and all of this is BS.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

now apply your Marxist past and get us out of this. or is your inner Marxist happy? ;>
editted to add:
I bring up the Marxist angle, because at the beginning of this war, I found an article by some Indian Marxist economists that argued that this war was about dollar hegemony. And it was completely pooh-poohed by the agonist BB members then. but there were more wingers and less economists then, as opposed to now. you and I both know, there's no better critique of capitalism than Marx. and judging from where we're at, he predicted things to a T.
me, I'm predicting r/evolution by 2012. and now I must go make breakfast corndogs. happy thinking, people.

rather than thinking like a Marxist or any other political economist, will get us out of this somehow.

If you want me to put America first, I can suggest some things that will be painful, but they will be more painful for America's opponents.

1) A super trade war. We'll survive; China will have a revolution. Russia will no longer have the inflated oil wealth to make mischief. Iran won't have the money it has; its power will implode in the Middle East. There will be chaos, and we'll need to find bases there out of the way until the chaos subsides.

2) Rationing here of commodities as in World War II. Downsizing retail, debt, etc by regulation and rationing.

3) Forgetting capitalism for a while. Focusing on training the next crack American work force.

4) Retooling education so it is cheaper and so everyone has a skill after a two year degree. This means downsizing university programs that impart little value today.

Ian said he'd like to see another Roosevelt. You'd have to have one to do this, and you'd have to have legislators with the nerve to follow him. So you'd have to have a moratorium on much of the special interests that have corrupted the House and Senate.

And you'd have to be very flexible, so that when rationing was not doing its job, you changed it up.

Then you would wait and watch the world try to recover without the American dollar while you fix your own house.

You asked.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

I wouldn't put any bets on America in that sort of fight with China. They had thousands of years of mercantile and macroeconomic experience and understood the relationship of economics to warfare when America's grandparents in Europe were throwing their bones onto rush-covered dirt floors for the dogs to gnaw. They will have unpleasant surprises for America that are orders of magnitude more sophisticated, subtle and forward-thinking than the current leadership shows any signs of being able to grasp. Even an American victory would wind up as an interchangeable term for "Pyrrhic victory".

For everyone's sake I hope this ide is strangled in its crib.

the US might still win a trade war with China. But it won't win it with the oil producers and China at the same time.

- EOM

with a buyer's strike.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

would spike through the roof and the dollar would have a run on it. Do it at the same time with oil producers, and you're looking at a 20% to 30% decline in standard of living.

If Americans are willing to do that, then sure, at the end of the day they might "win".

the absolute poorhouse, generally with much more unstable populations. We would win relative to them. We are losing relative to them now. Also, the dollar would not likely have a run as the economies of the other countries would turn south faster. It might become the secure and preferred currency once again.

As John Kennedy said, ask what you can do for your country(take a cut in standard of living); not what it can do for you(subsidize Chinese Industry through trade policies that allow you to buy three Barbies instead of one).

If you don't do something along these lines, you're looking at a huge cut later. And I've already taken one, if I hold the S&P 500. We're back to 2000 levels with the dollar down 40% against the Euro.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

if the US is willing to shoot itself in the foot it has on the throat of some other economies, I suppose it can "win".

Actually, something like that is going to happen unintentionally anyway. I expect major protectionism within 2 congresses. 3 absolute max.

the better for the foot to heal.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

the way, raising my bet while the millions of jobs they need to create to avoid unrest go uncreated, while the new buildings in Beijing go empty. They had a mini implosion of real estate in Guangdong a few years ago. It was not pretty. It would be something else in Beijing and Shanghai. Cinda Asset Management and the other three bogus entities for Chinese bank bad debt would be the only growth industry in the country.

Meanwhile, we could invest some time in alternative energy research while the oil producing states go hungry. So ten years from now when they try to sell that stuff to us, we can say 'no' to most of it.

You don't need to fight this war with men, you save your own folks to retool for the next global go-round if there is one.

I'm an old style Democrat. I think about my people first; I'll let you think about yours first.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

it might help me to understand "super trade war" and "forgetting capitalism" all in the same sentence. I suppose it's possible.

you haven't gone ex-pat yet, have you?
my only interest in America first-ing, is that it would seem that we are the drivers of this train wreck; and as such, it is our responsibility to avert it. which might be better than having China
or whoever allow us to sleep in the bed of our own making
yes, it seems insurmountable. but I have faith that there may be a win-win scenario, lest we radioactively go the way of dinosaurs.

ow, who knew 2 budweisers could hurt the next morning? I was hoping that Booker's might quiet the dogs, cuz coffee ain't doin a thing ;>
I'd like to ask more questions though, when my head is not pounding.

means we minimize purchases of Chinese and other foreign goods( a buyer's strike, if you will).

