  The Bush family could make better profits by bribing a dirty Chinese communist than by risking who the Chinese would vote into office.  That simple.

GHW Bush then killed 3500+ Panamanians in order to arrest their President, Manuel Noriega.  Noriega had been on the CIA payroll when Bush was had of the CIA, but it was determined that rather than just informing on cocaine dealers from Central and South America, Noriega was running drugs into the United States himself, and informing on enemies in order to make a bigger drug empire. Still, killing 3,500 innocent Panamanian citizens in order to capture (not kill) Noriega caused the Bush Administration a lot of embarrassment.  At this time I was a reporter for the Roanoke Times and World News, in Virginia, just south of Washington DC.  The Newsroom was abuzz, because the planes that were taking guns to Honduras and bringing back cocaine into the United States had been rented by Falwell Aviation.  They were rented to none other than Frank Clinton, Bill Clinton’s brother.  When Bill was nominated, in 1992, the FBI’s 300 investigations against Frank Clinton were halted immediately.

Well, this was a hot story, as Jerry Falwell, the owner of the planes, had for years raised money through his church that was handed directly over the CIA for its covert activities.  Falwell also used this tax-free religious money to fund campaigns of Republican candidates.  Noriega’s trial was set for Federal Court in Roanoke, Virginia, but amazingly, before any information implicating Jerry Falwell as the owner of the airplanes used to run guns south and cocaine north could come out, the trial was moved to Miami.  The US Attorney in Virginia said that Noriega could not get a fair trial in Virginia.  This was a lie in order to cover up Falwell’s involvement.

Bush, feeling some stress from his Panama blunder, but at least safe in the knowledge that Noriega was in jail, then sent Mary Gillespie, from the US Embassy in Baghdad, to tell Saddam Hussein that it was alright with the United States if he wanted to invade Kuwait, since he had suffered so many losses, and needed more oil to help refund his ailing economy in Iraq.  Hussein took that bait, and his attacks on Kuwait were used as an excuse to liberate Kuwait, and incapacitate Saddam Hussein.  The real issue was that Saddam Hussein was dumping oil on the world market, thus driving the price below the price that United States oil companies could make a profit.

The United Nations then stepped in and put sanctions onto Iraq, and allowed only a small amount of its oil to be sold in order to give Iraq humanitarian and medical supplies.  The countries that profited from these oil sales were France, Russia and

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India.  They no longer profit form Iraqi oil, and US oil companies are presently sneaking oil out of Iraq, through Iran actually ( Scott Ritter, NY Times, July 2007).  GW Bush has had to try to appease those countries since we attacked Iraq in 2003.

In Desert Storm, Papa Bush had a victory, and was headed for re-election, when the very well-spoken Arkansas Governor, Bill Clinton, burst onto the scene and upset the incumbent in 1992.  Maybe Big Business didn’t like Papa Bush’s style, who knows.

It was impossible for GHW Bush to get legislation passed that would take away more money for domestic issues, like education and welfare, or for the idea of free trade to take hold, because Democrats stood against these proposals.  Here is where Bill Clinton not only ruined the Democratic Party, but also managed to get these outrageous laws passed.  Clinton had won the White House by literally stealing all the Republican ideas.  Now, as a Democrat, he went to legislators, one-at-a-time, telling them why they should pass laws that would hurt the United States Workers, while providing huge profits for United States Companies. Of course, he claimed, that by moving jobs to Mexico, US workers would be better off. He knew he was lying, and this is NOT the traditional role of a Democrat. Democrats must take this stance to get nominated now.

With all the support of the Republicans, and enough Democrats swayed, the United States passed the North American Free Trade Agreement, which stopped all tariffs on goods from Mexico, and the flight of industry from the US to Mexico began.  Very reliable Mexican labor could be had for $2.00 or $3.00 per hour, compared to $8.00 to $30.00 per hour wages in the United States.  Highly polluting companies in California and Colorado, which could not meet local environmental laws moved first, followed by anyone else who wanted to make more profit from cheaper labor. 

Clinton also got the congress to adopt the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (known as GATT 2) which subordinated US laws to the rules of free trade that were hammered out in the G-7 meetings. This means that if a country breaks the free trade rules, it can face enormous sanctions.  These free trade rules apply to the developed world at the expense of the so-called third world.  In other words, the United States is not allowed to support its farmers with subsidies if it hurts, say French farmers, but IS allowed to subsidize its farmers to the extent that it hurts African or South American farmers.

