The belly of the beast

An excellent article at The Black Commentator (as are many articles there) talks about the delusion of thinking things might get better in America's near future.

As history will tell, and as events daily demonstrate, the piratical decision to upset the global game board in order to impose a New American Century without rules, has united the world in revulsion against the United States. Like a strange name called out in the bedroom, the specter of American madness cannot be erased from planetary memory; even if George Bush is ejected from the White House in November, this society has shown its horrific ass to the rest of the species. America writhes in flagrante (literally, "in blazing crime") in Iraq, caught in the global gaze like a rutting dog unable to disengage itself from the object of its lust. (Those who are offended by such images are simply unaware of how the U.S. appears to people outside the American corporate communications bubble that envelops the nation in narcissistic, racist delusions.)

The article talks in part about what black people in particular can hope for - which is simply very bad times.

I think this is right. And I expect class and race disturbances in the future of a much greater impact than any we have seen in our history since the Civil War. I hope I'm wrong. But I don't think so.

Not only did the world outgrow any rational economic basis for U.S. hegemony, but Washington repeatedly abused its paramount position for narrow U.S. corporate and dollar-gaming ends, wreaking havoc on the development plans of emerging elites around the globe while disregarding the sovereignty of all other nations. As Bloomberg's Tokyo bureau reported in April of this year, "there's no ignoring Asia's desire to reduce U.S. influence in the region. Leaders here wonder if scrapping the dollar might expedite the process." America and its local allies are viewed as politically bankrupt throughout the Middle East and the whole of Latin America. (Africa is another story, so drenched in misery that conventional political descriptions do not apply.)

The Bloomberg article is from April and speaks of Indonesia considering turning to the euro. Libya currently threatens the same, and there is evidence that this same sin is what actually precipitated the attack upon Hussein. I see the euro's threat to replace the dollar as the trade note of choice worldwide as key to all our moves. And no wonder that the pirates in chief are robbing the treasury. I wonder how much of Halliburton, et al. dollars have already been converted.

You're right. I know nothing about international finance.

The euro began 2003 at roughly the same value as the dollar, and now hovers around $1.25. But much more is at issue here than transient numbers. Modern currencies are backed by faith in the stability, responsibility and good judgment of the issuing nation. The United States spent decades squandering its store of good faith, and now relies as core policy on the threat of smart bombs and "regime change" to enforce its undeserved dominance in the world economic system.

...Foreign capital hangs back from U.S. capital markets despite returns on American stock investments of 12 percent - three to four times what can be earned in a sluggish but sane Europe. That the euro rises to record heights (as has the British pound) in defiance of market "fundamentals" is evidence of profound recoil from the U.S. by foreign elites.

"What if all the funds parked in the U.S. are pulled out? What if this flow of capital dries up?" asked The Hindu writer in his April commentary. The effect on the U.S. economy would be cataclysmic since the amounts involved are huge.

...No one wants an apocalyptic crash of the World Order that is currently so enmeshed with the dollar. But it is Bush's Pirates who represent the greatest threat to the system as it now exists. And who can say that in the next year or during a second term in the White House Bush will not unleash another horror on humanity that provokes just such a disaster for the U.S. and the world? This is the nightmare that haunts the foreign elites on whom the U.S. economy depends.

Well, it haunts us all who are awake and watching.