Slavoj Zizek: A New Kind of Communism

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The economic consequences of cheap money

Ludwig Von Mises

[From a memorandum, dated April 24, 1946, prepared in English by Professor Mises for a committee of businessmen for whom he served as a consultant, this article appears in The Causes of the Economic Crisis, and Other Essays Before and After the Great Depression (2006) as chapter 5, "The Trade Cycle and Credit Expansion: The Economic Consequences of Cheap Money."]

The author of this paper is fully aware of its insufficiency. Yet, there is no means of dealing with the problem of the trade cycle in a more satisfactory way if one does not write a treatise embracing all aspects of the capitalist market economy. The author fully agrees with the dictum of Böhm-Bawerk: “A theory of the trade cycle, if it is not to be mere botching, can only be written as the last chapter or the last chapter but one of a treatise dealing with all economic problems.”

It is only with these reservations that the present writer presents this rough sketch to the members of the Committee.

I. The Unpopularity of Interest

America’s Message To The Rest Of The World: You Send Us Oil And Cheap Plastic Gadgets And We’ll Send You Our Wealth And Prosperity

Have you ever seen pictures of extravagant wealth from places such as Dubai or Abu Dhabi and wondered where in the world they got all that money from?  Have you ever read news stories that talk about China lending us hundreds of billions of dollars and wondered how they could possibly have so much wealth?  Well, it is actually quite simple.  They got much of it from us.  Every month, the United States buys much more from the rest of the world then they buy from us.  It is called a "trade deficit" and the United States has been running one for decades.  In essence, what is happening each month is that we are transferring somewhere between 40 to 50 billion dollars of our national wealth to the rest of the globe and they are sending us oil and cheap plastic gadgets that Americans greedily consume.  By the end of the year we have usually transferred somewhere around a half trillion dollars of our national wealth out of the country for good.

In order to maintain our standard of living, the U.S. government has been going to the countries we have been sending our wealth to and has been begging them to loan us massive amounts of their dollars.  At this point the U.S. government literally owes trillions of dollars to the rest of the world.

Scoffers say that it is just a bunch of "paper money" that we are sending them, but the truth is that it is hundreds of billions of dollars of "paper money" that is not in the hands of average Americans.  We have sent massive amounts of our wealth and prosperity overseas and it isn't coming back unless we borrow it.

Today there are dozens and dozens of U.S. cities such as Detroit, Michigan and Camden, New Jersey that are turning into post-industrial hellholes while thousands of gleaming new modern factories are going up all over China. 42.9 million Americans are now on food stamps (a 16 percent increase in just one year) while the oil sheiks of the Middle East build opulent palaces that are extravagant beyond belief.

Most Americans do not realize how serious the U.S. addiction to foreign oil really is.  We are constantly being drained of our wealth by the oil powers of the Middle East.

So what are they doing with all of this money?  Well, let's take a look at just a couple of examples.

Have you ever heard of the Emirates Palace? It is located in the United Arab Emirates and it cost approximately 3.8 billion dollars to build. The following is how one writer for a major UK newspaper described it after a visit....

The Emirates Palace has so many biggest and best boasts, it could have its own chapter in the Guinness Book of Records, but the atrium is the whistles and bells, the jaw-dropping big daddy of them all — 60 metres high, 42 metres wide and topped with the largest dome in the world. Staff need golf carts to negotiate their way around it. It is decorated with 13 colours of marble, ranging from sunrise yellow to sunset red (to reflect the many hues of the desert), and lots and lots and lots of gold: 6,040 square metres of gold leaf cover the largest gilded expanse ever created in one building. It’s even in the food. I ate gold leaf on my chocolate cake. Apparently, it aids digestion.

In Dubai, there is so much wealth that they pretty much build whatever they can dream up.  For example, in Dubai you will find the largest "indoor ski resort" in the world.  One travel site describes it this way....

When one thinks of Arabia, let alone Dubai, one likely pictures an arid desert of heat and sun. One does not think of snow skiing. Yet, that is what one can do at Ski Dubai, arguably the largest indoor ski resort in the world. The resort features 22,500 square meters of ski area. The heavily insulated building is kept at 30.2 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and 21.2 degrees Fahrenheit throughout the night, which is when the snow is generated. The resort features five ski runs and is open year round.

But it is not just the Middle East that is getting incredibly wealthy off of the United States.  In a recent article entitled "China #1, United States #2? 25 Facts That Prove The Transition Is Really Happening" I detailed how China is in the process of surpassing the United States economically.

Over the past 25 years, the U.S. trade deficit with China has soared into the stratosphere.  In 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 6 million dollarsfor the entire year.  In the month of August alone, the U.S. trade deficit with China was over 28 billion dollars.

