The rebels in Libya are in the middle of a life or death civil war and Moammar Gadhafi is still in power and yet somehow the Libyan rebels have had enough time to establish a new Central Bank of Libya and form a new national oil company. Perhaps when this conflict is over those rebels can become time management consultants. They sure do get a lot done. What a skilled bunch of rebels – they can fight a war during the day and draw up a new central bank and a new national oil company at night without any outside help whatsoever. If only the rest of us were so versatile! But isn’t forming a central bank something that could be done after the civil war is over? According to Bloomberg, the Transitional National Council has “designated the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and the appointment of a governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.” Apparently someone felt that it was very important to get pesky matters such as control of the banks and control of the money supply out of the way even before a new government is formed.
Of course it is probably safe to assume that the new Central Bank of Libya will be 100% owned and 100% controlled by the newly liberated people of Libya, isn’t it?
Most people don’t realize that the previous Central Bank of Libya was 100% state owned. The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia’s article on the former Central Bank of Libya….
The Central Bank of Libya (CBL) is 100% state owned and represents the monetary authority in The Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and enjoys the status of autonomous corporate body. The law establishing the CBL stipulates that the objectives of the central bank shall be to maintain monetary stability in Libya , and to promote the sustained growth of the economy in accordance with the general economic policy of the state.
Since the old Central Bank of Libya was state owned, it was essentially under the control of Moammar Gadhafi.
But now that Libya is going to be “free”, the new Central Bank of Libya will be run by Libyans and solely for the benefit of Libyans, right?
Of course it is probably safe to assume that will be the case with the new national oil company as well, isn’t it?
Over the past couple of years, Moammar Gadhafi had threatened to nationalize the oil industry in Libya and kick western oil companies out of the country, but now that Libya will be “free” the people of Libya will be able to work hand in hand with “big oil” and this will create a better Libya for everyone.
Right?
Of course oil had absolutely nothing to do with why the U.S. “inva—” (scratch that) “initiated a kinetic humanitarian liberty action” in Libya.
When Barack Obama looked straight into the camera and told the American people that the war in Libya is in the “strategic interest” of the United States, surely he was not referring to oil.
After all, war for oil was a “Bush thing”, right? The Democrats voted for Obama to end wars like this, right? Surely no prominent Democrats will publicly support this war in Libya, right?
Surely Barack Obama will end the bombing of Libya if the international community begins to object, right?
Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize. He wouldn’t deeply upset the other major powers on the globe and bring us closer to World War III, would he?
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has loudly denounced “coalition strikes on columns of Gaddafi’s forces” and he believes that the U.S. has badly violated the terms of the UN Security Council resolution….
“We consider that intervention by the coalition in what is essentially an internal civil war is not sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council resolution.”
So to cool off rising tensions with the rest of the world, Obama is going to call off the air strikes, right?
Well, considering the fact that Obama has such vast foreign policy experience we should all be able to rest easy knowing that Obama will understand exactly what to do.
Meanwhile, the rebels seem to be getting the hang of international trade already.
They have even signed an oil deal with Qatar!
Rebel “spokesman” Ali Tarhouni has announced that oil exports to Qatar will begin in “less than a week“.
Who knew that the rag tag group of rebels in Libya were also masters of banking and international trade?
We sure do live in a strange world.
Tonight, Barack Obama told the American people the following….
“Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.”
So now we are going to police all of the atrocities in all of the other countries around the globe?
The last time I checked, the government was gunning down protesters in Syria.
Is it time to start warming up the Tomahawks?
Or do we reserve “humanitarian interventions” only for those nations that have a lot of oil?
In fact, atrocities are currently being committed all over Africa and in about a dozen different nations in the Middle East.
Should we institute a draft so that we will have enough young men and women to police the world with?
We all have to be ready to serve our country, right?
The world is becoming a smaller place every day, and you never know where U.S. “strategic interests” are going to be threatened next.
The rest of the world understands that we know best, right?
Of course the rest of the world can surely see our good intentions in Libya, can’t they?
Tensions with Russia, China and the rest of the Arab world are certainly going to subside after they all see how selfless our “humanitarian intervention” has been in Libya, don’t you think?
In all seriousness, we now live in a world where nothing is stable anymore. Wars and revolutions are breaking out all over the globe, unprecedented natural disasters are happening with alarming frequency and the global economy is on the verge of total collapse.
By interfering in Libya, we are just making things worse. Gadhafi is certainly a horrible dictator, but this was a fight for the Libyan people to sort out.
We promised the rest of the world that we were only going to be setting up a “no fly zone”. By violating the terms of the UN Security Council resolution, we have shown other nations that we cannot be trusted and by our actions we have increased tensions all over the globe.
So what do all of you think about what is going on in Libya? Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….
Is the U.S. government on the verge of a massive debt problem? For years, the U.S. government has been able to borrow all the money that it has wanted to at extremely low interest rates. But now many of the lending sources that the U.S. government has been depending on are drying up. Even before this recent crisis in Japan, a number of big players were moving away from U.S. Treasuries and the U.S. Federal Reserve was having to step in to pick up the slack. But now this debt crunch is about to get a whole lot worse. For years, many had feared that it would be China that would start dumping U.S. government debt, but now it turns out that Japan is going to be the real problem. Right now, Japan is the second largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt. Japan currently holds about $882 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds and they are likely going to have to liquidate much of that in order to fund the rebuilding of their nation. So needless to say they won’t be accumulating any more U.S. government debt. But the U.S. government still needs to borrow a trillion and a half dollars from someone every single year. So where in the world are they going to get it?
This is called a debt problem. Have you ever gotten to the point where you are in debt up to your eyeballs and nobody wants to lend you any more money?
Well, the U.S. government is rapidly reaching that point.
Even before the crisis in Japan, several of the big boys had starting moving away from U.S. government debt.
So if foreign nations like Japan are not gobbling up U.S. government debt and big bond funds like PIMCO are not buying any of it, then who in the world is going to be purchasing the massive amounts of debt that the U.S. government is constantly pumping out?
Well, many of you already know that answer.
The Federal Reserve is going to step in of course. The Federal Reserve knows that if the U.S. government cannot borrow gigantic quantities of money at super low interest rates it will go broke. So the Federal Reserve is just going to keep buying up most new U.S. government debt. It is just that simple.
But isn’t that a Ponzi scheme?
Of course it is. Let’s not mince words here. It is a total scam.
And it is a scam that cannot go on indefinitely.