American Politics is thus involved in keeping poor countries poor, in order to gain their human and natural resources, and when a poor country becomes rich (see China) the US does what it can to make a profit from that, and/or lessen the country’s influence. Read any book by Noam Chomsky for further details.

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Under Clinton, and all other Presidents since World War II, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have worked to ensure that poor countries remain poor, by offering their governments loans they can almost assuredly never pay back.  I have been told that South Koreans beat this system by voluntarily offering personal money to help your government pay back such loans.  Bravo.

After getting NAFTA and GATT 2 passed, Clinton then took away the safety nets that help US workers who have been “laid off.”  So now, regardless of the number of children a woman has, and no matter how impossible it is for her to care for her children and work at the same time, she is allowed government assistance to raise her children for ONLY THREE YEARS.  After that, the US Government cuts off the checks, and, well, the people can starve as far as the government is concerned. The bleak chances of finding adequate, affordable daycare in the United States are exacerbated by laws that make providing day care very expensive to do.  All this creates a larger lower class that is willing to, or forced to, work for low wages.

So Clinton did his work for big business, and was granted an eight-year term in office.  Before he was done, he would ALSO bomb Iraq (1998), never work to release the country from sanctions, and have at least one sexual affair that his wife ignored, stating that his love life “just shows how virile he is.”  By staying attached to Bill, Hillary hurt her chances amongst the feminists in the United States, but helped her chances amongst the businessmen who have funded her campaign in 2008.

But so much has happened since GW Bush was elected in 2000.  Most would say, that, in fact, he LOST the 2000 election.  It came down to the state of Florida, and in Florida, the state LAW is that any election that is within 1.5% should have each and every vote recounted for accuracy.  Well the Bush/Gore election totals in Florida were within 700 votes, which is a very small part of 1% of the votes, yet, with the POOR advice of Ramsey Clark (Clark was also part of Saddam Hussein’s defense team in Iraq until Hussein was executed) Mr. Al Gore asked Florida to ONLY recount seven of its 98 counties.

The Supreme Court had originally asked to NOT be involved (as it was against the law FOR them to be involved) but later jumped in when Mr. Bush sued Mr. Gore.  Had the entire state’s votes been recounted, as the LAW PROVIDED, Mr. Gore would have won. This was confirmed by the Associated Press and Rolling Stone Magazine, who paid over $500,000 to have each vote recounted.  By then, of course, the Supreme Court had voted, 5-4 that Bush was the winner.  Thus, in the so-called

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Democracy of the United States, the only nine votes that counted in the WHOLE COUNTRY in 2000, were the nine votes on the US Supreme Court: a court, which is now sadly even more stacked to the conservative side.

Anyone with a ten-year-old reading ability knows that Bush stole the 2000 election.  Well, he stole it again in 2004, only this time in Ohio.  How could a country free to vote in an election reelect George Bush? Well, partly it is because LESS than 55% of those eligible to vote DO vote.  The poor and the young don’t vote in the extreme, while the rich and the old do vote, and tend to vote conservatively.  It is also partly because in the US we have NEVER voted out a sitting president in the middle of a war.  Or he lost, but “won” by stealing the vote in Ohio, as many scholars believe.

A lot of it also has to do with Carl Rove, the man who worked for Bush, and who sent out an eight-page letter to conservative and fundamentalist and Catholic churches in the United States, asking that the ministers and priests read the letter in their services.  As per US law, the letter never actually said “vote for George Bush,” as this would break the Jeffersonian concept of separation of Church and State.  But it did make it OBVIOUS who the church officials were voting for, and who they expected their parishioners to vote for.  Thus, following in the tradition set up by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts, and many others, Bush was deemed to be the MORAL candidate in 2004, even though he was responsible for 500,000+ Iraqi civilian deaths by then, had created torture chambers all over the world, and lied in order to start the Iraq war in the first place. Big media made sure that US voters would ignore the photos of torture at Abu Graib.

