Following is a link to an opinion piece written by Chris Hedges, referring to work done by Micahel Hudson. I respect the opinions of both men. I suspect their predictions are sound, but I don’t know. Consider this food for thought. dhfjr.
The American Empire is Bankrupt
By Chris Hedges
This week marks the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful.
Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America’s imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze.
There are meetings being held Monday and Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia, (formerly Sverdlovsk) among Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance. Watch what happens there carefully. The gathering is, in the words of economist Michael Hudson, ”œthe most important meeting of the 21st century so far.”
It is the first formal step by our major trading partners to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If they succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value, the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket, interest rates will climb and jobs will hemorrhage at a rate that will make the last few months look like boom times. State and federal services will be reduced or shut down for lack of funds. The United States will begin to resemble the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe. Obama, endowed by many with the qualities of a savior, will suddenly look pitiful, inept and weak. And the rage that has kindled a handful of shootings and hate crimes in the past few weeks will engulf vast segments of a disenfranchised and bewildered working and middle class. The people of this class will demand vengeance, radical change, order and moral renewal, which an array of proto-fascists, from the Christian right to the goons who disseminate hate talk on Fox News, will assure the country they will impose.
much more at the link
without confidence, it’s hard to do squat. i like your optimism, genuine yet realistic as it is (it’s hard to see the roses when wearing rose-colored glasses), even if it’s guarded optimism. while i don’t share it, it’s not like …um… oh okay, i got something -it’s not like it can’t get worse yet. where there’s a will, there’s a way, always. i think the difference between us is my wariness of political opportunists, like those whom got us in the mess in the first place.
seriously, seems to me this meeting, that we were so pointedly not let into, may have been called for more than one purpose.
but prophets such as Daniel predicted a succession of powers leading up to this new world order concept. Even if you’re not, a review of history shows similar patterns–one evil empire after another–successfully worse in nature.
While we as Americans may have enjoyed benefits as citizens of the current empire in the same way a Roman citizen would have during that epoch, much of the rest of the world has suffered at our hand.
Should we be supplanted, the next version is almost assuredly going to be worse. For Americans, it will be a hell of a lot worse.
I did inhale.
george orwell and h. g. wells, back in the 1930s, debated (or at least discussed) 2 things in particular, New World Order, and Socialism. i don’t know that that dialogue ever quite concluded. i do suspect it influenced the times. and our patriarchal families of power. perhaps where it went off the rails into world events.
i’d like to imagine if the discourse fully flowered, it would have ended up arriving at the realization of what you’re noting, and publicly stated, loudly.
optimism… it’s hard for most to have.
you note our benefits compared to the rest, and with that comes too the contrast in consumption and so on. it’s hard to imagine that continuing as it had, yeah.
or our population growth at all.
labor pains. people may suffer, and die, and the birthrate may decline, but i believe, for myself, after the cusp will be a blossum, right here, online. labor pains.
more people share your priorities than my personal own, i honestly believe. i respect that and spare you my planned reply that pertains to my own optimism. speculation abounds and there’s a bunch of camps of it -and a whole lotta text better placed elsewhere.
frankly, i’m excited for the future, damned excited. i may not be a typical american by far (idiot starving artiste stereotypifies me better), but i indeed am one. just sayin’. broadly speaking though, your point’s well taken indeed. general america’s gonna crap out.
& so will i when (& if?) they pull the plug, yeah, right?