The truth is that the Ponzi Scheme of the U.S. Treasury issuing bonds and the Federal Reserve buying them up cannot last forever as PIMCO’s Bill Gross noted in his March newsletter….
“Basically, the recent game plan is as simple as the Ohio State Buckeyes’ “three yards and a cloud of dust” in the 1960s. When applied to the Treasury market it translates to this: The Treasury issues bonds and the Fed buys them. What could be simpler, and who’s to worry? This Sammy Scheme as I’ve described it in recent Outlooks is as foolproof as Ponzi and Madoff until… until… well, until it isn’t.”
Gross also noted in his recent newsletter that the Federal Reserve is currently buying up about 70 percent of all new U.S. government debt.
So now that Japan is out of the picture, how high will that figure go now?
80 percent?
90 percent?
Over the past several weeks there has been all kinds of speculation about whether “quantitative easing” will be extended past June or not.
Well, whether they call it “quantitative easing” or not, the truth is that the Federal Reserve is going to have to continue to “buy” most new U.S. government debt or the system will crash.
We have gotten to the point where the U.S. federal government cannot continue to function without Federal Reserve monetization of the debt.
This is a sign that we are rapidly approaching the financial endgame.
So why doesn’t the U.S. government just stop spending so much stinking money and stop getting us all into so much debt?
Well, because there isn’t enough political will in Washington D.C. to do any real budget cuts, and if our politicians did balance the budget at this point it would crash the economy.
Just the other day, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to fund the federal government that would cut 6 billion dollars from U.S. government spending.
Now the debt normally does not go up that much on a typical day. But what this example does show is the losing battle that our politicians are fighting.
The truth is that the U.S. government has to keep going into more debt. Under the current system the alternative would be to collapse the economy.
But the debt that we have already piled on to the backs of future generations is absolutely criminal.
How mad do you think future generations are going to be with us for heaping 14 trillion dollars of debt on to their shoulders?
Talk about a debt problem!
But this is what we get for allowing a private central bank to run our financial system. This debt-based system was designed to fail from its very inception.
The man supposedly “in charge” over at the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, has a track of record of incompetence that is absolutely staggering. It is a mystery why our representatives in Washington D.C. are not howling for his resignation.
Instead, most of our politicians continue to express blind faith in our current financial system and they continue to insist that everything is going to be okay.
Well, everything is not going to be okay. The Obama administration is projecting that the federal budget deficit for this fiscal year will be an all-time record 1.65 trillion dollars.
Of course they are also trying to convince us that budget deficits will go down in future years, but by now we should all know not to trust the rosy future projections of government officials.
After all, it was only a few short years ago that Bush administration officials were promising that we would be swimming in huge budget surpluses by now.
The truth is that the government has been lying about all of this for a long time. For now, the Federal Reserve is just going to keep monetizing U.S. government debt for as long as it can.
This Ponzi scheme will keep on working and working and working until someday it simply doesn’t anymore.
When that day arrives, the U.S. government debt problem is going to unleash hell on world financial markets.
The ratio of government handouts to wages and salaries in the United States is now at an all-time high. According to TrimTabs Investment Research, government handouts have reached a level that is equivalent to 35 percent of all wages and salaries in the United States. Considering the fact that this figure was only 21 percent back in the year 2000 and only 10 percent back in 1960 that is very frightening. The sad truth is that today the American people are more dependent on direct government payments than they ever have been before. What this does is that it takes formerly independent Americans and transforms them into “sheeple” and pets of the government. Today we have tens of millions of Americans that eagerly await the crumbs that the federal government tosses them each month. This is one reason why our national debt is exploding, but our politicians like this system because it enables them to buy votes. Meanwhile, the federal government and the international corporations that dominate our economy have rigged the game so that power and money are becoming increasingly centralized in their hands. As a result of the system that the “big boys” have developed, millions of small businesses across the country are being absolutely crushed, the standard of living of the middle class is gradually being destroyed and more American families slip into poverty ever single day. What we need to do is to dramatically reduce the power of both the federal government and the big corporations so that small businesses and individuals can thrive once again, but instead “activists” such as Michael Moore are out there demanding even more taxes and even more government handouts.
Not that a “safety net” is a bad thing. We simply are not going to allow tens of millions of Americans to starve out in our streets. However, it has gotten to the point where the majority of American families are now dependent on the U.S. government in one form or another and that is very, very wrong.
More government handouts are never a long-term solution to anything. Handouts do not give people dignity. Handouts do not teach people to be independent. Handouts do not enable people to live the “American Dream”. Handouts are not the path to prosperity.
What the American people need are jobs and an environment where small businesses can thrive. But instead, the federal government has allowed the big global corporations to ship millions of our jobs out of the country and the federal government continues to burden our small businesses with an endless array of new taxes and regulations.
Who is successful in America today?
It is the big boys. Everyone else is being crushed.
This is what the founding fathers tried to warn us about. They did not want the federal government to have much power at all, and they were deeply suspicious of large corporations.
But we have turned our backs on the principles of the founding fathers.
We should be figuring out how to get back to the America that our founding fathers originally tried to create, but instead all of the attention is being given to “activists” such as Michael Moore who are calling for even more taxes and even more government handouts. The following video is of Michael Moore giving a speech to protesters in Madison, Wisconsin on March 5th, 2011. His speech was entitled “America Is Not Broke”….
Yes, the “little guy” is being absolutely crushed in America today. But for people like Michael Moore the solution is always to tax the middle class more and to pass out even more government handouts.
That isn’t going to solve anything. Most of the ultra-wealthy have turned avoiding taxes into an art form. A third of all the wealth in the world is now held in “offshore banks“. Many of our largest corporations don’t pay a dime in federal taxes even as they pass out multi-million dollar bonuses to their executives.
Raising taxes in most definitely not the answer. Those that have mastered the art of avoiding taxes will continue to do so no matter how high you raise them.
The truth is that we need to shut down the IRS and scrap the current tax system entirely. It simply does not work.
What we need to do is to get the federal government and the big corporations under control and transfer the power back to the American people.
That is what our founding fathers intended. They intended for the common man to be empowered to start businesses, create wealth and pursue happiness.
But instead tens of millions of Americans have become addicted to government handouts. When large numbers of people give up and willingly become wards of the government that is not good for society.
Unfortunately, more Americans today are dependent on the U.S. government than ever before. Just consider the following statistics….
-According to TrimTabs Investment Research, social welfare benefits in the United States have risen by $514 billion over the past two years alone.
-As 2007 began, only about 26 million Americans were on food stamps, but today over 44 million Americans are now on food stamps.
