It’s Official: The Crash of the U.S. Economy has begun
It’s Official: The Crash of the U.S. Economy has begun
By Richard C. Cook
Global Research, June 14, 2007
It’s official. Mark your calendars. The crash of the U.S. economy has begun. It was announced the morning of Wednesday, June 13, 2007, by economic writers Steven Pearlstein and Robert Samuelson in the pages of the Washington Post, one of the foremost house organs of the U.S. monetary elite.
Pearlstein’s column was titled, “The Takeover Boom, About to Go Bust” and concerned the extraordinary amount of debt vs. operating profits of companies currently subject to leveraged buyouts.
In language remarkably alarmist for the usually ultra-bland pages of the Post, Pearlstein wrote, “It is impossible to predict when the magic moment will be reached and everyone finally realizes that the prices being paid for these companies, and the debt taken on to support the acquisitions, are unsustainable. When that happens, it won't be pretty. Across the board, stock prices and company valuations will fall. Banks will announce painful write-offs, some hedge funds will close their doors, and private-equity funds will report disappointing returns. Some companies will be forced into bankruptcy or restructuring.”
Further, “Falling stock prices will cause companies to reduce their hiring and capital spending while governments will be forced to raise taxes or reduce services, as revenue from capital gains taxes declines. And the combination of reduced wealth and higher interest rates will finally cause consumers to pull back on their debt-financed consumption. It happened after the junk-bond and savings-and-loan collapses of the late 1980s. It happened after the tech and telecom bust of the late '90s. And it will happen this time.”
Samuelson’s column, “The End of Cheap Credit,” left the door slightly ajar in case the collapse is not quite so severe. He wrote of rising interest rates, “As the price of money increases, borrowing and the economy might weaken. The deep slump in housing could worsen. We could also discover that the long period of cheap credit has left a nasty residue.”
Other writers with less prestigious platforms than the Post have been talking about an approaching financial bust for a couple of years. Among them has been economist Michael Hudson, author of an article on the housing bubble titled, “The New Road to Serdom” in the May 2006 issue of Harper’s. Hudson has been speaking in interviews of a “break in the chain” of debt payments leading to a “long, slow economic crash,” with “asset deflation,” “mass defaults on mortgages,” and a “huge asset grab” by the rich who are able to protect their cash through money laundering and hedging with foreign currency bonds.
Among those poised to profit from the crash is the Carlyle Group, the equity fund that includes the Bush family and other high-profile investors with insider government connections. A January 2007 memorandum to company managers from founding partner William E. Conway, Jr., recently appeared which stated that, when the current “liquidity environment”—i.e., cheap credit—ends, “the buying opportunity will be a once in a lifetime chance.”
The fact that the crash is now being announced by the Post shows that it is a done deal. The Bilderbergers, or whomever it is that the Post reports to, have decided. It lets everyone know loud and clear that it’s time to batten down the hatches, run for cover, lay in two years of canned food, shield your assets, whatever.
Those left holding the bag will be the ordinary people whose assets are loaded with debt, such as tens of millions of mortgagees, millions of young people with student loans that can never be written off due to the “reformed” 2005 bankruptcy law, or vast numbers of workers with 401(k)s or other pension plans that are locked into the stock market.
In other words, it sounds eerily like 2000-2002 except maybe on a much larger scale. Then it was “only” the tenth worse bear market in history, but over a trillion dollars in wealth simply vanished. What makes today’s instance seem particularly unfair is that the preceding recovery that is now ending—the “jobless” one—was so anemic.
Neither Perlstein nor Samuelson gets to the bottom of the crisis, though they, like Conway of the Carlyle Group, point to the end of cheap credit. But interest rates are set by people who run central banks and financial institutions. They may be influenced by “the market,” but the market is controlled by people with money who want to maximize their profits.
Key to what is going on is that the Federal Reserve is refusing to follow the pattern set during the long reign of Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan in responding to shaky economic trends with lengthy infusions of credit as he did during the dot.com bubble of the 1990s and the housing bubble of 2001-2005.
This time around, Greenspan’s successor, Ben Bernanke, is sitting tight. With the economy teetering on the brink, the Fed is allowing rates to remain steady. The Fed claims their policy is due to the danger of rising “core inflation.” But this cannot be true. The biggest consumer item, houses and real estate, is tanking. Officially, unemployment is low, but mainly due to low-paying service jobs. Commodities have edged up, including food and gasoline, but that’s no reason to allow the entire national economy to be submerged.
