Quote from gnome:
Nothing new. That's been the central theme of government since the beginning of civilization.
I would think it is more accurate to say: "That's been the central theme of [bad] government since the beginning of civilization."
We have a permanent war economy, and it is killing us. Has the present Washington administration of religious zealots and idealogues together with our duty-shirking congress tipped us over a precipice that will prove too steep to climb back up?
Will we go on repeating and buying into the fear mongering and war mantra until we are all ruined, or will a hero arise to tell us that the emperor has no clothes? In any case i will likely be dead before a total collapse comes. Great nations and institutions rot from within for years and years before the decay is generally acknowledged and externally obvious.
Once an individual's or a nation's integrity is lost, however, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to regain it. The damage recently done to our nations integrity will be very difficult to repair.
I don't see the current dollar weakness as intentional. I see it as an unavoidable result of political expediancy. Our heavy borrowing in an attempt to maintain the appearance of prosperity in the face of unsustainable war expenditures as led to the political necessity of monetizing our debt, so that it can be paid back by our population in inflated prices and by cheating our creditors by paying them with cheapened money.
The present economic environment in the US is advantageous, in the short run, to the Treasury and to individuals and corporations with long term debt at lower interest rates. It does nothing of substance though for those with heavy credit card debt and no mortgages or other long term debt. As has often happened in recent US history, those at the upper end of the economic spectrum gain at the expense of those at the lower end; though they are thrown occasional bones to quiet them down.
We have tried to put a cheerful face on our rapidly failing currency by saying that it will help exports and thus attack our catastrophic balance of payment problem. But of course we are only kidding ourselves. Because we are a nation of a currently high living standard with high labor costs, dollar devaluation will lead to demand for higher wages, and higher costs will result; thus largely negating any benefit to exports.
The great exporting nations either have high quality to sell (Germany, Japan, Tiwan, and now Korea) or cheap labor (China, Brazil). We have expensive labor and we no longer produce enough goods of high quality. Though some of what we produce is quality, high- tech, machine tools and heavy equipment, in almost everycase there is competition from equally high quality produced elsewhere. The current low regard with which the US is held in the world hurts our producers when there are alternative sources of equal quality. The current data does not show much of an impact of our 50% lower dollar (compared to 1994) on exports though there is marginal improvement.
The one place we we are still able to find a ready international market is in agriculture.
If there is going to be any hope for the long range future of the US economy we must break the pattern of endless war, find alternative markets for our war industry (high speed rail and infrastructure, perhaps), and return our economy to a peacetime footing. An incidental consequence will be a break with Isreal. We can no longer let Isreal call our shots, if we hope to achieve this.