-Over 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid.
-Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 American is on Medicaid.
–53 million Americans received $703 billion in Social Security benefits in 2010.
-Right now the U.S. government is either writing or guaranteeing well over 90 percent of all mortgages in the United States.
-It is being projected that extended unemployment benefits will cost the federal government $34 billion over the next two years.
-30 U.S. states have borrowed a total of $41.5 billion from the federal government just so that they could continue paying out unemployment benefits during the recession.
-Entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare now account for 58% of all U.S. government spending.
But what else should we expect? The federal government has been using a sledgehammer to endlessly pound away on the capacity of small businesses and individuals to create wealth and jobs and opportunities. The business atmosphere in the United States is now so toxic that it is amazing that any small businesses have survived.
Most Americans find themselves with no other way to make a living other than to work for someone else. But the big global corporations have discovered that they can make much larger profits by getting rid of American workers and by shipping our jobs overseas and our politicians are allowing them to get away with it.
The truth is that both political parties don’t have the answers. Neither party seems to have any clue about how to stop millions of jobs from leaving the United States and neither party seems to have any clue about how to create a business environment inside the United States where individuals and small businesses can actually thrive.
How much longer will it be before we all finally admit that we are experiencing total system failure in this country? Should we all just quit trying and sit on our couches waiting for the next government handout? The truth is that there aren’t nearly enough jobs for all Americans anyway.
The middle class is dying and the establishment has us all fighting with each other. The left and the right are busy fighting about taxes and budget cuts while the ultra-wealthy continue to enjoy massive profits and incredibly low taxes in the globalized economic system that we have allowed our politicians to create.
Yes, there are tens of millions of Americans that are deeply suffering right now and they need to be helped.
But government handouts are never a long-term solution to anything. What we need to do is to massively reduce the power of the federal government, massively reduce the power of the big corporations and stop businesses and jobs from being shipped out of the country. We also need to create an environment in the United States that is very favorable to small businesses. That would give our country a chance to start creating good jobs again.
But instead, we continue to allow our politicians to destroy our economy. We actually have 10 percent fewer middle class jobs in this country than we did just ten years ago. The middle class is being systematically destroyed. All of the wealth and all of the power are slowly being transferred into the hands of big government and the big corporations.
The vast majority of the rest of us are being transformed from strong, independent, prosperous Americans into dehumanized sheeple that can’t wait for the next government check to come in.
Does anyone out there actually believe that this is what our founding fathers originally intended?
The end of QE2 is still several months away and yet quite a few top Federal Reserve officials are already hinting that more quantitative easing may be necessary. Apparently the U.S. economy is not moving forward as rapidly as they would like. So it looks like “QE3″ could be on the way. But did anyone out there actually believe that quantitative easing would come to a complete stop in June? Whether they call it “QE3″ or something else entirely, the reality of the matter is that we have now come to a time when the Federal Reserve is going to be continually purchasing a significant percentage of all new U.S. government debt. This is essentially a gigantic Ponzi scheme, but sadly there is just not enough money in the rest of the world to be able to continue to feed the U.S. government’s voracious appetite for debt. Right now Ben Bernanke and his cohorts are trying to break the news to us gently, but anyone with half a brain can see what is happening. The only way for the game to keep going is for the Federal Reserve to print lots more money, and that is going to be incredibly bad for the U.S. economy in the long run.
The other day James Bullard, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, made national headlines when he declared that Fed officials should “never say never” when it comes to QE3 and more quantitative easing. But the truth is that other Fed officials have been dropping public hints about the “need” for QE3 for several weeks now. Just consider the following quotes from top Federal Reserve officials….
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in response to a question about the potential for QE3 at the National Press Club….
“In the end, we’ll just ask the same questions. Where’s the economy going, and what do various inflation indicator look like? We’ll ask those questions. If unemployment is still too low, then we may continue. If we’re moving towards full employment, then we won’t need to stimulate more.”
William Dudley, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during a recent speech at New York University….
“The economy can be allowed to grow rapidly for quite some time before there is a real risk that shrinking slack will result in a rise in underlying inflation.”
James Bullard, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis during a recent speech at the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce….
“The natural debate now is whether to complete the program, or to taper off to a somewhat lower level of asset purchases. Quantitative easing has been an effective tool, even while the policy rate is near zero. The economic outlook has improved since the program was announced.”
Charles Evans, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago during a recent interview with The Financial Times….
“The message that comes out of what I think of as high-quality research on this subject is that policy ought to remain accommodative for really quite a while, even a while after conditions start to improve.”
So how in the world did things get to the point where the Federal Reserve feels forced to recklessly print gigantic piles of money?
Well, it didn’t happen overnight. Back during the 1980s and 1990s there were many people that desperately tried to warn about what would happen if U.S. government debt was not brought under control.
Unfortunately, our politicians did not heed those warnings.
Today, the U.S. national debt has reached a grand total of $14,137,541,098,872.71. It is 14 times larger than it was just 30 years ago. It is the largest single debt in the history of the world.
So why don’t our politicians just balance the budget now so that we don’t keep having to borrow so much money?
Well, there are some huge problems. First of all, when you combine entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare with interest on the national debt, it comes to approximately 64 percent of all federal government spending.
But that is not the bad news.
In the years ahead, entitlement spending and interest on the national debt are both projected to absolutely explode.
We are rapidly approaching a time when spending on entitlement programs and interest on the national debt will be significantly greater than all of the revenue that the federal government brings in each year. All federal revenues will be spoken for even before a single penny is spent on defense, education, running the government or anything else.
Either entitlement programs are going to have to be seriously reformed or the U.S. government is going to have to come up with a massive amount of extra money from somewhere or the U.S. government is going to have to borrow increasingly large piles of money from someone.
Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions and most of our politicians are scared to death to touch entitlement programs because it will mean that they will lose votes.
But our entitlement programs were never meant to be as massive as they are today. Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 American is on Medicaid.
Obviously something has to be done, because the debt that we are passing on to future generations is absolutely criminal.
For example, every single child born in America today inherits $45,000 in U.S. government debt.
Isn’t that lovely?
Of course our liberal friends believe that the answer is just to raise taxes.
Oh really?
The truth is that our taxation system is deeply broken.
Small business owners and middle class Americans are being taxed into oblivion while those at the top of the food chain often pay no federal taxes whatsoever.
For example, did you know that Citigroup did not pay a dime of federal taxes in the third quarter? Meanwhile, their executives continue to bring in bonus packages worth millions.