So what is really happening? Actually, it’s simple. The difference today is that China and other large investors from abroad, including Middle Eastern oil magnates, are telling the U.S. that if interest rates come down, thereby devaluing their already-sliding dollar portfolios further, they will no longer support with their investments the bloated U.S. trade and fiscal deficits.
Of course we got ourselves into this quandary by shipping our manufacturing to China and other cheap-labor markets over the last generation. “Dollar hegemony” is backfiring. In fact China is using its American dollars to replace the International Monetary Fund as a lender to developing nations in Africa and elsewhere. As an additional insult, China now may be dictating a new generation of economic decline for the American people who are forced to buy their products at Wal-Mart by maxing out what is left of our available credit card debt.
About a year ago, a former Reagan Treasury official, now a well-known cable TV commentator, said that China had become “America’s bank” and commented approvingly that “it’s cheaper to print money than make cars anymore.” Ha ha.
It is truly staggering that none of the “mainstream” political candidates from either party has attacked this subject on the campaign trail. All are heavily funded by the financier elite who will profit no matter how bad the U.S. economy suffers. Every candidate except Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich treats the Federal Reserve like the fifth graven image on Mount Rushmore. And even the so-called progressives are silent. The weekend before the Perlstein/ Samuelson articles came out, there was a huge progressive conference in Washington, D.C., called “Taming the Corporate Giant.” Not a single session was devoted to financial issues.
What is likely to happen? I’d suggest four possible scenarios:
1.
Acceptance by the U.S. population of diminished prosperity and a declining role in the world. Grin and bear it. Live with your parents into your 40s instead of your 30s. Work two or three part-time jobs on the side, if you can find them. Die young if you lose your health care. Declare bankruptcy if you can, or just walk away from your debts until they bring back debtor’s prison like they’ve done in Dubai. Meanwhile, China buys more and more U.S. properties, homes, and businesses, as economists close to the Federal Reserve have suggested. If you’re an enterprising illegal immigrant, have fun continuing to jack up the underground economy, avoid business licenses and taxes, and rent out group houses to your friends.
2.
Times of economic crisis produce international tension and politicians tend to go to war rather than face the economic music. The classic example is the worldwide depression of the 1930s leading to World War II. Conditions in the coming years could be as bad as they were then. We could have a really big war if the U.S. decides once and for all to haul off and let China, or whomever, have it in the chops. If they don’t want our dollars or our debt any more, how about a few nukes?
3.
Maybe we’ll finally have a revolution either from the right or the center involving martial law, suspension of the Bill of Rights, etc., combined with some kind of military or forced-labor dictatorship. We’re halfway there anyway. Forget about a revolution from the left. They wouldn’t want to make anyone mad at them for being too radical.
4.
Could there ever be a real try at reform, maybe even an attempt just to get back to the New Deal? Since the causes of the crisis are monetary, so would be the solutions. The first step would be for the Federal Reserve System to be abolished as a bank of issue and a transformation of the nation’s credit system into a genuine public utility by the federal government. This way we could rebuild our manufacturing and public infrastructure and develop an income assurance policy that would benefit everyone.
The latter is the only sensible solution. There are monetary reformers who know how to do it if anyone gave them half a chance.
Richard C. Cook is the author of “Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age.” A retired federal analyst, his career included work with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, and NASA, followed by twenty-one years with the U.S. Treasury Department. He is now a Washington, D.C.-based writer and consultant. His book “We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform,” will be published later this year. His website is at www.richardccook.com.
http://tinyurl.com/2q2all
US may collapse as a superpower: analyst
The World Today - Friday, 1 June , 2007 12:27:00
Reporter: Eleanor Hall
Listen to the audio (MP3):
http://tinyurl.com/2gn2u9
ELEANOR HALL: A Canadian military analyst who's served in the armed forces and has written on international affairs for more than two decades, is issuing a warning today about the collapse of the United States as a superpower.
In his latest book, The Mess they Made: the Middle East after Iraq, Gwynne Dyer says there's no doubt that the US will withdraw its troops from Iraq once President George W. Bush leaves office.
