Crouching Tiger, Tumbling US Economy

[babylonsister]

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/1186/81/

Crouching Tiger, Tumbling US Economy
Saturday, 17 March 2007
by Heather Wokusch

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
Sun Tzu, Chinese author and military strategist, c. 544-496 BC


Bush and Cheney may be declaring "Mission Accomplished" now that the Iraqi Cabinet has approved the draft of an oil law granting foreign companies unprecedented access to the country's fields.

But Beijing is having the last laugh.

Just last week, Chinese oil company officials arrived in Baghdad to revive Hussein-era contracts for developing Iraq's oil, specifically, the Ahdab oil field in south-central Iraq. Hundreds of millions of dollars and a reduction in Iraq's Chinese debt are already on the table.

It wasn't supposed to work this way. The US had a major role in developing Iraq's proposed oil law, with its scandalous long-term agreements enabling foreign oil companies to plunder the nation's most precious resource. Yet despite the US "investment" of more than 35,000 dead or wounded troops and over 400 billion dollars to secure access to Iraq's oil for itself, China is poised to sign the first major contract.

China also recently announced plans to strategically refocus its one trillion dollar foreign-currency war chest. Rather than continuing to rely on US Treasury bonds, which yield relatively small returns and risk dollar depreciation, Beijing is expected to increasingly snap up natural resources and energy assets across the world.

It's no wonder that China is ditching the US, which currently faces a national debt of almost nine trillion dollars, growing at the rate of $2.04 billion dollars per day. The subprime housing bubble threatens rising defaults and decreased stateside consumption, while the personal savings rate for Americans fell to a shocking negative 1% in 2006, the worst level since the Great Depression.

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[donsu]

1. I've long said the way to ruin the neo cons is through their pocketbooks

the neo cons live to make profit, legal or otherwise

the more profit they have they more power they have.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. Yeah, but it's ruining the rest of us, too

We're all in steerage, but it's the same ship.

[BearSquirrel2]

4. This is not the full story ...

I don't think they even care that the US is on the road to economic oblivion. They made their money and they can retreat to any country in the world they want with it. Their "New World Order" is not governed by nation states, it's governed by corporations that is controlled by capital, not citizens.

To me the Halliburton move was so shocking because it was a very broad declaration that Halliburton no longer NEEDS the US for it's own legitimacy and they expect the US government to come to them as opposed to the other way around.

Our trade with China has put the US in a VERY bad position. We are not "bringing China up" Democratically, instead we are bringing fascists up economically. At least during the cold war we knew better than to trade with our enemies.

[Loge23]

2. More serious than it looks...

I don't think a whole lot of attention has been paid to this situation.
Iraq may indeed be a business deal gone bad (as heard on the Randi Rhodes show) but the implications of China's reallocation are absolutely devastating for our economy. Actually, we don't have an economy - we have a loan.
The sounds of that collapse you may hearing are the beginnings of the long awaited "correction" for the U.S. financial structure.

What did anyone truly expect anyway? How can we have a complete idiot as President - being advised by special interest representatives - and actually expect that this disasterous administration will improve our economy?? Folks, this administration is a disaster of a "gift" that will keep on giving for a painfully long time. Compounding the pain is the impending retirements of the baby-boomer generation which will not only seriously impact the obligations (yes, obligations) of the government, but also the savings of this generation which is largely in the over-inflated stock market. Not pretty....but that's what happens when people don't bother to vote and the one's that do are no longer counted.