Did you know that even though Boeing receives billions in federal subsidies every year and even though it has a bunch of juicy government contracts it did not pay a single penny in federal corporate income taxes from 2008 to 2010?
Did you know that while Exxon-Mobil did pay $15 billion in taxes in 2009, not a single penny went to the U.S. government? Meanwhile, their CEO brought in over 29 million dollars in total compensation that year.
You can find a lot more examples of this phenomenon right here.
Those at the top of the food chain are experts at avoiding federal taxes. So liberals can raise rates all they want but it won’t do much good.
As I have written about previously, the truth is that approximately a third of all the wealth in the world is now held in “offshore” banks. The ultra-wealthy and the monolithic predator corporations that dominate the global economy don’t mess around when it comes to paying taxes. They don’t care if they aren’t paying their “fair share”. They simply know how to play the game and they laugh at all the rest of us.
Our entire system is broken beyond repair and needs to be reconstructed from the ground up.
But of course that simply is not going to happen.
So what can be done?
Not a whole heck of a lot.
The truth is that the U.S. economy is on the verge of a major collapse.
Marc Faber, the author of the Gloom, Boom and Doom report recently gave a speech in which he declared that the U.S. financial system is in such disastrous shape that only a “reboot” will be able to save it….
I think we are all doomed. I think what will happen is that we are in the midst of a kind of a crack-up boom that is not sustainable, that eventually the economy will deteriorate, that there will be more money-printing, and then you have inflation, and a poor economy, an extreme form of stagflation, and, eventually, in that situation, countries go to war, and, as a whole, derivatives, the market, and everything will collapse, and like a computer when it crashes, you will have to reboot it.
But can we just “reboot” the system and expect things to go back to normal?
Of course not.
The truth is that when the rest of the world completely loses faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. Treasuries the dominoes are going to start to fall. Eventually we are going to see a financial panic that is going to make 2008 look like a Sunday picnic. Our economic system will massively implode as all of the gigantic mountains of debt and paper money collapse like a house of cards.
Right now the Federal Reserve is desperately trying to hold the system together by “papering over” all of the mistakes. But in the end it is not going to work. In fact, what we are witnessing now are the very early stages of hyperinflation. A lot of other nations in the past have thought that they could just print their way out of trouble, but many of those “experiments” ended in total disaster.
Marc Faber is certainly right about one thing – all of this money printing is going to give us substantial inflation to go along with the high unemployment that we already have. This is called “stagflation” and anyone that remembers the 1970s knows that it is not a lot of fun.
But the Federal Reserve seems absolutely determined to print more money. Fed officials are doing the same thing now that they did right before QE2. They are dropping hints about QE3 and they are trying to break it to us gently.
Well, it is about time that someone told the American people the truth. All of this money printing is going to end in disaster and so you had better get prepared.
If the U.S. dollar is being devalued so rapidly, then why does it sometimes increase in value against other global currencies? Well, it is because everybody is recklessly printing money now. The 6 charts which you are about to see below prove this. The truth is that it is not just the U.S. Federal Reserve which has been printing money like there is no tomorrow. Out of control money printing has also been happening in the UK, in the EU, in Japan, in China and in India. There are times when one particular global currency will fall faster than the others, but the reality is that they are all being rapidly devalued. Unfortunately, this is a recipe for a global economic nightmare.
Right now you can almost smell the panic as it rises in global financial markets. Investors all over the world are racing to get out of paper and to get into hard assets. Just about anything that is “real” and “tangible” is hot right now. Gold hit a record high last year and it is on the rise again. In fact, it just hit a new five-week high. Demand for silver is becoming absolutely ridiculous right now. Oil is marching up towards $100 a barrel again. Agricultural commodities have exploded in price over the past year. Many investors are even gobbling up art and other collectibles.
Paper money is no longer considered to be safe. All over the globe investors are watching all of the reckless money printing that has been going on and they are becoming alarmed. An increasing number of investors and financial institutions are putting their wealth into hard assets that are real and tangible in an effort to preserve their wealth.
The other day, a reader of this column named James sent me some charts that he had put together. I thought they were so good that I asked him if I could include them in an article. These charts show how central banks all over the globe have been recklessly printing money. Over the last 30 years virtually the entire world has developed a great love affair with fiat currency….
Of course anyone with half a brain can see where all of this is ultimately headed. In the end, inflation is going to spiral out of control and we are going to witness financial implosion on a global scale.
So why don’t these nations just adopt sound money?
Well, it turns out that if you are a member of the IMF, you are specifically prohibited from having gold-backed currency.
Yes, you read that correctly.
In fact, U.S. Representative Ron Paul once sent an open letter to the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve asking about this and he received no response. The following is the content of that letter….
Dear Sirs:
I am writing regarding Article 4, Section 2b of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s Articles of Agreement. As you may be aware, this language prohibits countries who are members of the IMF from linking their currency to gold. Thus, the IMF is forbidding countries suffering from an erratic monetary policy from adopting the most effective means of stabilizing their currency. This policy could delay a country’s recovery from an economic crisis and retard economic growth, thus furthering economic and political instability.
I would greatly appreciate an explanation from both the Treasury and the Federal Reserve of the reasons the United States has continued to acquiesce in this misguided policy. Please contact Mr. Norman Singleton, my legislative director, if you require any further information regarding this request. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.
Ron Paul
U.S. House of Representatives
Sadly, the truth is that the global elite don’t want nations to start adopting gold-backed currencies. They want countries to use fiat currencies that they can openly manipulate for their own benefit.
At this point, every nation on earth (to the best of my knowledge) uses a fiat currency. All of the major global currencies are being continually devalued. In fact, there are times when counties will purposely devalue their currencies even more rapidly in order to gain a competitive advantage in world trade.
This is why so many investors now have such an aversion to paper currency. It starts losing value the moment you take possession of it.
In some areas of the world, “gold fever” is absolutely exploding. For example, China imported five times as much gold in 2010 as it did in 2009. On the Shanghai Gold Exchange, trading volume soared 43 percent during the first 10 months of 2010.
Gold, silver and other precious metals are now seen as a great hedge against inflation worldwide. Investors all over the globe are demonstrating a strong preference for “real money” over “paper money”.
So what does all of this mean?
It means that some tremendous imbalances are being built up in the global financial system. The central banks of the world must continue to inflate these bubbles with constantly increasing amounts of paper money and debt in order to keep the game going. If at some point the reckless money printing comes to a screeching halt it is going to unleash hell on global financial markets.