But he predicts that already that war has set in motion events that will radically transform not only the Middle East but the role of the United States in the world.
Gwynne Dyer is in Sydney this week and he joined me earlier in the World Today studio.
There've been a series of conflicts in the Middle East over the last 40 years, why do you see this latest war in Iraq as likely to be so transformative for the region?
GWYNNE DYER: Well the Americans actually have never committed troops in the Middle East, never actually fought a war in the Middle East, the United States, before. I think this is having an impact on the American public, comparable to the impact on the American public in the Vietnam War though the casualties are far lower this time. So now, there is developing, a Middle Eastern allergy in American public opinion, rather similar to the South East Asian allergy that you had by the end of the 1960's.
That is transformative because if America is not there enforcing the status quo, the status quo probably collapses. It is very old and shoddy. The regimes of the Arab world, with zero exceptions, except for Iraq, where the Americans overthrew Saddam, have all been in power for at least forty years.
They're all dictatorships or absolute monarchies, most of them are corrupt beyond imagining. So this is a very unstable status quo, maintained by American subsidies, American troops, American guarantees, and when those are withdrawn, I think that there will be very large changes in the Middle East.
ELEANOR HALL: You're certain that all of those will be withdrawn, not just the US troops, but the US subsidies as well?
GWYNNE DYER: Not all and not right away, but enough to create a momentum, in which Congress will be reluctant to vote new funds, Congress will be very suspicious about new commitments to support Arab regimes, and meanwhile the momentum in the streets in the Arab world will be moving very rapidly in the favour of the revolutionaries. And that's what they are, after all, the Islamists, after all, are political revolutionaries, they're not just religious fanatics.
ELEANOR HALL: So what will be the shape of the Middle East at that point?
GWYNNE DYER: I think that you're going to see some, I can't tell you which ones, but some Arab regimes fall in the next five years, fall to Islamists of various variety. Some of them perhaps very radical, some of them less so.
ELEANOR HALL: So what would this mean for terrorism in the West
GWYNNE DYER: I think it would drop. I mean the terrorism in the West has two sources, really, first of all the actual 9/11 attacks were a strategic move by a revolutionary Arab organisation, al-Qaeda, to trick the United States into invading Muslim countries. If you pull the troops out of the Middle East, and the West is no longer occupying Muslim countries, I think the wind goes out of the sails of that particular interpretation.
ELEANOR HALL: There's not a danger that having Islamist republics in the Middle East might inspire terrorism around the world?
GWYNNE DYER: No, I don't see why, because I mean, once they're in power, what do they need to bother us for?
ELEANOR HALL: You suggest that the Iraq war could also transform the role of the US in the world, that it's actually done far more damage to US power and prestige than the Vietnam War. What are you predicting for the US?
GWYNNE DYER: Well, think about the Vietnam War for a moment. The United States suffered a humiliating defeat and frankly the US armed forces were a complete shambles for 10 years after that. And yet, within five years, it was all forgiven and forgotten. And in the world at large by the end of the 1970's, the United States was back as the leader of the free world – trusted, beloved by all, well, by most. That could happen again, if the US pulls out of Iraq, as soon as Mr Bush leaves power.
Which is what I think will happen. About 10 minutes after the inauguration of the next President in January 2009, the evacuation starts. However, there is the possibility that the United States before Mr Bush leaves will attack Iran. And if that happens, I think we have a very different outcome. Former National Security Adviser in the United States, Zbigniew Brzezinski is on record as saying if the United States attacks Iran, it will lose its place in the world. And I think he's right.
ELEANOR HALL: What do you think the odds are though, of the United States attacking Iran?
GWYNNE DYER: I have no idea, I change in my view from week to week on this, which presumably means they're about 50/50. I mean, the forces are in place, the runways have been lengthened, you know, the extra carriers are in the Gulf.
ELEANOR HALL: And yet there are constant denials from the Bush administration…
GWYNNE DYER: Well of course there are, but that's what you'd have in this situation, so it means nothing. Could all be bluff, and I hope it is, but if it isn't, then it is imaginable that the Bush administration decides to roll the dice one last time. If they attacked Iran, they would lose, and of course, the Iranians would close the Gulf to the tanker traffic, and so suddenly there's a global economic crisis, and then in two or three months we get America off the hook, somehow and get the Gulf reopened. But by that time, frankly, I think NATO will have broken up, I think the Russians will have decided they'd better make a deal with the Chinese, it would change the look of the chessboard very dramatically.
