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Orgasmic Vancouver: Ruppert's Economic War |
Category: Articles 8 comments 9 Nov 2004 @ 08:57 by ashanti : Cuba bans US dollar transactionsOld news, but relevant to be repeated here I think: {link:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3953291.stm|Cuba bans US dollar transactions}: An extract from the article above: "Dollars were made legal tender in 1993 following an economic crisis sparked by the collapse of the Soviet Union. But dollars will no longer be accepted in shops and other businesses, and tourists and Cubans exchanging dollars will have to pay a 10% commission.....In May, the US announced it was tightening its embargo on Cuba, with measures including capping the remittances sent to the island by Cubans in the US. In response, said the Cuban central bank in a statement, dollars would no longer be accepted in shops and businesses. They will have to be exchanged for "convertible pesos" - a local currency that can be used in special shops on the island but has no value internationally - for a 10% charge.....In his message, Mr Castro urged Cubans to tell relatives to send money in other currencies, such as euros, British pounds or Swiss francs." 9 Nov 2004 @ 20:10 by koravya : Thanks for the reference material.;) 9 Nov 2004 @ 21:04 by ov : I think there will be lots more {link:quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_mukherjee&sid=aAwTOe4JIHIo|Can Asia Dump Bretton Woods II as Dollar Falls?} Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush's second term may be a challenging time for Asian central bankers. With the dollar hitting an all-time low against the euro yesterday, traders are betting that Bush may add to the $412.6 billion U.S. budget deficit, increasing the pressure on the dollar to decline. [...] Whereas the original Bretton Woods system collapsed in 1973, its replacement is seen as an ongoing and mutually beneficial agreement between the U.S., which is the world's financial "core" and Asia, which is its "periphery." The periphery is allowed to expand its exports by keeping its currencies cheap, as long as it supplies capital to the core to pay for its spending excesses. [...] At the heart of Bretton Woods II is China's 200 million underemployed rural population. ``And even if this reserve of labor was gone,'' the authors say, ``India is ready to graduate to the periphery with its vast supply of underemployed workers.'' If it's in the interest of Asian central bankers to keep a lid on their home currencies until every surplus worker in rural China and India has found a job in an export factory, then why should there be a change in Asia's currency policy in the next four years of Bush's presidency? Weak Dollar There are strong reasons. On the U.S. side, the issue is political. Jobs are at stake. A weak dollar is ``ultimately what the economy needs,'' says Bill Gross, the chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California. On the Asian side, the reason why the region must now choose to live with higher currencies is inflation. By increasing interest rates for the first time in nine years, China has sent a signal that it's taking inflation seriously. ``All central banks may be better off if no bank tries to diversify its reserve holdings,'' Roubini says, ``but as the risks of dollar depreciation grows, each central bank has an incentive to defect and to try to protect itself from losses.'' Losses could indeed be large. Asian central banks own more than $2.2 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves out of a global total of $3.4 trillion. At the end of last year, almost 64 percent of central bank reserves globally were denominated in U.S. dollars, according to the International Monetary Fund. As Asia tries to diversify out of the dollar, the U.S. currency may decline further. An individual central bank ``can only protect itself if it either shifts out of dollars and into euros ahead of the others, or buys a euro/dollar hedge before everyone else,'' Roubini says. 9 Nov 2004 @ 21:41 by ov : Oil Reality Crashes An Economic Fantasy {link:www.world-crisis.com/analysis_comments/1045_0_15_0_C/|Not So Vast As Our Failure} Jeff Berg - Today the world economy is based on an ideology which exalts the virtue of supply and demand, and in practice at least to an extent this mechanism is allowed to operate in global trade. The monkey wrench to this system will come when the reality of oil supply refuses to cooperate with the demands of our economic laws. When the world hits peak oil, much less terminal decline, and demand outstrips supply our economic world order is forever changed. Because from that point on it will not matter to oil production what our governments say, what our corporate leaders demand or what laws the economists at the WTO assure us are as ineluctable as the law of gravity. It took hundreds of millions of years to make the oil we have now and when there is no more, well, there is no more, ever. ------------ This article is more about background facts on peak oil then it is about the economic war, but oil and economics are tightly bound. Maybe instead of returning to the gold standard we should have an oil standard currency. "the government will pay on demand one litre of crude oil for each petrodollar." {link:www.world-crisis.com/|www.world-crisis.com/} is a site I've just came across today but it appears to address the critical issues, which is more than can be said for mass denial media, and from what I've read so far it doesn't appear to be propaganda. 11 Nov 2004 @ 23:28 by othomas : Paper dollar decline I have long known that the US was out of conrol in its ability to print currency without backing. Your posting to new civ has opened a door to information which I sorely needed. My income is a Civil service pension from US govt. I do not know how it can be paid in any other currency, so I live in peace in Mexico as long as I can. Thank you for opening this topic and gathering so many meaninful references from other members. I have not found any additional meaningful commentaries/additions in my web search. 12 Nov 2004 @ 12:19 by lugon @80.58.19.44 : thanks Thanks so much for this posting. Now we have things to do. 12 Nov 2004 @ 13:25 by spiritseek : good article I wanted you to know that I also read your article and agree on how our spending has added to the problem. 12 Nov 2004 @ 17:16 by ov : Thanks for feedback I've been scattered around the web the last few days collected up information for new articles to write up. I find it encouraging that other people are finding value from the information that I'm collecting; that makes it all worthwhile. Thanks in large part to the web, and because the news is generated in other parts of the world than just North AMerica, the information is out there except that a person has to hunt it down, and that means you need to know what you are hunting. It wasn't that long ago that we had large organizations that did this for us, they were called the Evening News and they were there on the TV, but that information channel has been bought up and turned into a huge propaganda machine. Used to be that just the commercials and the entertainment were propaganda but the NEWS at least pretented to be objective reality, and it did fufill their public watch dog function to some extent. Not any more. Michael Ruppert was right about needing to support and build up the alternate news channels. Not alternate because they aren't related to reality, but because they aren't beholding to the corporate teat. We all need to work towards providing the credibility and legitimacy to those sites that deserve that acknowledgment. Other entries in Articles 28 Mar 2007 @ 05:36: The Tyee - Vancouver's Online Newspaper 22 Feb 2007 @ 18:11: Tips for a Powerful Chinese New Year 21 Feb 2007 @ 05:19: Back Online 18 Aug 2005 @ 20:01: Gazan Gulag 21 Jan 2005 @ 23:26: Bush Deconstructed 14 Nov 2004 @ 08:40: The PNAC Opposition 13 Nov 2004 @ 19:19: Mass Murder in Falluja 7 Nov 2004 @ 20:27: The Vote Was Hacked 2 Nov 2004 @ 08:13: Pillage of Baghdad 1 Nov 2004 @ 00:10: Halliburton & Cheney
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