But if all of this reckless money printing continues we are eventually going to see horrific inflation all over the planet. In fact, we are already seeing significant inflation happening in many areas of the globe. Almost every single day a new headline about inflation in China seems to pop up in the financial news. Rising food prices are sparking unrest in the Middle East and elsewhere. Even U.S. consumers are starting to see some uncomfortable price increases at the gas pump and in the supermarket.
So it is not just Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that is off his rocker. The whole world is going crazy with money printing.
Hopefully this whole thing is not going to end as badly as many of us fear that it will. But right now the central banks of the world are pumping unprecedented amounts of cash into the global financial system, and those in the global financial system are funneling a very large percentage of that cash into hard assets. Unless something changes, that is going to mean that prices for basic necessities such as food and gas are going to continue to rise.
Once upon a time, the United States was the greatest industrial powerhouse that the world has ever seen. Our immense economic machinery was the envy of the rest of the globe and it provided the foundation for the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world. But now the once great U.S. economic machine is being dismantled piece by piece. The U.S. economy is being gutted, neutered, defanged, declawed and deindustrialized and very few of our leaders even seem to care. It was the United States that once showed the rest of the world how to mass produce televisions and automobiles and airplanes and computers, but now our industrial base is being ripped to shreds. Tens of thousands of our factories and millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas. Many of our proudest manufacturing cities have been transformed into “post-industrial” hellholes that nobody wants to live in anymore.
Meanwhile, wave after wave of shiny new factories is going up in nations such as China, India and Brazil. This is great for those countries, but for the millions of American workers that desperately needed the jobs that have been sent overseas it is not so great.
This is the legacy of globalism. Multinational corporations now have the choice whether to hire U.S. workers or to hire workers in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages. The “great sucking sound” that Ross Perot warned us about so long ago is actually happening, and it has left tens of millions of Americans without good jobs.
So what is to become of a nation that consumes more than it ever has and yet continues to produce less and less?
Well, the greatest debt binge in the history of the world has enabled us to maintain (and even increase) our standard of living for several decades, but all of that debt is starting to really catch up with us.
The American people seem to be very confused about what is happening to us because most of them thought that the party was going to last forever. In fact, most of them still seem convinced that our brightest economic days are still ahead.
After all, every time we have had a “recession” in the past things have always turned around and we have gone on to even greater things, right?
Well, what most Americans simply fail to understand is that we are like a car that is having its insides ripped right out. Our industrial base is being gutted right in front of our eyes.
Most Americans don’t think much about our “trade deficit”, but it is absolutely central to what is happening to our economy. Every year, we buy far, far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us.
In 2010, the U.S. trade deficit was just a whisker under $500 billion. This is money that we could have all spent inside the United States that would have supported thousands of American factories and millions of American jobs.
Instead, we sent all of those hundreds of billions of dollars overseas in exchange for a big pile of stuff that we greedily consumed. Most of that stuff we probably didn’t need anyway.
Since we spent almost $500 billion more with the rest of the world than they spent with us, at the end of the year the rest of the world was $500 billion wealthier and the American people were collectively $500 billion poorer.
That means that the collective “economic pie” that we are all dividing up is now $500 billion smaller.
Are you starting to understand why times suddenly seem so “hard” in the United States?
Meanwhile, jobs and businesses continue to fly out of the United States at a blinding pace.
This is a national crisis.
We simply cannot expect to continue to have a “great economy” if we allow our economy to be deindustrialized.
A nation that consumes far more than it produces is not going to be wealthy for long.
The following are 21 signs that the once great U.S. economy is being gutted, neutered, defanged, declawed and deindustrialized….
#1 The U.S. trade deficit with the rest of the world rose to 497.8 billion dollars in 2010. That represented a 32.8% increase from 2009.
#2 The U.S. trade deficit with China rose to an all-time record of 273.1 billion dollars in 2010. This is the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.
#3 The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#4 In the years since 1975, the United States had run a total trade deficit of 7.5 trillion dollars with the rest of the world.
#5 The United States spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.
#6 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented only 11.5 percent and it continues to fall.
#7 The number of net jobs gained by the U.S. economy during this past decade was smaller than during any other decade since World War 2.
#8 The Bureau of Labor Statistics originally predicted that the U.S. economy would create approximately 22 million jobs during the decade of the 2000s, but it turns out that the U.S. economy only produced about 7 million jobs during that time period.
#11 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#12 The United States now has 10 percent fewer “middle class jobs” than it did just ten years ago.
#13According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding 30 percent to 10.1 million. During that exact same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million.
#14 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.
#15 Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Ten years later, the United States had less than 15 percent and China’s share had soared to 20 percent.
#16 The number of Americans that have become so discouraged that they have given up searching for work completely now stands at an all-time high.
#17 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#18 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#20 In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States? Zero.
#21 Ten years ago, the “employment rate” in the United States was about 64%. Since then it has been constantly declining and now the “employment rate” in the United States is only about 58%. So where did all of those jobs go?
The world is changing.
We are bleeding national wealth at a pace that is almost unimaginable.
We are literally being drained dry.
Did you know that China now has the world’s fastest train and the world’s largest high-speed rail network?
They were able to afford those things with all of the money that we have been sending them.
How do you think all of those oil barons in the Middle East became so wealthy and could build such opulent palaces?
They got rich off of all the money that we have been sending them.
Meanwhile, once great U.S. cities such as Detroit, Michigan now look like war zones.
Back in 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was about 6 million dollars for the entire year.
As mentioned above, the U.S. trade deficit with China for 2010 was over 273 billion dollars.
What a difference 25 years can make, eh?
What do you find when you go into a Wal-Mart, a Target or a dollar store today?
You find row after row after row of stuff made in China and in other far away countries.
It can be more than a bit difficult to find things that are actually made inside the United States anymore. In fact, there are quite a few industries that have completely and totally left the United States. For certain product categories it is now literally impossible to buy something made in America.
So what are we going to do with our tens of millions of blue collar workers?
Should we just tell them that their jobs are not ever coming back so they better learn phrases such as “Welcome to Wal-Mart” and “Would you like fries with that”?
For quite a few years, the gigantic debt bubble that we were living in kind of insulated us from feeling the effects of the deindustrialization of America.