ELEANOR HALL: Why would it change it so dramatically, when you're saying that the Iraq war, you're expecting that the world and the American people will forgive the Bush administration, why wouldn't they equally forgive it for a disastrous war in Iran, were that to happen?
GWYNNE DYER: It's the rogue state phenomenon. I mean, this could be another unprovoked, illegal American attack on a sovereign state. It would actually convince a great many people that the United States is congenitally a rogue state.
A senior Japanese diplomat said to me, last year, he said "You know the United States is a twelve year old with a shotgun". And what he meant was that as the United States begins to suspect that it's past the apogee of its trajectory, its on the way down, as a great power no longer on the way up or at the top securely, that it is becoming extremely erratic, that is lashing out in all sorts of ways to try and slow or stop what it perceives as incipient decline.
So there is concern that we're getting into rather deep water here, that we may be going into an era where the Americans become highly unpredictable and quite dangerous.
ELEANOR HALL: Gwynne Dyer, thanks very much for speaking to us.
GWYNNE DYER: You're welcome.
ELEANOR HALL: And that's the military historian, Gwynne Dyer, speaking about his latest book, The Mess they Made: the Middle East after Iraq.
http://tinyurl.com/2bc7zw
ONLINE Lese-Tip:
Systemkrise
Informationen zur aufkommenden Krise des weltweiten Finanzsystems.
Wir müssen jetzt jederzeit damit rechnen, dass das losbricht,
was bisher nur noch mühsam zusammengehalten wurde.
Enthält alle Einträge ab dem 1.6.2007
Neu 2007-06-14:
Alan Greenspan über die Dollars der Chinesen
Neu 2007-06-13:
Der Bond-Crash geht weiter
Neu 2007-06-07:
US-Prime Brokers retten Hedge-Fonds
Neu 2007-06-04:
Die China-Aktien-Bubble ist geplatzt
Neu 2007-06-02:
Börsenastrologe Amanita - derzeit 2. Stufe der Hyperinflation
http://tinyurl.com/233fl6
By Richard C. Cook
Global Research, June 14, 2007
It’s official. Mark your calendars. The crash of the U.S. economy has begun. It was announced the morning of Wednesday, June 13, 2007, by economic writers Steven Pearlstein and Robert Samuelson in the pages of the Washington Post, one of the foremost house organs of the U.S. monetary elite.
Pearlstein’s column was titled, “The Takeover Boom, About to Go Bust” and concerned the extraordinary amount of debt vs. operating profits of companies currently subject to leveraged buyouts.
In language remarkably alarmist for the usually ultra-bland pages of the Post, Pearlstein wrote, “It is impossible to predict when the magic moment will be reached and everyone finally realizes that the prices being paid for these companies, and the debt taken on to support the acquisitions, are unsustainable. When that happens, it won't be pretty. Across the board, stock prices and company valuations will fall. Banks will announce painful write-offs, some hedge funds will close their doors, and private-equity funds will report disappointing returns. Some companies will be forced into bankruptcy or restructuring.”
Further, “Falling stock prices will cause companies to reduce their hiring and capital spending while governments will be forced to raise taxes or reduce services, as revenue from capital gains taxes declines. And the combination of reduced wealth and higher interest rates will finally cause consumers to pull back on their debt-financed consumption. It happened after the junk-bond and savings-and-loan collapses of the late 1980s. It happened after the tech and telecom bust of the late '90s. And it will happen this time.”
Samuelson’s column, “The End of Cheap Credit,” left the door slightly ajar in case the collapse is not quite so severe. He wrote of rising interest rates, “As the price of money increases, borrowing and the economy might weaken. The deep slump in housing could worsen. We could also discover that the long period of cheap credit has left a nasty residue.”
Other writers with less prestigious platforms than the Post have been talking about an approaching financial bust for a couple of years. Among them has been economist Michael Hudson, author of an article on the housing bubble titled, “The New Road to Serdom” in the May 2006 issue of Harper’s. Hudson has been speaking in interviews of a “break in the chain” of debt payments leading to a “long, slow economic crash,” with “asset deflation,” “mass defaults on mortgages,” and a “huge asset grab” by the rich who are able to protect their cash through money laundering and hedging with foreign currency bonds.
