« RUSH TO WARs - false grounds, tainted historyIt's an option, stupid »

Failed State Update with Krugman and Roberts

October 27th, 2009

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In theory, a near worthless dollar is great for American manufacturers, American jobs. Lower costs for American goods means US exports should rise, reducing our trade deficit and helping pay off the national debt! That's the theory, the rationale behind Richard Nixon's decision to take the US off the so-called 'gold standard' back in the 70s.

The reality is this: despite the right wing's subversion of the dollar, despite the deals Nixon and subsequent GOP regimes gut with China, US exports have decreased, US jobs have decreased, the US standard of living as decreased as just one percent of the population has prospered at everyone else's expense at least since Ronald Reagan's tax cut of 1982, a tax cut which benefited only this rich base of GOP/right wing supporters. These downward trends have defined US history since the 1970s despite temporary gains made during the Carter and Clinton years. I have previously posted the key 'stats' which prove this to have been the case.

Check out the CIA's World Fact Book which lists the US at the very bottom of the list with the world's largest negative Current Account Balance. China, which pegs the Yuan to the dollar, is at the top of the list with the world's largest positive Current Account Balance.

If the GOP had been correct, US exports should have risen! The 'balance of trade deficit' i.e, the NEGATIVE Current Account Balance would have been reduced! If the GOP had been correct, the US could have paid off the huge amounts that decades of conservative budget in literally forced the US to borrow with other countries. But --not surprisingly --things have not worked out as the GOP would have you believe.

    Many economists, myself included, believe that China’s asset-buying spree helped inflate the housing bubble, setting the stage for the global financial crisis. But China’s insistence on keeping the yuan/dollar rate fixed, even when the dollar declines, may be doing even more harm now.

    Although there has been a lot of doomsaying about the falling dollar, that decline is actually both natural and desirable. America needs a weaker dollar to help reduce its trade deficit, and it’s getting that weaker dollar as nervous investors, who flocked into the presumed safety of U.S. debt at the peak of the crisis, have started putting their money to work elsewhere.

    But China has been keeping its currency pegged to the dollar — which means that a country with a huge trade surplus and a rapidly recovering economy, a country whose currency should be rising in value, is in effect engineering a large devaluation instead.

    --Palin vs Krugman On The Dollar -- Who Is Right?

Foreign Policy magazine goes on to say that, as dismal as the effects of Chinese policy on the US and US consumers, 'It's the rest of the world -- particularly Europe and the Pacific Rim -- that are getting royally screwed by China's policy.' FB claims these countries now suffer because their products are 'less comptetive' in the US vis a vis Chinese exports.

Keep in mind, that it was Nixon who took the dollar off the gold standard because of 'pressures' on the value of the dollar. Simply, had there been a run on the buck, the gold in Fort Knox would not have covered it.

Secondly, it was hoped that by removing the dollar from an unrealistic standard, US products would enjoy greater sales abroad. So what happened? Someone please tell me what the US produces? Cars? Nope, it imports them! Take a look at Flint Michigan if you are interested in knowing the effects this has had! Electronics? Nope! Since the early 1960s, it is Japan that has flooded the US market with transistor radios etc! Aerospace? Nope! Ask a Californian! The Aerospace industry which had driven the SOCAL boom, is but a shadow of its former glory. What of 'Silicon Valley'. What of it? IT is outsourced to India!

    The enormous scale of foreign borrowing and money creation necessary to finance Washington’s wars are sending the dollar to historic lows. The dollar has even experienced large declines relative to currencies of third world countries such as Botswana and Brazil. The decline in the dollar’s value reduces the purchasing power of Americans’ already declining incomes.

    Despite the lowest level of housing starts in 64 years, the US housing market is flooded with unsold homes, and financial institutions have a huge and rising inventory of foreclosed homes not yet on the market.

    Industrial production has collapsed to the level of 1999, wiping out a decade of growth in industrial output.