The IMF is trying to move the world away from the U.S. dollar and towards a global currency once again. In a new report entitled “Enhancing International Monetary Stability—A Role for the SDR“, the IMF details the “problems” with having the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of the globe and the IMF discusses the potential for a larger role for SDRs (Special Drawing Rights). But the IMF certainly does not view SDRs as the “final solution” to global currency problems. Rather, the IMF considers SDRs to be a transitional phase between what we have now and a new world currency. In this newly published report, the IMF makes this point very clearly: “In the even longer run, if there were political willingness to do so, these securities could constitute an embryo of global currency.” Yes, you read that correctly. The SDR is supposed to be “an embryo” from which a global currency will one day develop. So what about the U.S. dollar and other national currencies? Well, they would just end up fading away.
CNN clearly understands what the IMF is trying to accomplish with this new report. The following is how CNN’s recent story about the new IMF report begins….
“The International Monetary Fund issued a report Thursday on a possible replacement for the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.”
That is exactly what the IMF intends to do.
They intend to have SDRs replace the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency.
So exactly what are SDRs?
Well, “SDR” is short for Special Drawing Rights. It is a synthetic currency unit that is made up of a basket of currencies. SDRs have actually been around for many years, but now they are being heavily promoted as an alternative to the dollar.
Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) are international foreign exchange reserve assets. Allocated to nations by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a SDR represents a claim to foreign currencies for which it may be exchanged in times of need.
The SDR is a hybrid. SDRs are part U.S. dollar, part euro, part yen and part British pound. In particular, the following is how each SDR currently breaks down….
U.S. Dollar: 41.9%
Euro: 37.4%
Yen: 9.4%
British Pound: 11.3%
Now there are calls for other national currencies to be included in the basket.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has publicly called for the national currencies of Brazil, Russia, India and China to be included in the SDR.
In January, the Obama administration said that it fully supports the eventual inclusion of the yuan in the SDR.
So yes, it looks like we are definitely moving in the direction of the SDR becoming a true global currency.
But is this a good idea?
Globalist organizations such as the IMF say that having a true global currency would facilitate world trade, it would make currency wars less likely, it would stabilize the global economy and it would make the rest of the globe less reliant on what is going on in the United States.
In fact, there is a lot of discussion in international financial circles that oil should be traded in SDRs rather than in U.S. dollars.
In a recent interview, IMF Deputy Managing Director Naoyuki Shinohara even suggested that the IMF may actually consider issuing bonds that are denominated in SDRs. Apparently the goal would be to promote the use of the new “currency”.
But once again, it is important to remember that the IMF does not see SDRs lasting forever either. Rather, the IMF considers the SDR to be an “embryo” from which a true global currency could emerge.
“A global currency, bancor, issued by a global central bank (see Supplement 1, section V) would be designed as a stable store of value that is not tied exclusively to the conditions of any particular economy. As trade and finance continue to grow rapidly and global integration increases, the importance of this broader perspective is expected to continue growing.”
In fact, at one point the IMF report from last year specifically compares the proposed global central bank to the Federal Reserve….
“The global central bank could serve as a lender of last resort, providing needed systemic liquidity in the event of adverse shocks and more automatically than at present. Such liquidity was provided in the most recent crisis mainly by the U.S. Federal Reserve, which however may not always provide such liquidity.”
Yes, unfortunately this is what the IMF really has in mind for all of us. A one-world economic system with a one-world currency and a one-world central bank.
Is that what we really need?
A “global Federal Reserve” that dominates the currency and the economy of the entire planet?
At least with the U.S. Federal Reserve there is hope that someday the American people can convince Congress to shut it down.
A “global Federal Reserve” would not answer to anyone. Individual nations could attempt to pull out, but then they would potentially be isolated from the rest of the globe and potentially cut off from world trade.
That may sound very far-fetched now, but that is the direction we are headed.
And shifting away from the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of the world would be disastrous for the U.S. economy.
Right now the fact that the U.S. dollar is the primary reserve currency of the world is one of the only things holding it up. If you took that support away the U.S. dollar could end up collapsing quite quickly.
Let us hope that the American people wake up and start insisting that we want no part in a global currency. If we ever allow a world currency to start replacing the U.S. dollar to a large extent, we will lose a great deal of our economic sovereignty. Not that we haven’t lost most of it already, but at least if we are still using our own national currency there is a greater chance that we can reclaim it.
What the IMF is proposing right now may seem very innocent, but the long-term consequences of going down the road they want to put us on could potentially be absolutely catastrophic.
The American people need to send a very clear message to their representatives in Washington D.C…..
In the shocking video you are about to watch, Howard Dean declares that it is the job of the government to redistribute our wealth. Not only that, he says it in such a way that indicates that he believes that such a notion should be obvious to anyone with half a brain. Well, while it is true that the United States has become a highly socialized nation, the reality is that this is not what the founding fathers intended. The founders intended for us to live in a land where we would have enough freedom and enough liberty to be able to work hard and enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They did not intend for a gigantic federal government to take huge amounts of money from one group of people and give it to another group of people. In any nation where a large scale redistribution of wealth is happening, the incentive to work goes right out the window. Pretty soon you end up with an entire class of people that have learned how to “make a living” by being a parasite of the government, and that is not good for any economy.
If our founding fathers were alive today, they would be horrified by what we have turned into. In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote the following….
“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
The sad truth is that democracy starts to break down once people start realizing that they can vote themselves money out of the national treasury. In fact, that is a very large part of what politics in America is all about today. Politicians are constantly promising what they are “going to do” for various groups of people.
“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
Not that our founding fathers were against charity. In fact, they believed in it very much. It is just that they did not believe in repressive taxation by a huge national government and they did not believe in large scale redistributions of wealth.
With all of that in mind, watch this shocking video of Howard Dean declaring that it is the job of the government to redistribute our wealth….
Obviously Howard Dean envisions an “America” that is very different from the one that our founding fathers intended.
But does that mean that all government welfare programs are bad?
Of course not.
In fact, if we were to cut them all off today we would have millions of people starving in the streets.
A very large percentage of Americans today don’t even know how to take care of themselves. If we pulled away all government support all of a sudden there would be chaos and anarchy in the streets.
The sad reality is that we have tens of millions of Americans that are now deeply dependent on the socialist system that we have established.
Unfortunately, this is what socialism does – it turns people into pets of the government. Our society should be teaching people to be self-sufficient, but instead we are teaching people to allow the government to take care of them from the cradle to the grave.
So does that mean that our founding fathers would be in favor of the rampant corporate greed that we are witnessing today?
Of course not.
As I have written about previously, the founding fathers were against all large concentrations of power. During the Boston Tea Party, it was the tea of perhaps the most powerful corporation in the entire world at the time (the East India Trading Company) that our founders dumped into the harbor.