Among those poised to profit from the crash is the Carlyle Group, the equity fund that includes the Bush family and other high-profile investors with insider government connections. A January 2007 memorandum to company managers from founding partner William E. Conway, Jr., recently appeared which stated that, when the current “liquidity environment”—i.e., cheap credit—ends, “the buying opportunity will be a once in a lifetime chance.”
The fact that the crash is now being announced by the Post shows that it is a done deal. The Bilderbergers, or whomever it is that the Post reports to, have decided. It lets everyone know loud and clear that it’s time to batten down the hatches, run for cover, lay in two years of canned food, shield your assets, whatever.
Those left holding the bag will be the ordinary people whose assets are loaded with debt, such as tens of millions of mortgagees, millions of young people with student loans that can never be written off due to the “reformed” 2005 bankruptcy law, or vast numbers of workers with 401(k)s or other pension plans that are locked into the stock market.
In other words, it sounds eerily like 2000-2002 except maybe on a much larger scale. Then it was “only” the tenth worse bear market in history, but over a trillion dollars in wealth simply vanished. What makes today’s instance seem particularly unfair is that the preceding recovery that is now ending—the “jobless” one—was so anemic.
Neither Perlstein nor Samuelson gets to the bottom of the crisis, though they, like Conway of the Carlyle Group, point to the end of cheap credit. But interest rates are set by people who run central banks and financial institutions. They may be influenced by “the market,” but the market is controlled by people with money who want to maximize their profits.
Key to what is going on is that the Federal Reserve is refusing to follow the pattern set during the long reign of Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan in responding to shaky economic trends with lengthy infusions of credit as he did during the dot.com bubble of the 1990s and the housing bubble of 2001-2005.
This time around, Greenspan’s successor, Ben Bernanke, is sitting tight. With the economy teetering on the brink, the Fed is allowing rates to remain steady. The Fed claims their policy is due to the danger of rising “core inflation.” But this cannot be true. The biggest consumer item, houses and real estate, is tanking. Officially, unemployment is low, but mainly due to low-paying service jobs. Commodities have edged up, including food and gasoline, but that’s no reason to allow the entire national economy to be submerged.
So what is really happening? Actually, it’s simple. The difference today is that China and other large investors from abroad, including Middle Eastern oil magnates, are telling the U.S. that if interest rates come down, thereby devaluing their already-sliding dollar portfolios further, they will no longer support with their investments the bloated U.S. trade and fiscal deficits.
Of course we got ourselves into this quandary by shipping our manufacturing to China and other cheap-labor markets over the last generation. “Dollar hegemony” is backfiring. In fact China is using its American dollars to replace the International Monetary Fund as a lender to developing nations in Africa and elsewhere. As an additional insult, China now may be dictating a new generation of economic decline for the American people who are forced to buy their products at Wal-Mart by maxing out what is left of our available credit card debt.
About a year ago, a former Reagan Treasury official, now a well-known cable TV commentator, said that China had become “America’s bank” and commented approvingly that “it’s cheaper to print money than make cars anymore.” Ha ha.
It is truly staggering that none of the “mainstream” political candidates from either party has attacked this subject on the campaign trail. All are heavily funded by the financier elite who will profit no matter how bad the U.S. economy suffers. Every candidate except Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich treats the Federal Reserve like the fifth graven image on Mount Rushmore. And even the so-called progressives are silent. The weekend before the Perlstein/ Samuelson articles came out, there was a huge progressive conference in Washington, D.C., called “Taming the Corporate Giant.” Not a single session was devoted to financial issues.
What is likely to happen? I’d suggest four possible scenarios:
1.
Acceptance by the U.S. population of diminished prosperity and a declining role in the world. Grin and bear it. Live with your parents into your 40s instead of your 30s. Work two or three part-time jobs on the side, if you can find them. Die young if you lose your health care. Declare bankruptcy if you can, or just walk away from your debts until they bring back debtor’s prison like they’ve done in Dubai. Meanwhile, China buys more and more U.S. properties, homes, and businesses, as economists close to the Federal Reserve have suggested. If you’re an enterprising illegal immigrant, have fun continuing to jack up the underground economy, avoid business licenses and taxes, and rent out group houses to your friends.