Forgetting capitalism means largely what we did in WWII, or a version of it; there was rationing for a time.

I have no faith that there is a win/win situation with the current political landscape. It will be they win/ we lose.

The universities, largely run by postmodern democrats, are as much a part of the problem as Wall Street. They take the funds of the middle class and return them an education that is for the most part meaningless.

Wall Street, meanwhile, is raising capital to outsource the jobs which the education is allegedly for.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

but I've always agreed w/ you re: wall street, universities, and a lack of faith in the current political landscape. but I do have some faith in the general population left....well, up until you squashed it. ;D

:)

I have faith in the mob, the people.

http://carl-sandburg.com/

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

The reason the article was met with hostility because it was a crock of shit in proposing that we invaded because Iraq was thinking of going to euros.

It isn't essential which currency oil is traded in, nor is it essential for the dollar to be the world's "reserve" currency. What is important is where money ends up, and what is done with it once it is parked there.

If money continues to be parked in the US, then they could trade barrels of oil in Zloty's or Quatloos for all the difference it made. If money is not parked in the United States, and is not spent on goods the United States makes, it can be traded in dollars and it won't matter. Oil was traded in pounds for a while after the British Empire was already kaput.

The other question is what is done with parked money. In this decade the US has built out our mcMansion infrastructure with parked money. This was bad all the way around for our economy, and good for those people who wanted to see us have huge sunk oil costs and large houses to fill with junk. These people were, not coincidentally, loaning us the money.

Strange how drug dealers are willing to extend a great deal of credit to buy more drugs, that.

People often latch on to irrelevant technical details, and ascribe them great importance. Saddam's threat to go Euro is an example of false cause and effect thinking. The war in Iraq was about oil, and it is the control of oil that supports the dollar, not the accounting unit involved. This is why petro-currencies such as the pound and the loonie have done well. Oil isn't traded in Canadian dollars, and that doesn't mean anything at all, because the Canadians are, right now, selling asphalt mixed with sand at $75 a barrel.

Keeps going this way and I am going to start sneaking out at night and prying up parts of the interstate...

arguments have been overdrawn although some reports are that some of those doing that kind of paranoia were running around the OSP in 2002 fulminating against Saddam for threatening the dollar.

But my understanding is that there are significant advantages to being the world reserve currency and with oil priced in dollars because it has meant that capital flows will have to come to American banks and through the stock and bond markets. Isn't that how the money parking lot was in part constructed?

http://www.rupe-india.org/34/military.html

it ain't about Saddam & Euros. but it does wrongly presuppose a desired strong dollar, IMO.
and try not to be so nasty, I have a hangover....

(my dad disocovered many of the wells in the Putamayo basin), I can tell you that occupying the land and producing the wells are two distinct matters. As long as the locals believe their resources are being stolen from them and provide no benefit for the home team, people will destroy pipelines, infrastructure and take pot-shots at the people operating facilities. Defending all of this is very difficult and costly.

The short answer is we won't win.

I did inhale.

we perfected this strategy eons ago. the neocons fucked it up by spouting "democracy". install a strong man. call up a draft. rig their elections. it ain't that hard, is it?
damn, it is going to take a nuclear false flag or provocation to win this, ain't it? and you guys wonder why the Dems capitulate?
EVERYTHING is riding on winning at this point.

stir up them hornets.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

The CW in DC can jump up and down and shout from the rooftops we are winning or in the future we have won but it won't matter to most of the world. To them we have already lost.

a couple million men, sure, it can make the oil flow. As long as it's willing to, say, kill a couple million for Iraqis very publicly.

of revolution.

Odd how reminiscent much the anti-terror infrastructure efforts of the last five years seem to be of the kind of Baron-Haussman-like infrastructure you'd build to suppress violent revolution, isn't it?

By snorting the libertarianism crack about unregulated buying and selling leading inevitably to a free market. Democracy? We've installed weak Democracies before and done perfectly well. Taiwan, Japan, Germany, Italy, South Korea are all examples of nominally Democratic states which were produced by US occupation, that never-the-less managed to elect governments we were prefectly happy to do business with.

A strong man is coming to Iraq sooner or later, and we will do business with him.

