Is the US at Risk of hyperinflation

Getting with the Program
Two years ago, American Armageddon raised eyebrows and caused lots of sniggers with an in-your-face title and a table of contents that included the following section:

PART TWO: RISKS

5. Economic Malaise
6. Systemic Crisis
7. Depression
8. Hyperinflation

When Giants Fall. Intro to the book

For a taste of what it’s all about, here is the Introduction:

In late 2007, a Chinese submarine suddenly “popped up” in the middle of U.S. military exercises taking place in the Pacific Ocean. According to Matthew Hickley of the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail, the 160-foot Song class diesel-electric attack submarine “sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles ” at the USS Kitty Hawk, a 1,000-foot aircraft carrier with 4,500 personnel on board that was being guarded by a dozen warships and at least two submarines. The newspaper added—in a report that received scant U.S. media attention—that American military chiefs “were left dumbstruck.” One North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) official said that “the effect was ‘as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik ’—a reference to the Soviet Union’s first orbiting satellite in 1957 which marked the start of the space age.”

Capitalism Snuffs out the Age of Enlightenment’s Candle

Suppose Paul Krugman, or any other Nobel Prize winning economist, owned an automobile that intermittently broke down but could be made to run again by tinkering with the mechanism. Suppose the breakdowns happened unexpectedly in places that not only caused Mr. Krugman but countless others inconvenience and hardship, as for instance, on a major highway during rush hour, perhaps even causing injurious or even deadly accidents. How many times would Mr. Krugman allow this to happen before coming to the conclusion that the vehicle, regardless of how often it underwent tinkering, would never be a reliable mode of transportation and that it should be consigned to a junk yard? Only Mr. Krugman knows the answer, but I suspect that it would not take too long. Neo-classical Anglo-American economics in all of its variations, which have come about by tinkering, is just such an unreliable economic vehicle.

Is military spending crippling America?

The United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars each year on its military. Part of the budget funds a worldwide network of bases, including sites in former Soviet republics.

The U.S. has 6,000 military bases on its own territory and huge numbers of military facilities abroad – more than any other country in the world.

Dirty Business, Dirty Wars: U.S.-Latin American Relations in the 21st Century

Much is being made across the political spectrum in the United States about Washington’s waning influence in Latin America. The region has seen an emergence of left and center-left presidents voted into office, many as a result of budding social movements growing democracy from the grassroots. Some pundits and analysts are suggesting that this phenomenon is occurring because of the Bush Administration’s perceived neglect of the region. Rather, what is happening is blowback from Washington’s continued meddling in the economic and political affairs of an area arrogantly referred to as the United States’ “backyard.” Latin America’s growing unity in rejecting the Washington Consensus remains fragile in the face of U.S. opposition. Washington has been quietly using the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, and a neo-cold war ideology to institutionalize a militarism in the region that risks returning us to the not so far off days of “dirty wars.”

The World is Facing the First Truly Global Economic Crisis

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum Davos, Switzerland January 28, 2009

The seeds of Latin America’s rebirth were sown in Cuba

There was one region that saw the bankruptcy of neoliberalism – and now the rest of the world is having to catch up

On 9 October 1967, Che Guevara faced a shaking sergeant Mario Teran, ordered to murder him by the Bolivian president and CIA, and declared: “Shoot, coward, you’re only going to kill a man.” The climax of Stephen Soderbergh’s two-part epic, Che, in real life this final act of heroic defiance marked the defeat of multiple attempts to spread the Cuban revolution to the rest of Latin America.

The Complete Discussion about the Actual Economic Crisis

 

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30 ene

The world after Keynes

January 14th, 2009 · No Comments

Stuart Holland argues in Red Pepper magazine that whilst Keynes is back in fashion, he did not anticipate many changes that have taken place in recent decades (transnationalisation of capital and corporations), neither did he recognise that the state itself might need to become an entrepreneur and drive long term innovating investment through public ownership. Holland argues that current borrowing to invest should be led by governments (rather than the private sector), be invested in social and environmental as well as economic spheres, be based on redistribution of wealth, and emphasise social advances above economic productivity.

In Davos, Putin mocks US over economy

As US President Barack Obama won approval for a giant $825 billion economic stimulus plan, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, speaking in Davos, mocked the American delegates to last year’s forum for emphasising the US economy’s “fundamental stability and cloudless prospects”.

A Primer on the Wall Street meltdown

Focus on the Global South, 25 September 2008

The Wall Street meltdown is not only due to greed and to the lack of government regulation of a hyperactive sector. It stems from the crisis of overproduction that has plagued global capitalism since the mid-seventies, argues Walden Bello.

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