    --Paul Craig Roberts, The US as Failed State

If the US is a 'failed state', it is because it has been impoverished by at least two trends: 1) the transfer of US wealth upward to just one percent of the US population which now owns more than 95 percent of the rest of the nation combined; 2) the decline of the US dollar, a trend begun when Richard Nixon eschewed the Bretton-Woods agreement.

Richard Nixon Take US Off Gold Standard

I tried to learn the truth about those GOP/China deals back in the late seventies when I had a rare opportunity to put a microphone in front of George H.W. Bush in the Grand Ballroom of the Hyatt-Regency in downtown Houston. Had I known then, what I know now, it might have been a much, much better interview. I left unhappy with getting Bush's goofy story about eating 'aeromatic meats' (dog lip) in the Forbidden City.

Also see:

-###-

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

By: Len Hart Failed State Update with Krugman and Roberts, via The Existentialist Cowboy

No feedback yet

Voices

Voices

  • by Kaitlin Harper "The sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea, The hot stars down from heaven are whirled." -- Völuspá (The Prophecy of the Seeress - Norse- A prophetic vision of Ragnarök) Israel and America have never been more isolated…
  • poem by: Clever Iconoclast Cast I this spell from here to Holy Hell to ghosts who rumble roads where witches bode their toads. [Witches’ Familiars in 17th Century Europe (February 2011 update) – Benjamin Breen] To henchmen on the lurk In dungeons…
  • Dr. Althea Mentes I. The Pressure Valve: How Rage Became a Renewable Resource All empires master the skill of domination, but America industrialized it. Our rulers discovered that rebellion, like oil or lithium, could be extracted, processed, and sold…
  • Fred Gransville Gaza was and is now a laboratory in which the shoulders of business, law, and amorality collide in ways that defy euphemism. To call what occurs “peace” is to embrace an Orwellian fiction; to call it “conflict” is to sanitize…
  • By David Swanson, World BEYOND War The Nobel Committee has frequently given the peace prize to major war makers, and frequently to do-gooders whose work in a variety of fields has been unrelated to abolishing war. It has also often given the prize to…
  • Cathy Smith The mainstream press shows its Zionist complicity plainly. Headlines like Israel awaits hostages and peace deal may be imminent ignore 77 years of Zionist bloodletting. The "press" writes about the genocidal deaths of ~67,000 Gazans as if…
  • Fred Gransville Map of families registered in Texas reporting one or more members with Morgellons Disease. Morgellons disease is one of the most perplexing and controversially shrouded conditions in modern medicine. Characterized by fibers emerging from…
  • It’s Football Season The Summer has gone and the winds have come The leaves are falling and fall is in the air But the sun shines bright and and the fields are buzzing  The bees are preparing for the long winter’s night Propaganda fills the mail  As the…
  • Robert David The Bush Controlled Demolition of Democracy The George W. Bush years (2001–2009) were less a presidency and more a controlled demolition of freedom, liberty, trust, wealth, and global credibility. Bush shattered the economic backbone of the…
  • By Mark Aurelius Part 1 was published at this link directly below (you are advised to read it as ** worthy): https://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2025/09/21/radioactive-how-the-real-radicals#more60423 Likely you agree that these times that we…
Censorship is not safety. It is authoritarianism in disguise. Bing is not just a search engine—it is an information gatekeeper. Click the red button to email MSN and Bing.com executives. This message challenges their censorship of ThePeoplesVoice.org and demands transparency, algorithmic fairness, and an end to suppression of free expression.
October 2025
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
 << <   > >>
      1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31  

  XML Feeds

CMS software
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted articles and information about environmental, political, human rights, economic, democratic, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. This news and information is displayed without profit for educational purposes, in accordance with, Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. Thepeoplesvoice.org is a non-advocacy internet web site, edited by non-affiliated U.S. citizens. editor
ozlu Sozler GereksizGercek Hava Durumu Firma Rehberi Hava Durumu Firma Rehberi E-okul Veli Firma Rehberi