Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Wow! Post of the century hyperbola t'would be, maybe, but post of the day t'will be. Oh, to understand
the guts of things as, Michael Hudson, does ... what a f%$^&*g thrill to read that Real News.

There is so much in the interview. a couple of excerpts .. one present day reality ..

"HUDSON: Well, as you know, in 1971, President Nixon had to take the dollar off gold. So it was the Vietnam War that forced the dollar off gold and ended its role as a monetary standard as good as gold. I've just got back from a tour of Asia and Brazil, and these countries are saying, because the dollar is being used so much to fund the military deficit, when we run a balance of payments surplus with America, we get dollars, we export, the dollars are turned over to the central bank. There's nothing central banks can do with dollars but buy US Treasury bonds. And we've been financing, with our Treasury bond purchases, the military spending that's responsible for the US federal deficit, for our encirclement. So by keeping the dollar, we're keeping ourselves encircled. We don't want any more dollars. That's what I'm told--Brazil, China, even Australia."

JAY: Yet everybody's buying American Treasury bonds. [...]

"So China and other countries--Brazil, Venezuela, the oil-producing countries--are all now shunning the US dollar. That means that the whole world economy is fragmenting into a dollar bloc, meaning--." [...]

Yessiree! One talking point, to be used to in the prodding of some flea-ridden, rabid, cement-headed,
in the past, conservative, fear-ridden, antique mentalities, oh no that's socialism!!!, dinosaurs here ..

"HUDSON: [...] That's how America got rich in the 19th and 20th century. It's how England got rich in the 18th and 19th century. You need a mixed economy in order to get rich. But if in the process of fighting labor you say, oh, it's socialism to have government, then you're not going to have the government able to help industry as well as able to help labor, and the economy's going to shrink. So you have a kind of junk economics that's in the mind of the policymakers today that by cutting away government, they prevent the infrastructure from essentially enabling this economy to lower its costs." [...]

"JAY: So then what's the point of the 800 bases, then? I mean, when Britain was in a somewhat analogous situation
with these colonies costing so much, they said, well, let's get rid of the colonies 'cause they're like boat anchors.

HUDSON: That's right.

JAY: Well--but you don't hear that in the United States very--I mean, you hear it from
very few people saying, let's get rid of 800-plus military bases 'cause they're boat anchors.

HUDSON: The reason you don't is, in the past, all of the money that the military spent abroad would be spent on foreign economies, and then they'd siphon up into the central banks. And the central banks would have nothing to do with these dollars but to keep their currency stable by recycling the dollars into US Treasury bills. If it weren't for the military deficit, America would have had to finance its own domestic budget deficit. It's been foreigners that are financing the budget deficit. Now that foreigners are essentially saying, we don't want any more dollars, we're not going to fund your deficit, all of a sudden they think: who's going to fund the deficit if not foreign central banks? The answer is: American labor, the American middle class and working families are going to fund it, not the military."

Thanks to Paul Jay, snr. ed. TRNNJAY, to, Michael Hudson, to Edger of Daily Kos and to you. Definitely another revisit.

Yawn .. 8am ..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmdPQp6Jcdk

G'day from this ex gamblin' man!!! ... gulp, rotflmao, ugh .. out for cancer sticks.