President Bush done has ruined our reputation in almost all countries, he has continued the trend to get the US government deeper and deeper into debt, and he has added (by stealing them) to the powers of the Presidency, without the congress or the Supreme Court, stepping in to slow him down, except in one case:  the Supreme Court, even though packed with conservatives, did tell him that his military tribunal system (which has NOT even started the trials of so many of the men held in Cuba) HAD to be changed in order to be constitutional.  Well, Bush bounced this back to the congress and asked them to write a law he could sign or veto, and sure enough, they wrote a law he didn’t like, and sure enough, he vetoed it.  Thus, the prisoners, many of whom have been held for over four years, still have no recourse in any court.  Many have committed suicide, even if it goes against their Muslim beliefs. He has put into power incompetent cabinet members who are simply saying “yes” to whatever Bush and his father’s team dream up.  He has effectively ended the United States’ experiment with

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Democracy.  And most of the Democrats have been right there voting with him the whole way.  Will the next President surrender these powers?  With both parties completely under the control of big money, honestly folks, when do you think we are going to leave Iraq, or any other area that has oil?  It's not just Iran that is in our sites, but Hugo Chavez, in Venezuela too.

            Pat Robertson should have been arrested, tried and found guilty of treason for publicly calling for the execution of a foreign leader (he of course, famously said that Hugo Chavez should be assassinated).  He has NOT been arrested in part because he is a conservative.  How about Robert Novak and his editor and publisher? It DOES NOT MATTER who leaked the fact that Valerie Plame was in the CIA.  Novak's act of writing a story, and his editor's and publisher's act of PRINTING the story in a syndicated column that ran in over 60 newspapers are all acts of treason STRAIGHT UP, without having to know the source.  All the editors should be in jail.

            How about Judith Miller of the so-called "liberal" New York Times? She went to jail to PROTECT the Bush Administration official who leaked Plame's name. Uh, she was PROTECTING the ADMINISTRATION she, as a journalist, was supposed to be watch-dogging. (God bring us back another Molly Ivins!)

            How about the Security and Exchange Commission? Should not its leadership be in jail?  They have withheld information about who short-sold (a bet that a stock will go down) $250 MILLION worth of United Airlines and $250 Million worth of American Airlines less than a week before 9-11-2001.  Such a large bet (to me a half Billion dollars is a large bet) would surely not be made without some sense that you'd win the bet.  In other words, whoever made this bet probably KNEW 9-11-2001 was going to happen, because it was those exact airlines that were hijacked.  ALSO, it a US law that ANY stock purchase or sale this large MUST be disclosed to the public.  STILL, this one NEVER has been disclosed.  The New York Times tried but failed to get this information.

            How about the hundreds of physics, architecture and engineering professors at Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Cal Tech, Northwestern, Chicago, Etc. who will tell you that never in the history of metallurgy has a fire caused the collapse of an entire building whose structure is made of the type of heavy steal girders and beams that made up the World Trade Center.  Is it "surprising" then that a Bush family member was the head of security at the WTC on 9-11-2001? I have no idea about the truth of the 9-11-2001 attacks, but I do no that no credible evidence has EVER linked Osama Bin Laden to the attacks.  If anyone here knows of such evidence, I’d be very interested in reading it.

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Is it "surprising" that the Carlyle Group, of whom GHW Bush (Daddy Bush, or Papa Bush if you like) is the general partner (i.e. CEO) invests the Saudi money, and has for 30 years? Is it "surprising" that 15 of the 19 hijack attackers on 9-11-2001 were from Saudi Arabia, yet, for some reason we did NOT go to war against Saudi Arabia? How about Osama Bin Laden? Was he not our main man in the Mujahade'en offensives (defensives?) against Russia in Afghanistan?  Is he not a member of the House of Saud.  Is not his father a cousin of the "King" of Saudi Arabia?  Indeed, Osama is a "Saudi Prince," and President Bush, at least THREE TIMES has called off the capture or killing of Osama Bin Laden because "a Saudi Prince is visiting him now, and we can't risk killing a Saudi Prince."  Well PHLOOOOEY on that, Bin Laden himself is a Saudi Prince y'all.  Will Bush finally capture Bin Laden just before the 2008 elections?

And, isn't it true that UNOCAL, the oil pipeline specialists, has been wanting to circumvent Iraq and Iran to build a pipeline from Chechnyan oil reserves in the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan and Pakistan for OVER 30 years?  That's why Russia, no longer the USSR, still fights to preserve control over Chechnya, having given up on Ukraine, Georgia, etc.  OIL.  And,  is not one of UNOCAL'S vice presidents the United States Special Envoy to Afghanistan now?  And did not the US Congress step in to prevent the Chinese national oil company form buying UNOCAL until Chevron came up with the money to do so?  Heck, this is nowhere near free trade, so the capitalists are always willing to break their own rules to keep control of oil, and other things.

