THE COMING END OF AMERICAN SUPERPOWER--Must Read

[KlatooBNikto]

This article by Paul Craig Roberts once again demonstrates his grasp of how tenuous our hold has become on superpower status as a result of the misadventures of this gang that couldn't shoot straight.

Link: http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts03012005.html

While Roberts rightly devotes his attention on the decimation of the dollar's purchasing power as a result of the loss of its status as a reserve currency and the destruction of the middle class, what may be an even greater calamity waiting to happen is the fading prospects of our younger generation.The accumulation of surplus capital abroad is going to mean American corporations are going to be takeover targets by Chinese, Indian ,Japanese and Korean corporations which may simply take them overseas.This is why I thought his comments, almost in an aside that American higher education may be in trouble got my attention.He also neglects to mention that higher end occupations like
medicine, surgery, legal work and even professorial work may be in danger of being outsourced especially to a country like India which have invested many years and many billions in educating their populations and have built a vast netwrok of modern hospitals that cater exclusively to european and Japanese clientele seeking low cost medical care of first rate quality.

All of these changes mean belt tightening for us and more precisely, our children.But we are waist deep in the big sandy ( apologies to Pete Seeger) and the big fools say to push on.

[fertilizeonarbusto]

1. Sounds like Professor Roberts

peeked right into my head. And isn't the last parragraph the terrifying truth? Who would want to help us after years of being belittled, slandered, lied to, stolen from, bullied and insulted by the dimwitted sociopaths?

[leveymg]

2. Explains the high-risk PNAC strategy - BushCo goes for broke

Even if "they" win, the rest of us lose. 9/11 was just the beginning of the "necessary sacrifices" to come.

They're counting on us not having our act together enough to even identify the real reason for what they're doing. Desperation.

[Democrats_win]

3. The cost of empire.

[glitch]

9. "They're shooting the moon"

What I said the morning of 9/11/2001.
Their actions since then have only fortified that opinion.

[lutherj]

4. Question: Is there enough capital in the world economy to finance

this debt? Our current debt of about 7.7 trillion is being financed by 80% of world savings, according to Thomas Friedman of the NY Times. I've seen the same statistic cited elsewhere, I think it was Thom Hartmann. Bush's privatization plan will borrow another 4.5 trillion in the next ten years, according to the Roberts article cited above. That's more than a 50% increase in debt. Seems to me, even allowing for inflation and economic growth, there isn't enough available capital in the world to finance this scheme.

[leveymg]

7. The inevitable result of underfinanced monetization is inflation

Lots and lots of inflation is the result of policy A (above).

The strategy to avoid outcome A is to seize somebody else's assets at way below market cost (strategy B). BushCo is so stupid that they'll end up paying so much for strategy B that they're just accelerating Outcome A.

Dumb Putz.

[HereSince1628]

5. I've been musing about the US future all day... 1) become a colony

2) acquire colonies, 3) maintain colonies seems to be the only path for a nation whose economy is no longer dominated by its own productivity.

I've been thinking all day that the administration had chosen option 2, while recognizing the option 1 could happen if our economy or empire fails.

I feel like I'm eating french fries and smoking cigs while watching a documentary on heart disease

[Spinoza]

6. All I know

is that I have been reading about the "imminent" demise of American superpower hegemony since I went to college in the 60's. Despite the torrents of books, essays, lectures, articles etc explaining why and how America is on the verge of some kind of come-uppance; all that seems to happen is that America gets richer and richer (as a nation; not all or most individuals) and more and more powerful. So maybe it finally is going to happen now. But I'll believe it when I see it.

[neweurope]

10. Rome didn't die in a decade, neither did the British or Spanish Empire.

But it'll come. Unfortunately too late for us.

-----------------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to the Hague!

[leveymg]

11. We're like the scavenger version of T-Rex

We used to wait for the dinosaurs to die or kill each other before we ate the carrion. Now, we're using up a lot of our own protein to do the killing - much less efficient. Eventually lethal in times of scarcity

There are some hungry predators/scavengers just quietly waiting for the Big Thud.

[ArkDem]

8. Here is a buch more of his stuff

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/paulcraigroberts/archive.shtml