My current thinking, based on years of observation and even some study, is that the U$D has been a tool of a noble experiment, spawned toward the end of the Second World War, which has soured over time with experience and the baby bummer generation taking the helm in the person of Bill Clinton and King George the Pampered.  

    

In summary:  

  1. The USA was the only major power left standing at the end of WWII.  
  2. Toward the end of that great conflagration the soon to be victorious Allied Powers hammered out the plan for a new post-war order that would steer the world away from another cataclysmic era such as had dominated the first fifty years of the Twentieth Century; 
  3. In the interest of stability, the U$D was ordained the ‘reserve currency’, a currency backed by the stability of America that could be used globally with confidence as a store of value while at the same time affording maximum liquidity for the world’s business.     
  4. One objective was to promote an economic leveling of the playing field, with the intention of raising foreign economies toward the level of America’s economy and lifting the poverty stricken world population's standard of living up to that of the Average American.     
  5. America’s most recent half century of economic experience at that point in time was the Great War (later labeled World War I by historians), the irrational exuberance of the Roaring ‘20s, the Great Depression of the ‘30s, and then the Second World War.     
  6. With the mindset produced by that recent almost fifty years of experience, a lifetime of experience for those people, the planners were obsessively concerned with avoiding a repeat for the coming post-war economy.  They cannot be faulted for not being able to envision what has happened during our lifetime.  Their frame of reference was absolutely nothing at all like what we have become used to over the last half century.           
  7. America had it all its own way up through the 1970’s, and the expanding middle class and thriving working class became an engine of growth unseen before in history. 
  8. But right about 1980 America encountered real economic competition from abroad for the first time.  While it was just emerging, the efforts to nurture the global economies and strengthen other nations bore fruit.      
  9. And that presented the planners with a real problem that they had not foreseen because the fantastic prosperity of post-war America could not be imagined by them.  Problem: America, with 5% (1/20th) of the global population, was using some 35% of the world’s resources, with concomitant effusion of pollution.
  10. Hard fact: if the rest of the world (19/20ths of global population) was going to rise to the American people’s standard of living, the global village would consume 19 times 35 percent of the world’s resources, or 665% of the world’s resources: and where do you dump all that pollution?   
  11. The solution arrived at was this: instead of the foreign workers floating up to the American level, the American middle class would sink to the level of the foreign workers.         
  12. A major tool to implement this new direction would be to undermine global confidence the in U$D and take its special status as the reserve currency for the world away from it.         
  13. What are the mechanisms by which this tool can be used to achieve this new objective?     
    1. Depress wages at the professional level of the middle class through such programs as the H1B visa for skilled labor from India and other foreign nations;      
    2. Drive wages down at the lower end of the economic scale by blessing the invasion of illegal workers from south of the border with a policy of aggressive neglect of the laws on the books, laws that are designed to protect the sovereignty of America.     
    3. Ship whole industries offshore for cheap labor and to circumvent worker protection and environmental protection regulations that have been developed by and for the American people;      
    4. Import cheap stuff back into America, competing with domestic industries and accelerating the offshore downward spiral;      
    5. Invade an easy pushover nation, “cakewalk” in and spend ungodly amounts of U$D to maintain a foothold;      
    6. Sell copious quantities of IOUs to the Bank of China, the Saudi Central Bank and others to finance the “war” and other tax cuts largely benefiting the wealthy;      
    7. Tighten the bankruptcy laws to hold the wage earner’s feet to the fire in the interest of a ravenous credit card industry and lender industry; 
    8. promote ever increasing borrowing to drive the shop-‘til-you-drop consumer economy in its march-to-the-sea, increasing personal debt relentlessly while preaching to Americans that they just don’t save enough;      
    9. Beat the drums incessantly for the “war on terror” to divert the attention of a “frightened” populace from the activities of those that are leading them to the cliff;        
    10. Install an arrogant simpering pampered dimwit from the priviliged class of the baby bummer generation, the I must have it “Now” generation, the “Me” generation, the “If it feels good do it!” generation in the presidency to enthusiastically promote the demise of the middle class and implant an oligarchy along the Mexican lines to rule the new serfdom.     
    11. Meld the Replicant party and Dimocratic party into a single kabuki dance to maintain the illusion of checks and balance while in reality fashioning a one-party system at the beck and call of emperor dimwit.     
  14. A one-party Congress subservient to the simpering dimwit to paper his years of misrule with blank checks so that he can dance on the grave of the Constitution and the middle class that has arisen under its wisdom.

We’re in deep yogurt.  The U$D has been severely compromised as a store of value in the rest of the world’s eyes; and that is just exactly according to the plan of our industrial/military/political leadership.

  

Within that context what you see on the domestic and world stage should not catch you by surprise.

  

 

Expanded discussion may be found in this series of links: 

 

1.       The Rise and Fall of the American Middle Class: A Faulty Foundation.

06/19/2006 - 8:28 PM

2.       The Rise and Fall of the American Middle Class: The Big Idea.

06/19/2006 - 10:38 AM

3.       The Rise and Fall of the American Middle Class: The Seeds of Destruction.

06/20/2006 - 11:26 AM

4.       The Rise and Fall of the American Middle Class: American Dream a Global Nightmare?

06/22/2006 - 9:50 AM

5.       The Rise and Fall of the American Middle Class: Trading Places - the American dream for a third world Level Playing Field.

06/26/2006 - 2:53 PM

6.       The Rise and Fall of the American Middle Class: Epilogue – A World View                  

07/03/2006 - 4:29 PM