The American Empire Is Bankrupt

[Truth2Tell]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/20090614_the_american_empire_is_bankrupt/

Jun 14, 2009

By Chris Hedges

This week marks the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency">reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful.

Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America’s imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze.

There are meetings being held Monday and Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia, (formerly Sverdlovsk) among Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance. Watch what happens there carefully. The gathering is, in the words of http://www.michael-hudson.com/">economist Michael Hudson, “the most important meeting of the 21st century so far.”

It is the first formal step by our major trading partners to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If they succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value, the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket, interest rates will climb and jobs will hemorrhage at a rate that will make the last few months look like boom times. State and federal services will be reduced or shut down for lack of funds. The United States will begin to resemble the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe. Obama, endowed by many with the qualities of a savior, will suddenly look pitiful, inept and weak. And the rage that has kindled a handful of shootings and hate crimes in the past few weeks will engulf vast segments of a disenfranchised and bewildered working and middle class. The people of this class will demand vengeance, radical change, order and moral renewal, which an array of proto-fascists, from the Christian right to the goons who disseminate hate talk on Fox News, will assure the country they will impose.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/20090614_the_american_empire_is_bankrupt/">Continued...

[Turbineguy]

1. And I take it,

as is usual in these cases, there is nothing we can do about it?

[Truth2Tell]

3. Only things to soften the blow.

The cows left the barn a long time ago.

[Rex]

2. "The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance.'

I guess our paymasters didn't want us knowing how they were going to slice us up and carve us out to the highest paying bidder. :eyes:

Hey Wall Street and CEOAmerica I just want to say thanks guys, I hope you choke on every last dollar that is now worthless.

[Kaleko]

4. Duplicate post.

A lively discussion has been underway all day here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5851598#top

[Speck Tater]

5. From Russia With Love

This article reports the exact opposite: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8100066.stm

[madrchsod]

6. what a load of crap.....

russia and china has huge problems in their countries that make ours simple in comparison.

[JackRiddler]

7. Way to miss the point...

which is that they are ending their tolerance and participation in the exports-for-dollars-for-T-bills system that has propped up US deficits, consumer economy and Pentagon wars around the world.

It doesn't matter whether they "has" huge problems. They're not trying to run the one global empire. The point is they're about to stop paying for the US to do so.