by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
The dollar's implosion and the global banking spiral demand that Americans contemplate what was previously unthinkable: the toppling of the United States from its 60-plus years of economic dominance. The very idea of a greatly reduced U.S. world role is alien to most Americans, who "won't know what hit them when the hammer falls." Conditioned by a media that owes allegiance only to corporate owners, never to the truth, and believing that the U.S. is a "light unto the nations," much of the public find the looming economic meltdown inconceivable except in terms of "enemies" abroad. In a nation that increasingly produces nothing but weapons, "the response to the loss of domination will be more wars." Lack of a real social safety net ensures that "economic upheaval will create crime, family disruption and untold psychic damage" as Americans' most basic understandings of their country" are "shaken to the very core."
Freedom Rider: Economic Meltdown
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
"The country will be wholly unprepared for the coming catastrophe."
How will Americans react when their economy collapses? The story of the coming crisis is barely being told because the corporate media's information bubble gets thicker by the day. Very few people know or understand the depths of the coming crisis. There is talk of recession, and falling home prices, but there has been little if any explanation of the havoc that will be played out across the country when the day of reckoning comes.
Banks all over the world are taking "write downs" in the billions of dollars. In plain English, a write down is a loss. Not only are international investment banks losing money hand over fist, but the almighty dollar isn't so mighty anymore. Stores in New York City are accepting euros along with the greenback.
Humorous anecdotes of Manhattanites using euros are no longer funny. No nation on earth wants dollars anymore. Tourists can no longer use them at the Taj Mahal and oil rich Saudi princes would dump them if they could do so without hurting themselves. "My feeling is that the mere mention that OPEC countries are studying the issue of the dollar is itself going to have an impact that endangers the interests of the countries. There will be journalists who will seize on this point and we don't want the dollar to collapse instead of doing something good for OPEC." (*link saud)
"No nation on earth wants dollars anymore."
So said Prince Saud al-Faisal when he thought his microphone was turned off at an OPEC meeting. His words were stunning, so too is the fact that few Americans know he uttered them. The average American knows about the subprime mortgage crisis and knows that the neighbors lost their house. They think the problems were created by greedy banks and gullible home buyers who thought interest-only mortgages actually made sense. They don't know much else. They don't know that the subprime mortgage crisis is part of a larger crisis in the derivatives market that has enveloped the entire world.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=547&Itemid=1
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