2.
Times of economic crisis produce international tension and politicians tend to go to war rather than face the economic music. The classic example is the worldwide depression of the 1930s leading to World War II. Conditions in the coming years could be as bad as they were then. We could have a really big war if the U.S. decides once and for all to haul off and let China, or whomever, have it in the chops. If they don’t want our dollars or our debt any more, how about a few nukes?
3.
Maybe we’ll finally have a revolution either from the right or the center involving martial law, suspension of the Bill of Rights, etc., combined with some kind of military or forced-labor dictatorship. We’re halfway there anyway. Forget about a revolution from the left. They wouldn’t want to make anyone mad at them for being too radical.
4.
Could there ever be a real try at reform, maybe even an attempt just to get back to the New Deal? Since the causes of the crisis are monetary, so would be the solutions. The first step would be for the Federal Reserve System to be abolished as a bank of issue and a transformation of the nation’s credit system into a genuine public utility by the federal government. This way we could rebuild our manufacturing and public infrastructure and develop an income assurance policy that would benefit everyone.
The latter is the only sensible solution. There are monetary reformers who know how to do it if anyone gave them half a chance.
Richard C. Cook is the author of “Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age.” A retired federal analyst, his career included work with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, and NASA, followed by twenty-one years with the U.S. Treasury Department. He is now a Washington, D.C.-based writer and consultant. His book “We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform,” will be published later this year. His website is at www.richardccook.com.
http://tinyurl.com/2q2all
US may collapse as a superpower: analyst
The World Today - Friday, 1 June , 2007 12:27:00
Reporter: Eleanor Hall
Listen to the audio (MP3):
http://tinyurl.com/2gn2u9
ELEANOR HALL: A Canadian military analyst who's served in the armed forces and has written on international affairs for more than two decades, is issuing a warning today about the collapse of the United States as a superpower.
In his latest book, The Mess they Made: the Middle East after Iraq, Gwynne Dyer says there's no doubt that the US will withdraw its troops from Iraq once President George W. Bush leaves office.
But he predicts that already that war has set in motion events that will radically transform not only the Middle East but the role of the United States in the world.
Gwynne Dyer is in Sydney this week and he joined me earlier in the World Today studio.
There've been a series of conflicts in the Middle East over the last 40 years, why do you see this latest war in Iraq as likely to be so transformative for the region?
GWYNNE DYER: Well the Americans actually have never committed troops in the Middle East, never actually fought a war in the Middle East, the United States, before. I think this is having an impact on the American public, comparable to the impact on the American public in the Vietnam War though the casualties are far lower this time. So now, there is developing, a Middle Eastern allergy in American public opinion, rather similar to the South East Asian allergy that you had by the end of the 1960's.
That is transformative because if America is not there enforcing the status quo, the status quo probably collapses. It is very old and shoddy. The regimes of the Arab world, with zero exceptions, except for Iraq, where the Americans overthrew Saddam, have all been in power for at least forty years.
They're all dictatorships or absolute monarchies, most of them are corrupt beyond imagining. So this is a very unstable status quo, maintained by American subsidies, American troops, American guarantees, and when those are withdrawn, I think that there will be very large changes in the Middle East.
ELEANOR HALL: You're certain that all of those will be withdrawn, not just the US troops, but the US subsidies as well?
GWYNNE DYER: Not all and not right away, but enough to create a momentum, in which Congress will be reluctant to vote new funds, Congress will be very suspicious about new commitments to support Arab regimes, and meanwhile the momentum in the streets in the Arab world will be moving very rapidly in the favour of the revolutionaries. And that's what they are, after all, the Islamists, after all, are political revolutionaries, they're not just religious fanatics.
ELEANOR HALL: So what will be the shape of the Middle East at that point?
GWYNNE DYER: I think that you're going to see some, I can't tell you which ones, but some Arab regimes fall in the next five years, fall to Islamists of various variety. Some of them perhaps very radical, some of them less so.
ELEANOR HALL: So what would this mean for terrorism in the West
GWYNNE DYER: I think it would drop. I mean the terrorism in the West has two sources, really, first of all the actual 9/11 attacks were a strategic move by a revolutionary Arab organisation, al-Qaeda, to trick the United States into invading Muslim countries. If you pull the troops out of the Middle East, and the West is no longer occupying Muslim countries, I think the wind goes out of the sails of that particular interpretation.
