Hyperinflation Potential: Paul Craig Roberts Asks the Question

Posted by James Bowery on Monday, 12 February 2007 19:02.

In “The World Can Halt Bush’s Crimes By Dumping the Dollar”, Reagan-era Treasury official, Paul Craig Roberts, is basically posing the question I’ve posed here previously, but from another perspective.

So how does this play out in practice?

There are certainly enough petro-currency countries out there to provide a solid base for the transition to another reserve currency. Moreover, the US has alienated petro-currency countries enormously. The US has stretched its conventional forces, and alienated its own people to the point that it is risking political if not military instability at home.

Pseudo-sophisticates might point out that the US could threaten world-wide nuclear attack on petro-currency countries to cow them. However the US would then risk the detonation of Russian nuclear warheads smuggled in over the border and Russia would have plausible deniability since during the oligarch era things were so corrupt and abusive of their technologists that weapons capability just “got loose”.
Pseudo-sophisticates might further point out that the neocons are radical enough they might actually want nuclear war but what they forget is that neocons are essentially a mercantile class—not a warrior class. Merchants are cowards and cities are their primary habitat.

Sure the petro-currency countries can still accept USD for oil but then immediately exchange their USD for Euros or a petro-currency like the ruble. After all, isn’t that what machinery of global currency arbitrage is all about? Don’t guys like George Soros want “Open Societies” that allow them to shift currencies around willy-nilly and aren’t they willing to use their money muscle to make sure things stay “open”?

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Comments:

Posted by alex zeka on Mon, 12 Feb 2007 20:47 | #

I would seriously question your, needlessly contemptuous, assumption that the neocons are a ‘mercantile class’. Why can’t we assume that a certain proportion of True Believers are as demented and warhungry as they sound? Isn’t it the case for most ideological movements that a certain proportion do genuinely believe what’s being peddled by the others? And do not these rise to postions of pre-eminence in desperate straits, when the skin-deep believers bail out for safer intellectual shores?

I sense here a certain amount of that same unreasoning derision heeped by the neocons on Muslims, who cannot be thought brave, sincere and even logical on their own terms. Equally, you can’t seem to allow that some neocons do mean it. No, they’re obvious merchants at heart, even though they talk and act very much like warriors, albeit armchair ones. They’ve shown themselves very much ready to spill blood so far.

Neither their view of Muslims nor yours of them are rational assumptions, but rather cathartic vitriole poured on an enemy, and both obscure the actually existing realities. Now, will this turn me into a ‘pseudo-sophisticate’ as well, a term which could very well be applied to someone who seems to believe that his blinding insight is a better indicator of what a faction believes than the words and deeds of that faction?

Posted by Robert of the Rohorrim on Mon, 12 Feb 2007 21:46 | #

Does the merchantile class include those who use money as a weapon?

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:12 | #

Alex, I think most models of the Neocons are inconsistent with them being rational actors so it isn’t really up to me to make the argument. Do you have an alternate model?

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:19 | #

RotR, using money as a weapon only works so long as the war doesn’t escalate to the point that the enforcement powers of the fiat currency are undermined. I think that its pretty obvious the enforcement powers of the fiat currency in question are being threatened. Right now, the World Bank is only so powerful so if you want to claim that the invalidation of the US dollar is part of the neocon plan, and include Wolfowitz’s recent election as President of the World Bank then I’d be interested to hear how this is supposed to play out and in the interests of who, exactly?

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Tue, 13 Feb 2007 05:00 | #

I just have to say what an excellent column that was by Paul Craig Roberts (one of a great number he’s penned on the evil that is the Bush administration). I hope many will read it. Paul Craig Roberts has emerged as by far the best critic of Bush’s record of the most brazen, the most infuriating national and international lawlessness and heartbreaking moral crime. Bush is a one-man nation-destroyer, doing everything in his power to annihilate the United States and all other nations unfortunate enough to come within reach of his administration’s poisonous tentacles. If the international community can stop him through the means suggested by Roberts in this column, by God do it and do it fast, and let the chips fall where they may (with Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld ending up rotting in prison, one can fervently hope ...).