            Was it not 14 members of the same House of Saud that were staying at the Bush Crawford, Texas Ranch on 9-11-2001?  It was.  And, when, on 9-13-2001 they wanted to leave, and ALL AIR TRAFFIC IN THE US WAS SHUT DOWN except that allowed by Presidential order, a Presidential indeed showed up in Texas allowing the highest members of the House of Saud to depart, before being questioned by CIA, FBI, Police or transportation authorities about WHAT THEIR son/brother/cousin/nephew had been up to recently?  Indeed, away they went.  Read Craig Unger's "House of Bush, House of Saud" to see just how long these oil families have been united.  New World Order, y'all.

            Anyone who thinks that Hillary Clinton would change any of this, ought to go back and realize that WJ “Bill” Clinton, dropped more bombs on Iraq in 1998, than Bush one and Bush two COMBINED during Desert Storm and Shock and Awe.

            The only shocking and awful thing about this current administration and its torture, spying on US citizens without warrants, outing of CIA agents, hoisting a man (Alberto Gonzales) who wrote that torture is OK to ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE  

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UNTIED STATES, making illegal and immoral war against a country that in no way (Iraq's Army was about 10,000 ONLY when we attacked) could have attacked the United States, and was already impoverished and dying of cancer from sanctions and nuclear-waste coated bombs from Desert Storm, detaining "enemy Combatants" without recourse to habeas corpus, defense attorneys, or the ability to gain evidence proving their innocence, yes, the only shocking thing about all of this, to me, is that THE MEDIA HAS NOT COVERED A SINGLE PROTEST AGAINST THIS, and the United States citizenry (see Germany during Hitler's World War) has not protested louder, longer, and with more resolve.

            It's not my or any other working American’s fault that the Democrats kept voting Bush more money for this war.   The legislators and rich businessmen who own them are to blame.  It was a vote to cut off the money that ended the Vietnam War.  Why has Nancy Pelosi and the other "democratic" leadership failed us so?  Because the same big money that owns the Republicans, owns them. 

Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel are the two candidates in this race, out of 18, who are not owned by big money.  Still, Kucinich remains in the congress, and is the only candidate who voted against the Iraq War EVERY TIME a vote came up.  Big money may still own him though, and THAT'S why Kucinich may not be what he says he is, and THAT's why the United States, since at least 1980 has slipped into fascism. Does anyone out there really think Kucinich or Gravel is going to be nominated?  Can ANYONE forget John Kerry's FIRST WORDS of his acceptance speech in (ahem) Boston!?  I don't.  He said, to thunderous APPLAUSE, "My first act as president will be to put 40,000 more troops into Iraq."  Oh beauty, eh?  Nice choice, eh?

            Mussolini defined fascism as the perfect marriage between big business and government, to the mutual and exclusive benefit of big business and government.  I'm willing to go with Benito's definition.  Since all US laborers were HAMMERED by Clinton with NAFTA, GATT 2 and then "Welfare Reform." uh, is it not possible that my protests of the last 23 years have been correct? The protest is summarized thus:  "The battle is not between communism and capitalism, but between capitalism and democracy." That column first appeared in the Florida Alligator, in 1984. and similar columns and letters to editors have appeared in about 40 newspapers around the US ever since.  

The 2008 elections show little chance for improvement.  There are eight major Democrats running including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Christopher Dodd, Joseph Biden, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel.  Of

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these, only Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich have opposed the Iraq War from its beginning.  There is a very good chance Hillary Clinton will be nominated, fail in her attempts to change the over-priced United States health care system, and continue to pursue wars in all oil-rich areas of the world. 

Dennis Kucinich at least talks a good game.  He's certainly the highest ranking currently-seated Democrat that I like.  Granted, Gravel was a Senator, but that was long ago.  Mike Gravel, is in fact a better man than Kucinich.  It was Mike Gravel who filibustered the Senate until they finally voted to end the Vietnam War.  Americans should remember that when he talks.  He also points out (in every single debate) that big money now owns the Democratic Party, not Labor, as was once briefly true in the 60s.  I met with him in September 2006 to see about working on his campaign, but backed off, mostly due to my wife wanting me to not be stressed out about politics anymore.  A wise suggestion on her part.

