(Conspiracy Nation, 12/30/04)
-- No, it's not the Dalai Lama, it's the dollar alarma. To sell
newspapers, whenever the dollar loses a cent to the euro there are
ominous headlines and dire predictions. Meanwhile, slowly but steadily,
Sir Alan Greenspan and the "Federal" Reserve are raising the interest
rates.
Some good sense is found in a recent article by syndicated columnist
Scott Burns. ("Now we know where the Grinch lives," Champaign-Urbana
News-Gazette, 12/26/04) The Grinch did not awaken this Xmas (the "X"
here is the Greek letter signifying Christ) and Burns heaves a sigh of
relief. The Grinch holds the dollars we've been exporting, writes
Burns, in return for which we get doodads from abroad. "Other
governments would have to invent us if we didn't exist because it is
our consumption that keeps other governments in power." There is no
good alternative to the dollar, since we are actually in better shape
than most of the other industrialized nations.
But alarming stories sell newspapers, and so that newspapers can be
sold we are kept on edge. In Personal
Finance for Dummies, author Eric Tyson heads one section,
"Alarming or informing us?":
Imagine sitting down to watch the
evening news and hearing the following stock market report:
On Wall Street today, stock prices
dropped a bit less than one percent... The reason: There were more
people wanting to sell than there were people wanting to buy..."
Now contrast that report with the
following report for the same day:
Stocks plunged sharply today as the
Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted more than 100 points to close at
its lowest level in the past 168 hours...
At www.xe.com you can check the dollar/euro/yen ratios every day if
you want; it's not nearly as dramatic as the Drudge Report and other
more mainstream sensationalists -- but drink caffeine instead if you
need a pick-me-up.
The dollar does not look to be a sudden sinker. What appears to be
in the offing is the old easy money/tight money switcheroo. First there
was easy credit and people got over-extended. Now the knighted (by
England) chairman of the "Federal" Reserve is inching up on the
interest rates. As more default on their loans, bargain hunters can
come grab their property for pennies on the dollar. It's the same
sleight-of-hand done by the big-money boys back in the 1920s/1930s.
The larger situation is covered by authors William Wolman & Anne
Colamosca in their 1997 book, The
Judas Economy. "A hardheaded look at the world suggests that the
betrayal of [labor] is only beginning. In the global economy of the
mid-1990s no country can stay ahead for very long without continuing
strenuous effort on the part of corporations to cut costs, reorganize
their workforce, and shed employees." So, "productivity is up," you
see.
When Soviet communism collapsed in 1988, the power of global
capitalism soared. The mobility of labor has stayed about the same
while the mobility of capital "has taken a quantum jump." This means
increasingly that U.S. workers compete in the global marketplace with
workers in such grinded-down locales as China, for example. Wolman
& Colamosca foresee an eventual leveling off of labor conditions
between first-world and third-world workers, but in the meantime --
ouch! It's going to be very tough.
Following the collapse of the Soviet system, western capitalists
combined with some traitorous Russians to privatize the former Soviet
state-owned assets. The people of Russia were robbed and now live in
the midst of economic ruin. Why bring up Social Security at this point?
Are you saying some greedy sons-of-bitches are on-the-march here in the
good old USA?
There are mutterings in so-called "conservative" media outlets about
the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), which opposes the
Dubya Bush plan for Social Security "reform." Murmurings are being
heard: "The AARP is a liberal
organization." Uh-oh. Say, you're not a liberal are you??
-------
Conspiracy Nation
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/cn.html