Even assuming this were remotely possible first and second without bringing us to war with global rivals like China and Russia, then our short term economic outlook would be decent - like Britain has managed to ride the North Sea express. However, long-term we will suffer the fate of all bullies - we will grow still fatter and lazier gorging ourselves on our stolen honey until one of those global rivals beats our pants off with the technological advances they have earned not stolen.

This isn't a game purely about who has the most at a given moment regardless of how you get it. The game is about what you can actually create.

Most of American history has been a balance of taking the virgin extractable wealth of this continent together with an ability to innovate and create with the cheap labor of imported talent. The theft part was never so obvious nor did it effect global rivals. The theft that you propose is obvious and is out of the pockets of global rivals. This usually does not end well expecially when you start to lose your ability to create and innovate and when you close your borders and when your essence is that of a selfish, gluttonous bully.

from under this decline of our empire? really. given the current parameters, end the wars, fix the debt, fix the economy. how ya gonna do it? because we need a viable answer to combat the CW of DC.

I'm not going to take the bait. There are long, complicated ways to work off the consequences of overindulgence which other people here at the Agonist can do a far better job of explaining.

It is you, however, that I am particularly concerned with. You have done a great job representing the neocon realpolitik here. Steal and murder your way out of your problems.

Frankly and simply your laziness and greed disgust me.

sheesh you owe me a keyboard! Really, I'm thinking there is a serious case of miscommunication going on here.

you have to study your enemy to defeat him, this I know.
corndogs, corndogs, corndogs....
but I really need that drink, preferably something w/ bitters!

You and 'ol Joe Cropsey, meeting, plotting, snickering. And here I thought, oh, just never mind. I'm shocked, shocked.

as you don't know that I'm really a radical Marxist in the body of a shop owning cook. Madame DeFarge w/ a skillet, perhaps... ;>

Quite right. And I did take the bait and lie here mortally wounded.

dk is far from the way you desscribe- but is simply doing left realpolitik blueskying in the way some people on the left refuse to do.

It is unlikely the US will "win the wars" and get out- but it is not a logical impossiblilty- and treating it as not to be talked about
is actually a weakness in many people's view of the future.. Say how it's not possible, demolish it, but never never refuse to bring it up.

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

There is a change in energy basis coming, we are entering a new wave of industrialism. I used to refer to the first one as the water/wave economy, but a friend of mine has made excellent arguments to call it the mechanical economy.

Mechanical economy - printing press, sailing, water wheels, gunpowder, the factory. basic mill
Pressure economy - steam engine, chemistry, physics, precision tools, measurement, telegraph, advanced mill
Analog economy - petroleum, telephone, broadcast, reproduction, the assembly line

Digital economy has many components, but not its engine. If the United States wants to survive the transition of states, as the UK did from later mechanical to the pressure economy, it has to do what the UK did, and stake everything on the future, look at the world through the eyes of that future system, and dominate it, rather than spending all our effort to defend the old system.

Note that the British in the war of 1812 did not attempt to recapture the lost American colonies, but focused increasingly an Africa and India and China, which were the places that would produce the next wave of goods and profits. They also got obsessive about recoaling stations before most nations did.

you have to build a crack workforce. That's why you have to take down the university system in its present form, in order to recreate a workforce without the typical high cost of academic diversions.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

As far as my thinking goes, the middle east is a declining resource. And other countries aren't going to let the United States have all of it--their economies are as dependent on the black gold as yours.

The fuel that runs the world is dwindling and it isn't possible for economies to grow their economies based on a declining resource.

When push comes to shove, the American dollar as a reserve currency will be dropped like a hot potato.

What is the plan when it becomes obvious, that fiat currencies are as worthless as the printing presses that churn them out?

and the ultra conspiracy minded. everybody is buying the biggest aquifers they can. there's a lot of money to be made in dwindling resources, IIRC.

that the rich have better access to the foreign deals, offsetting whatever weakness they experience in American securities with foreign investments.

Up to now the central banks have been catering to them.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

way to tax.

Easiest way to tax.

"Small government" = Unitary Executive (dictatorship of the presidency)

"Low taxes" = Game of Monopoly with US owning Park Place (deregulation and asset inflation, along with money parking in the US, means that wealth flows to the top without the middle class perceiving itself as being "taxed")

"Strong military" = Military-Industrial-Governmental complex (the "revolving door") rules. (neoconservativsm = neo-fascism)

"Traditional values" = Authoritarianism (with added benefit of co-opting social conservatives for neo-liberal economic purposes and neo-imperialistic politics)

to a Republican top. At least, that was the K-Street strategy as I understood it--to create a class of Republican plutocrats.