No Democratic or Republican candidate has a solution to the rising unemployment in the United States, or a way to bring back home the jobs that have left to go to Mexico, China, and many other countries since NAFTA and GATT 2 were passed.  Cheap labor, and “globalization” have permanently eroded the American middle class, and although John Edwards says he is running to help the poorest of the working class, he has no plan that would bring jobs back to the United States.

Furthermore, no Democratic candidate is talking about the mistake that Bill Clinton made in promoting and signing the Welfare Reform Act of 1997. This means that the same people who worked with their hands to build products in former American industries, now have no safety net to protect them from long-lasting unemployment that is inevitable with the jobs moved overseas.  One result of this is that there are now five times more African Americans that call themselves Muslims than there were in 2001.

Worst of all, no Democratic candidate has called for an international war crimes tribunal to try President Bush for the illegal, anti-Geneva convention acts his administration and army have pursued, including, torture, and the holding of prisoner “enemy combatants” that are clearly not enemy combatants.  Democrats should also be calling for the impeachment of George Bush for the illegal spying on United States Citizens without warrants, the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, and for lying to the congress about Saddam Hussein trying to buy Yellow Cake Plutonium from Nigeria in order to have an excuse for war in Iraq.  Evidence now shows that Bush and English Prime Minister Tony Blair knew this concoction was a lie, and met to talk about it over a month before the lie was told to the US congress and people.

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For their part, the Republicans have 10 major candidates running, including: Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Sam Brownbeck, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Alan Keyes, John McCain, Ron Paul, and Tom Tancredo. 

At first, John McCain, the former Prisoner of War in Vietnam, and whose son is in the US Navy right now, was the front-runner, although not supported by many key “Country Club” Republicans, because of his independent spirit, and unwillingness to always go along with what big business wants.  He has already faded, and the next seeming frontrunner was Mitt Romney, but Romney’s support of homosexual unions, and equal protection for homosexuals as spouses has hurt him among religious conservatives, who are vital to Republican candidates.  Next up was Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, who spoke so well after the 9-11-2001 tragedy.  Giuliani has had a famous divorce, and this is part of how Fred Thompson has started to rise among Republican Candidates.

Thompson was an actor, just like Ronald Reagan.  He speaks well, was once elected to the US Senate from the state of Tennessee, a very conservative place. He has also worked as a Republican strategist in Washington, when not in the Senate. Most importantly, Thompson is favored by the Lincoln Group, an extremely wealthy club of Republicans that meets in southern California.  This group managed to get Ronald Reagan elected to Governor of California, and then President, and recently raised many millions of dollars for the campaign of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the current Governor of California.

I believe Thompson will be nominated, and that will give the Republicans a very good chance to retain the White House.  Carl Rove, the Republican strategist, and brilliant campaigner, has quit George Bush’s administration in order to concentrate on how to beat the Democrats in 2008, even though President Bush’s administration has done more to ruin the United States’ standing as a world power than any President in history.

How, then, could the Republicans even have a remote chance to win in 2008?  Simple:  they can influence who they run against.  Already, very much money has been pumped into the Barack Obama campaign.  Since he has only been in the US Senate four years, and has no international experience whatsoever, he would be easy to beat.  He is also an African American, and no African American candidate has done very well in national elections.  Racism still pervades the United States.  Just look at poverty statistics, and how much less African Americans get paid than white Americans DOING THE SAME JOB, and you will see why Obama would lose badly, if nominated.

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If Fred Thompson faces Hillary Clinton, that could be a much closer race, as many Democrats and independent voters look back on Bill Clinton’s administration as a positive one.  Bill Clinton’s influence is part of Hillary’s appeal, as he could serve in her administration, perhaps as Secretary of State, or even as Vice President.

A Clinton victory, of course, would give two families (Bush and Clinton) control of the White House for a minimum of 24 years. It would also assure that a conservative world view continues in the White House.

Finally, neither party will be able to solve the problem of our national, credit card, mortgage, and corporate debt.  This issue is why President Bush has eyed Iran as a war target.  In March, 2006 Iran sold 30 million barrels of oil to China for EUROS.  This was the first major oil trade made for anything but US dollars, and it signaled a new low for United States prestige and power.  Could Bush start a war with Iran before the 2008 elections?  Indeed he could.  China gets almost 30% of its foreign oil supply from Iran.  One way the United States could make sure that China does not simply purchase the United States, is to control the price and delivery of energy to China.  This would assure that the United States could earn some of its dollars back, and keep China from gaining further leverage on the United States.