ELEANOR HALL: There's not a danger that having Islamist republics in the Middle East might inspire terrorism around the world?
GWYNNE DYER: No, I don't see why, because I mean, once they're in power, what do they need to bother us for?
ELEANOR HALL: You suggest that the Iraq war could also transform the role of the US in the world, that it's actually done far more damage to US power and prestige than the Vietnam War. What are you predicting for the US?
GWYNNE DYER: Well, think about the Vietnam War for a moment. The United States suffered a humiliating defeat and frankly the US armed forces were a complete shambles for 10 years after that. And yet, within five years, it was all forgiven and forgotten. And in the world at large by the end of the 1970's, the United States was back as the leader of the free world – trusted, beloved by all, well, by most. That could happen again, if the US pulls out of Iraq, as soon as Mr Bush leaves power.
Which is what I think will happen. About 10 minutes after the inauguration of the next President in January 2009, the evacuation starts. However, there is the possibility that the United States before Mr Bush leaves will attack Iran. And if that happens, I think we have a very different outcome. Former National Security Adviser in the United States, Zbigniew Brzezinski is on record as saying if the United States attacks Iran, it will lose its place in the world. And I think he's right.
ELEANOR HALL: What do you think the odds are though, of the United States attacking Iran?
GWYNNE DYER: I have no idea, I change in my view from week to week on this, which presumably means they're about 50/50. I mean, the forces are in place, the runways have been lengthened, you know, the extra carriers are in the Gulf.
ELEANOR HALL: And yet there are constant denials from the Bush administration…
GWYNNE DYER: Well of course there are, but that's what you'd have in this situation, so it means nothing. Could all be bluff, and I hope it is, but if it isn't, then it is imaginable that the Bush administration decides to roll the dice one last time. If they attacked Iran, they would lose, and of course, the Iranians would close the Gulf to the tanker traffic, and so suddenly there's a global economic crisis, and then in two or three months we get America off the hook, somehow and get the Gulf reopened. But by that time, frankly, I think NATO will have broken up, I think the Russians will have decided they'd better make a deal with the Chinese, it would change the look of the chessboard very dramatically.
ELEANOR HALL: Why would it change it so dramatically, when you're saying that the Iraq war, you're expecting that the world and the American people will forgive the Bush administration, why wouldn't they equally forgive it for a disastrous war in Iran, were that to happen?
GWYNNE DYER: It's the rogue state phenomenon. I mean, this could be another unprovoked, illegal American attack on a sovereign state. It would actually convince a great many people that the United States is congenitally a rogue state.
A senior Japanese diplomat said to me, last year, he said "You know the United States is a twelve year old with a shotgun". And what he meant was that as the United States begins to suspect that it's past the apogee of its trajectory, its on the way down, as a great power no longer on the way up or at the top securely, that it is becoming extremely erratic, that is lashing out in all sorts of ways to try and slow or stop what it perceives as incipient decline.
So there is concern that we're getting into rather deep water here, that we may be going into an era where the Americans become highly unpredictable and quite dangerous.
ELEANOR HALL: Gwynne Dyer, thanks very much for speaking to us.
GWYNNE DYER: You're welcome.
ELEANOR HALL: And that's the military historian, Gwynne Dyer, speaking about his latest book, The Mess they Made: the Middle East after Iraq.
http://tinyurl.com/2bc7zw
ONLINE Lese-Tip:
Systemkrise
Informationen zur aufkommenden Krise des weltweiten Finanzsystems.
Wir müssen jetzt jederzeit damit rechnen, dass das losbricht,
was bisher nur noch mühsam zusammengehalten wurde.
Enthält alle Einträge ab dem 1.6.2007
Neu 2007-06-14:
Alan Greenspan über die Dollars der Chinesen
Neu 2007-06-13:
Der Bond-Crash geht weiter
Neu 2007-06-07:
US-Prime Brokers retten Hedge-Fonds
Neu 2007-06-04:
Die China-Aktien-Bubble ist geplatzt
Neu 2007-06-02:
Börsenastrologe Amanita - derzeit 2. Stufe der Hyperinflation
http://tinyurl.com/233fl6
bin66 - 15. Jun, 00:31
