Der Tagesspiegel has a lengthy excerpt from a new book to be released next week: Der globale Countdown by Harald Schuman and Christiane Grefe. The book is about the risks inherent in the globalized economy - risks that are all too apparent in the worldwide crisis spawned by the US real estate meltdown. The excerpt here, however, is an excellent discussion of how the Bush administration has dramatically raised the stakes - and increased the likelihood of a global meltdown - with its reckless fiscal policy. Among other things, the Bush administration has relied exclusively on China to fund its disastrous Iraq War. America's trade deficit with China increases the Chinese US dollar reserves by about $1 million per minute - which roughly equals the cost burden of Bush's wars:
De facto finanziert auf diesem Weg ausgerechnet der US-Rivale China Amerikas militärische Abenteuer mit milliardenschweren Billigkrediten für die Bush-Regierung. Die aufgewandten Summen stimmen erstaunlich überein. Die Kriege in Irak und Afghanistan kosteten von 2003 bis Ende 2006 rund 400 Milliarden Dollar amerikanischer Steuergelder. Etwa im gleichen Zeitraum erwarben die Mitarbeiter der Devisenverwaltung am Pekinger Platz der Luftfahrt amerikanische Staatsanleihen und staatliche garantierte Pfandbriefe im Wert von 464 Milliarden Dollar.
(It is ironic that in this way China - America's great rival - is financing America's military adventures with $$billions of cheap loans to the Bush administration. Astonishingly, expenditures nearly match each other. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost the US taxpayers from 2003 to 2006 about $400 billion. Over the same period the staff at the State Foreign Exchange Center on Fucheng Road in Beijing acquired US Treasury Bonds in the amount of $464 billion.)
The Bush administration's fiscal policy is leading inexorably to a prolonged period of hyperinflation and the replacement of the US$ by the Euro as a reserve currency. The final consequence will be a run on America.
Exactly. It will be worse than the 70's. Neither the oil crisis then nor the Great Depression are good models for what's happening now.
We have not solved a single domestic or foreign problem the U.S.A. has.
In my opinion, the real downfall was Gulf War I. Instead of coming to terms with that horror, we went into denial in the feel-good years of Clinton, and,taken unawares,let the criminal Bushes steal the Presidency.
Now we have to live with the hangover of our drunken sprees of war, unbridled consumerism, war, debt, and now the collapse.
Posted by: Hattie | April 15, 2008 at 03:28 PM