This war would also pretty much assure the Republicans of winning another four years in the White House, as the leading Democrats are a woman and an African American, both easily beaten if a war is still going on.  Thus, Carl Rove’s Permanent Republican President dream could be realized by a Permanent War in the Middle East.

I’ll finally end this talk about Politics with a warning that concerns economics.  American Politicians, try though they may, have no control over the value of the US dollar.  In Mexico, the value of the Peso was cut almost in half within a week of the passing of NAFTA.  It went from 5 to 9 Pesos to buy a dollar.  That made Mexican labor so much CHEPAER than it already was for American industrialists to take advantage of.  Politics was not involved directly in this, but it is no coincidence that the devaluation of the Mexican Peso happened so quickly after NAFTA passed.

Likewise, Fleet Bank and JP Morgan Bank managed to team up to PURCHASE the central bank of Argentina.  Yes, they bought it form the Argentine government, in 2003.  Argentina was the site of MANY bad loans those banks had made, and they wanted to get their money back out of there somehow.  At the time, Argentina was undergoing an economic meltdown, and the value of the Argentine Peso was dropping rapidly.  Thus, any loans made to Argentina would be paid back in Pesos so valueless that the banks would lose a lot of money, even if the loans were paid back.

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So, after they bought the central bank of Argentina, they got their friends at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to put pressure on the Argentine government by saying that unless the government put into effect “austerity” measures, the IMF and World Bank would no longer lend them any money.  These austerity measures meant that Argentina could not spend its way into a better economy the way Ronald Reagan had.

It also meant that Argentina’s economy worsened quicker.  In the end, many cities faced 70% unemployment, and that’s when the currency traders went to work, and revalued the Peso at one-to-one with the US Dollar.  With a peso so valuable, how could the US profit?  Well, because the Argentine unemployed were willing to work for so little.  President Bush then worked for the Free Trade of the Americas treaty.

In 2006 South Korea thought about changing its reserve money from dollars to Euros.  The New York Stock Exchange dropped 600 points the day this was announced.  Many phone calls and meetings were put together to stop the Korean Central Bank from changing its dollars into Euros. Korea, smartly realized that the American national debt would, at some point, make the Dollar worthless, or very less valuable than it is now.  Thus, an orderly change from Dollars to Euros, while the dollar was still worth SOMETHING, made sense.

South Korea holds the fourth largest amount of dollars in the world. Only China, Saudi Arabia and Japan hold more. If South Korea sold its dollars to buy Euros, the dollar would go down and the Euro would go up.  Well, South Korea may not have sold dollars and bought Euros, but the dollar is going down and the Euro is going up anyway.  The price of gold has gone up from $280 to $685. This indicates that many investors don’t have faith in ANY currency.

If the United States were to print up dollars and pay off its debt to China, there would be so many dollars floating around, that the currency would have no value.  Likewise, if oil starts trading in Euros rather than dollars, the dollar has no value, because everyone knows about our debt problem by now.

War is the reason the US is in such debt.  If our economy fails, everyone else goes down with us.  In order to prevent an economic meltdown I predict World War III.

World War III would be a political decision.  The US is politically set up to accommodate this, should it be necessary to avert economic collapse.  It would not be the first time the United States used foreign war to defeat economic problems at home.

These web sites will add useful reading:  www.jimhightower.com  www.chomsky.info  www.michaelmoore.com  www.howardzinn.org

dougstuber@aol.com

reading choices:

“Lies, and the Lying Liars who Tell Them”  Al Franken

“The People’s History of the United States,” Howard Zinn

“House of Bush, House of Saud” Craig Unger

ALL BOOKS BY Noam Chomsky, and folks, there are at least 25 of them, all small though.

All books by Ralph Nader.

Magazines:  “Multinational Monitor”  :”The Progressive” and “the New Yorker, especially when Seymour Hersch is reporting. His story about the Bush Administration

Eyeing a war in Iran in the October 8^th issue is an eye-opener for those who haven’t

Heard all the stuff Bush has been saying about Iran recently.