This article
A New American Century? Not! was written by a former US senator, Tim Ferguson (R) and posted on his web site at www.fergusonreport.com.
From the web site
The Ferguson Report
is published by former Maryland Senator Tim Ferguson, who served from 1995 thru 2003 as a fairly conservative Republican representing Frederick & Carroll counties. Views expressed reflect Constitutional precepts - not partisan rhetoric.----Those who hold the reigns of power benefit from public scrutiny whether they are Democrat, Republican, Independent, Liberal, Conservative or Moderate.The article "A New American Century, Not" starts with the rebuilding of Europe after WWII and the role of the US in financing the rebuilding effort and how the US dollar was used to maintain the place of the US as the preeminent superpower. It traces various events in recent economic history including the reason Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard and the creation of the Euro. It explains the Iraq/Saddam role in attempting to lead the way for other states to switch over to using Euros for oil sales and the economic implications should this actually be allowed to happen. It also explains the consequences for the US economy if the world switches out of the US dollar as the de facto reserve currency.
The euro threatens the hegemony
When the euro was launched at the end of the last decade, leading EU government figures, bankers from Deutsche Bank's Norbert Walter, and French President Chirac went to major holders of dollar reserves -- China, Japan, Russia -- and tried to convince them to shift out of dollars at least a part of their reserves, and into euros. However, that clashed with the need to devalue the too-high euro, so German exports could stabilize Euroland growth. A falling euro was the case until 2002.
Then, with the debacle of the U.S. dot.com bubble bursting, the Enron and Worldcom finance scandals, and the recession in the U.S., the dollar began to lose its attraction for foreign investors. The euro gained steadily until the end of 2002. Then, as France and Germany prepared their secret diplomatic strategy to block war in the UN Security Council, rumors surfaced that the central banks of Russia and China had quietly began to dump dollars and buy euros. The result was a dollar free-fall on the eve of war. The stage was set should Washington lose the Iraq war, or it turn into a long, bloody debacle.
But Washington, leading New York banks and the higher echelons of the U.S. establishment clearly knew what was at stake. Iraq was not about ordinary chemical or even nuclear weapons of mass destruction. The 'weapon of mass destruction' was the threat that others would follow Iraq and shift to euros out of dollars, creating mass destruction of the United States' hegemonic economic role in the world. As one economist termed it, an end to the dollar reserve role would be a 'catastrophe' for the United States. Interest rates of the Federal Reserve would have to be pushed higher than in 1979 when Paul Volcker raised rates above 17% to try to stop the collapse of the dollar then. Few realize that 1979 dollar crisis was also a direct result of moves by Germany, and France, under Schmidt and Giscard, to defend Europe together with Saudi Arabia and others who began selling U.S. Treasury bonds to protest Carter Administration policy. It is also worth recalling that after the Volcker dollar rescue, the Reagan Administration, backed by many of today's neo-conservative hawks, began a huge U.S. military defense spending to challenge the Soviet Union. More at:
A New American Century? Not! Of course, I like many have always doubted the conventional explanation for the rush to war provided by the Bush administration, and when it is laid out like this, it really does make sense to see why they were so absolutely frantic to get their war on, so frantic that they risked destroying the credibility of the US president and the US government by wildy exagerating and over-hyping a bunch of questionable intelligence info to get public opinion on side. It was more than just helping out Cheney's crooked war profiteer pals at Halliburton and even more than getting control of the oil fields, it looks like it might have been to stave off the complete collapse of the US economy. The question is for all of us liberal types I guess, is how should the situation have been handled without going to war over it.
What were the practical alternatives and what would have been the price to implement those alterntaives instead of going to war. Would the US public be willing to pay that price and support the president in NOT going to war. This is IMPORTANT folks. If a Democrat wins in November he will have to deal with the same economic forces and powerful coporate interests. Will he have an alternative solution when faced with a similar situation, especially when any alternative is quite likely to economically cause significant harm to the US economy?
I am certainly no economist, so if there are any following this issue I'd be interested in hearing their comments.
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