If you study early American history, you soon come to realize that corporations were generally very limited in scope and size for many, many years. The era of the giant corporation is relatively new, and our founding fathers never intended for our society to be dominated by gigantic international corporations.
So when the Democrats argue that we should give more power to the federal government and the Republicans argue that we should give more power to the big corporations they are both wrong.
Our founding fathers did not intend for our federal government to have nearly so much power and they did not intend for big, wealthy corporations to have so much power either.
Fortunately, many Americans today are getting back in touch with those principles. There is a growing dissatisfaction with the size of government, and according to Gallup two-thirds of Americans are now dissatisfied with the size and influence of major corporations in America today.
However, it is one thing to discuss the finer points of political and economic philosophy, but it is another thing altogether to deal with the reality of tens of millions of people that cannot feed themselves.
As I have mentioned many times before, there are over 43 million Americans on food stamps today.
So what are we going to do with all of them?
Allow them to starve?
Almost 53 million Americans receive Social Security payments.
What are we going to do – cut off Social Security and watch millions of elderly and disabled people freeze to death in their own homes?
Of course not.
But we have got to start swinging the pendulum back in the other direction. Right now one out of every six Americans is enrolled in some kind of anti-poverty program run by the federal government.
How many Americans being taken care of by the federal government will be too much?
One out of five?
One out of four?
One out of three?
Eventually the entire system crumbles when there are too few people still willing to work hard.
If you ever get the chance to visit a communist country you should. You will notice that nobody really works very hard. That is because there is no incentive to work hard. Very little real wealth gets produced and everyone suffers for it.
So does that mean the U.S. system works?
Of course not.
What we have in the United States today is not real capitalism. It is more aptly called “corporatism”. The big corporations and the big financial institutions have accumulated an absolutely stunning amount of economic power and over the decades they have gotten the government to tilt all of the rules of the game in their favor.
In America today, it is really hard for the average person to start a successful business. The big, powerful international corporations that dominate our economy are everywhere.
So most Americans today have to rely on working for an employer. Unfortunately, the big employers have started to realize that they can make much larger profits by shipping our jobs overseas. That is really bad news for the U.S. middle class.
Well, can’t we just tax all of these big corporations like crazy and even everything out?
Unfortunately it just does not work that way in today’s global society.
As I have written about previously, the ultra-wealthy and many of the biggest corporations have figured out how to “minimize” their tax burdens. While you and I are being taxed into oblivion, the global elite have figured out how to move their money around to escape taxation as much as possible. In fact, it is estimated that today approximately a third of all the wealth in the world is held in “offshore” tax havens.
Ultra-wealthy individuals and mega-powerful corporations can call just about anywhere “home” in today’s global economy. That is just the way the world works now.
In order to “tax the rich”, you first must get legal jurisdiction over their money.
Our tax system has become entirely unfair and it simply does not work. The whole thing needs to be scrapped.
But as we discuss tax policy, there are tens of millions of Americans that are living in poverty.
So what are we going to do about the growing number of Americans that cannot even feed themselves without government help?
Well, the truth is that what they really need is not more handouts.
If you give people handouts, they will just need more handouts tomorrow.
No, what all of these Americans really need are good jobs.
Unfortunately, there are a whole lot less good jobs in America today than there were ten years ago.
Our politicians have stood by as the giant corporations have moved thousands of facilities over to places such as China and India where they can legally pay people slave labor wages.
Since 2001, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good, and that number is going to continue to increase unless someone stops it.
But nobody is.
Virtually all of our politicians are just standing off to the side with their hands in their pockets.
Our entire economic system is breaking down. Millions of Americans families are scrambling to find some way to survive. Over the past two years, U.S. consumers have withdrawn $311 billion more from savings and investment accounts than they have put into them.
Other Americans are going very deep into debt because they don’t have any other options. When they finally can’t keep up with all the debt, many of these families are losing their cars and their homes.
We are in the middle of an economic nightmare that is absolutely unprecedented. “Redistributing the wealth” would just be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic at this point. It would not fix a darn thing.
When our politicians promise that a little “change” here or a little “tweak” there will get our economy back to normal they are lying to you and most of them know it.
What we need is a comprehensive overhaul of our entire economy. Basically what we need to do is to go back to the blueprint (the U.S. Constitution) and essentially start over.
But most Americans are not ready for that. Most Americans are still enjoying the tremendous prosperity that the biggest debt binge in the history of the world has purchased for us. Most Americans still do not believe that an economic collapse is really coming.
But a massive economic collapse is coming. This whole thing is going to come crashing down and it is not going to be pretty.
Have you been unemployed lately? If so, then you probably know how frustrating it is to try to find a job in the United States today. It now takes the average unemployed worker about 33 weeks to find a job. There are millions of Americans that have not been able to find a full-time job even after searching hard for an entire year. Some areas of the United States have been devastated so badly by the economic downturn that they are starting to resemble war zones. Unless you have been there, it is hard to even try to describe the extreme frustration that one feels when you are unable to pay the mortgage and feed your family. It can be absolutely soul-crushing. But it is not the fault of those who are unemployed. The truth is that our economy is dying and it is not producing nearly enough jobs anymore. Unfortunately, as you will see from the facts listed below, most of the things that are causing our economy to die have no realistic chance of being changed any time soon.
The following are 10 reasons why it has become so insanely difficult to find a job in America today….
#2 There is a lot more competition for the very few job openings that are actually available. According to Gallup, the U.S. unemployment rate has been hovering around 10 percent for over a year. When Gallup includes “underemployed Americans” that have part-time jobs but really want full-time jobs in the numbers, they get a lot worse. Currently, Gallup says that 19.3 percent of the workforce is either unemployed or underemployed.
#3 The U.S. economy is producing an extremely low number of new jobs. The federal government says that only about 36,000 jobs were added in January. Well, an increase of 150,000 jobs per month is necessary just to keep up with population growth. We continue to fall farther and farther behind.
#4 All across the nation, state and local governments are rapidly cutting jobs. Government jobs used to be considered some of the safest jobs available, but today state and local governments all across America are facing horrific budget crunches. In fact, things have gotten so extreme that some cities are cutting their police forces by up to 50 percent.
#5 U.S. businesses are being absolutely crushed by regulations, and yet the government just keeps piling them on. For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is projecting that the food service industry will have to spend an additional 14 million hours every single year just to comply with new federal regulations that mandate that all vending machine operators and chain restaurants must label all products that they sell with a calorie count in a location visible to the consumer. These kinds of ridiculous regulations are chasing U.S. businesses out of the country at a blistering pace.