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 13 Feb 2007 09:19 | #

Yes it was excellent except that I don’t think the nuclear danger is from the USA’s neocons. There is some possibility that Israel has the warrior spirit necessary to tactically strike with nuclear weapons. The Israelis aren’t neocons however. Israelis are real Zionists, not diaspora hypocrites. Diaspora Zionists are necessarily parasites unlike Zionists living in Israel. It is the Israelis’ relative lack of hypocrisy that makes them credible as a nuclear power.

Posted by alex zeka on Tue, 13 Feb 2007 11:05 | #

I do have a model. It’s that a certain proportion of neocons are True Believers, and that once the going gets tough those whose beliefs are less genuine will be exposed as hypocrites or run away from their old positions, thus leaving the movement in the hands of the TBs. This also happens to be the model used for most ideological movements, so I scarcely need to justify it: *you* need to prove why the neocons differ from all other movements, I don’t need to prove why they don’t differ.

Posted by Bud White on Tue, 13 Feb 2007 14:41 | #

Paul Craig Roberts has it wrong!

IMO, this Putin vs Bush charade is a classic good cop bad cop routine designed to get Iran to cease it’s nuclear weapons development.

In the larger scheme, the USA is playing the part of the worlds military enforcer. The US military is being used by the rest of the NWO crowd as the enforcement arm for the purpose of coercing the remaining holdout countries to sign onto the NWO agenda.

In the long complicated process of forming global socialism, the international power brokers are currently in the stage of dividing the world into regional trading blocks. Iran, and Iraq (North Korea too) are bucking their plans; they are intransigent holdouts; so, is there any question as to why Iran, and Iraq were included in the “axis of evil?”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperation_Council_for_the_Arab_States_of_the_Gulf

Once one broadens their scope and views the big picture, all the incomprehensible geopolitical maneuvering starts to make sense.

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 13 Feb 2007 17:09 | #

Alex, I don’t think the neocons differ! Take for example the Freudians. They were once a dominant school of psychology and the going got rough due to advances in cognitive psychology. Now only the most fanatical True Believers in Freud are left, and they are ineffectual.

A similar thing is going on with the neocons. Guys like Bush may be fanatical True Believer neocons but are they really able to be effective without mercantile hypocrites like Wolfowitz around?

Remember, one of the keys of Jewish power is to put third rate at best people into positions of power precisely so that they cannot operate independently of their Jewish puppet masters, and so that first rate guys like Henry Ford or Charles Lindbergh don’t rescue the people.

Posted by alex zeka on Thu, 15 Feb 2007 18:06 | #

So, basically you’re assuming that the TBs have no power whatsoever (as they’re third rate people), and that the hands pulling the strings will quickly release their marionettes once their ideology starts requiring them to take risks. Has it occurred to you that the marionettes, who have been talked up to the skies by their old puppeteers, might well decide to follow through what they believe? What if they start pulling their own strings?

Posted by James Bowery on Fri, 16 Feb 2007 03:21 | #

WASHINGTON — A powerful Democrat and Iraq war foe said he intends to introduce legislation in the coming weeks that would effectively end President Bush’s plans to send 21,500 more troops into Iraq by setting limits on which troops can be sent.

Using an unusual medium — a recorded interview posted on the Internet — Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said his bill would prevent troops from being sent back to Iraq too soon or too poorly equipped. Troops being sent back to Iraq for another tour would have to stay in the United States at least one year before being redeployed. The bill would also end “stop-loss” policies by preventing the president from retaining troops in Iraq after their enlistments expire.

• House Speaker Pelosi Says Bush Has No Authority to Invade Iran

Murtha, who is chairman of the defense subcommittee to the House Appropriations Committee, said he is formulating legislation with teeth because he doesn’t think Bush’s plan to send more troops to Baghdad and al Anbar province would accomplish the goals of bringing peace to the country or returning troops home sooner.

The Bush administration “won’t be able to continue. They won’t be able to do the deployment. They won’t have the equipment. They don’t have the training and they won’t be able to do the work,” Murtha said in the post on the Democrat-friendly Web site MoveCongress.org. “This vote will limit the options of the president and should stop this surge.”

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