#6 When you combine all forms of taxation, businesses pay more taxes in the United States than just about anywhere else in the world. Some of the biggest corporations have figured out how to get around this, but many other businesses are being absolutely crushed by this. All of this taxation is also chasing businesses out of the country. Now Barack Obama is at it again. He has just proposed an increase in unemployment taxes. This is going to make it even less likely that businesses will want to hire more employees.
#7 Advances in technology mean that less workers are needed today. A robot can do the labor that a hundred workers used to perform. A computer can do the work that a thousand people used to perform. Our society now needs less manual labor than it used to, and that is not going to change. In fact, our society is only going to become more computerized and more automated. That means that the ultra-wealthy do not need as many of us to work for them.
#8 Nations such as China are taking jobs away from us. Tens of thousands of factories and millions of jobs are moving to China. There is a reason why Barack Obama mentioned China four times during his State of the Union address. China now even makes more beer than the United States does. China has been very shrewd. They have invited international corporations to come over and take advantage of their vast population by paying them slave labor wages. The U.S. middle class is being shredded by this. Why should companies pay U.S. workers 10 or 20 times more than they could pay a Chinese worker?
#9 Every single year, the U.S. buys hundreds of billions of dollars more stuff from the rest of the world than they buy from us. This is called a trade deficit, and it is killing the U.S. economy. The hundreds of billions of dollars going to the rest of the world could be going to U.S. businesses, and in turn U.S. businesses would need more workers. But instead of fixing our trade balance problem, our politicians continue to insist that “globalism” is going to be really, really “good” for us.
#10 Every single year the U.S. federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars just on interest on the national debt. This is money that we don’t get any economic benefit from. If we were not in so much debt, the U.S. government would be able to spend that money on goods and services inside the United States and that would support a lot more jobs. This is just one of the ways that our horrific national debt is a tremendous drag on our economy.
Is the U.S. government on the verge of a massive debt problem? For years, the U.S. government has been able to borrow all the money that it has wanted to at extremely low interest rates. But now many of the lending sources that the U.S. government has been depending on are drying up. Even before this recent crisis in Japan, a number of big players were moving away from U.S. Treasuries and the U.S. Federal Reserve was having to step in to pick up the slack. But now this debt crunch is about to get a whole lot worse. For years, many had feared that it would be China that would start dumping U.S. government debt, but now it turns out that Japan is going to be the real problem. Right now, Japan is the second largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt. Japan currently holds about $882 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds and they are likely going to have to liquidate much of that in order to fund the rebuilding of their nation. So needless to say they won’t be accumulating any more U.S. government debt. But the U.S. government still needs to borrow a trillion and a half dollars from someone every single year. So where in the world are they going to get it?
Wow That Was Fast! Libyan Rebels Have Already Established A New Central Bank Of Libya
Of course it is probably safe to assume that the new Central Bank of Libya will be 100% owned and 100% controlled by the newly liberated people of Libya, isn’t it?
Most people don’t realize that the previous Central Bank of Libya was 100% state owned. The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia’s article on the former Central Bank of Libya….
Since the old Central Bank of Libya was state owned, it was essentially under the control of Moammar Gadhafi.
But now that Libya is going to be “free”, the new Central Bank of Libya will be run by Libyans and solely for the benefit of Libyans, right?
Of course it is probably safe to assume that will be the case with the new national oil company as well, isn’t it?
Over the past couple of years, Moammar Gadhafi had threatened to nationalize the oil industry in Libya and kick western oil companies out of the country, but now that Libya will be “free” the people of Libya will be able to work hand in hand with “big oil” and this will create a better Libya for everyone.
Right?
Of course oil had absolutely nothing to do with why the U.S. “inva—” (scratch that) “initiated a kinetic humanitarian liberty action” in Libya.
When Barack Obama looked straight into the camera and told the American people that the war in Libya is in the “strategic interest” of the United States, surely he was not referring to oil.
After all, war for oil was a “Bush thing”, right? The Democrats voted for Obama to end wars like this, right? Surely no prominent Democrats will publicly support this war in Libya, right?
Surely Barack Obama will end the bombing of Libya if the international community begins to object, right?
Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize. He wouldn’t deeply upset the other major powers on the globe and bring us closer to World War III, would he?
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has loudly denounced “coalition strikes on columns of Gaddafi’s forces” and he believes that the U.S. has badly violated the terms of the UN Security Council resolution….
So to cool off rising tensions with the rest of the world, Obama is going to call off the air strikes, right?
Well, considering the fact that Obama has such vast foreign policy experience we should all be able to rest easy knowing that Obama will understand exactly what to do.
Meanwhile, the rebels seem to be getting the hang of international trade already.
They have even signed an oil deal with Qatar!
Rebel “spokesman” Ali Tarhouni has announced that oil exports to Qatar will begin in “less than a week“.
Who knew that the rag tag group of rebels in Libya were also masters of banking and international trade?
We sure do live in a strange world.
Tonight, Barack Obama told the American people the following….
So now we are going to police all of the atrocities in all of the other countries around the globe?
The last time I checked, the government was gunning down protesters in Syria.
Is it time to start warming up the Tomahawks?
Or do we reserve “humanitarian interventions” only for those nations that have a lot of oil?
In fact, atrocities are currently being committed all over Africa and in about a dozen different nations in the Middle East.
Should we institute a draft so that we will have enough young men and women to police the world with?
We all have to be ready to serve our country, right?
The world is becoming a smaller place every day, and you never know where U.S. “strategic interests” are going to be threatened next.
The rest of the world understands that we know best, right?
Of course the rest of the world can surely see our good intentions in Libya, can’t they?
Tensions with Russia, China and the rest of the Arab world are certainly going to subside after they all see how selfless our “humanitarian intervention” has been in Libya, don’t you think?
In all seriousness, we now live in a world where nothing is stable anymore. Wars and revolutions are breaking out all over the globe, unprecedented natural disasters are happening with alarming frequency and the global economy is on the verge of total collapse.
By interfering in Libya, we are just making things worse. Gadhafi is certainly a horrible dictator, but this was a fight for the Libyan people to sort out.
We promised the rest of the world that we were only going to be setting up a “no fly zone”. By violating the terms of the UN Security Council resolution, we have shown other nations that we cannot be trusted and by our actions we have increased tensions all over the globe.
So what do all of you think about what is going on in Libya? Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….