For many Americans this can be difficult to comprehend.  For a moment, imagine a giant map of the world and that there is a gigantic pile of money in China and a gigantic pile of money in the United States.  Then start taking 20 billion dollars from the pile of the United States and give it to China every single month.

After a while, what is going to happen?

Well, the United States is going to be a lot poorer and China is going to be a lot wealthier.

As we have become poorer, it has been harder and harder to maintain our very high standard of living.

The U.S. government has been borrowing larger and larger sums of money from the rest of the world in order to "stimulate" our economy, but in the process we are piling up horrific amounts of debt.

The national debt of the United States is now 13 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.

If we did that again over the next 30 years, we would have a national debt of approximately $170 trillion by the year 2040.

Of course that will never happen.

Why?

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China #1, United States #2? 25 Facts That Prove The Transition Is Really Happening

The End of the American Dream

On a recent episode of The Office, Michael Scott spent much of the show bemoaning the fact that China could soon become the number one economic superpower.  Of course by the end of the episode everyone had concluded that the United States would continue to be number one indefinitely, but in the real world things are not so simple.  Sadly, the cold, hard facts reveal that China is on the rise and the United States is experiencing a dramatic economic decline.  The world is changing and China is projected to become the largest economy in the world at some point during the next decade.  Americans have been taught from birth that "the U.S. is number one", but the transition is really happening.  China is passing the United States even in quite a few high tech industries and in many areas of scientific research.  The numbers that you are going to read below are absolutely staggering.  It is getting really hard to deny that the Chinese are wiping the floor with us economically.  In fact, they are beating us so badly that it is hard to put into words.

Of course our leaders are saying all the right things.  During the State of the Union address last January, Barack Obama defiantly declared the followingto the rest of the world....

"I do not accept second place for the United States of America."

Well, Barack Obama may not be willing to "accept" it, but that doesn't mean that it is not happening.  China is becoming an absolute powerhouse.  Of course that would never have happened if we had not opened up trade with them.

We have essentially merged our economy with China's over the past couple of decades.  Now, if you walk into just about any store and start examining the products you will notice that far more of them are made in China than are made in the United States.

But most Americans still do not take China seriously.  Most Americans still view China as being vastly inferior to the United States.  Most Americans do not consider China to be an economic or a military threat at all.

Unfortunately, Americans have become so dumbed-down that only about 70 percent of them can even find China on a map.

The truth is that the world is radically changing.  The truth is that China has become a world class rival of the United States.  The truth is that the United States had better wake up fast if it wants to stay "number one".

The following are 25 facts that prove that China is rapidly becoming the number one economic superpower on the globe....

#1 Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Ten years later, the United States had less than 15 percent and China's share had soared to 20 percent.

#2 The United States had been the leading consumer of energy on the globe for about 100 years, but this past summer China took over the number one spot.

#3 Nobel economist Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040 if current trends continue.

#4 Between 2000 and 2009, America's trade deficit with China skyrocketed nearly 300 percent.

#5 Over the past 15 years, China has moved up from 14th place to 2nd placein the world in published scientific research articles.

#6 Apple iPhones are manufactured in China by workers making about 293 dollars a month (and that was after a big raise).

#7 In 2009, the United States ranked dead last of the 40 nations examined by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation when it came to "change" in "global innovation-based competitiveness" over the previous ten years.

#8 According to one recent study, China could become the global leader in patent filings by next year.

#9 Today, China controls over 90 percent of the total global supply of rare earth elements.

#10 According to a disturbing new study by the Economic Policy Institute, if the trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.

#11 China is now the number one producer in the world of wind and solar power.

#12 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

#13 Russia and China have announced that they have decided to quit using the U.S. dollar and instead start using their own national currencies when trading with each other.

#14 China now possesses the fastest supercomputer on the entire globe.

#15 In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold around the world.  So how many of those cellphones were manufactured inside the United States?  Zero.

#16 Today, the United States spends about $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that China spends on goods from the United States.

#17 Now, close to half of all the graduate science students enrolled at colleges and universities in the United States are foreigners.

#18 China now has the world's fastest train and the world's biggest high-speed rail network.

#19 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

#20 China is now the number one supplier of components that are critical to the operation of U.S. defense systems.

#21 Over the past several decades, China has been able to accumulateapproximately $2.5 trillion in foreign currency reserves, and the U.S. government now owes them close to 900 billion dollars.

#22 Since 2001, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good.

#23 In 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 6 million dollars for the entire year.  In the month of August alone, the U.S. trade deficit with Chinawas over 28 billion dollars.

#24 According to author Clyde Prestowitz, China's number one export to the U.S. is computer equipment.

#25 In 2010, the number one U.S. export to China is "scrap and trash".

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Banksters Move to Gut Aspects of Financial Reform Bill

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
November 17, 2010

Now that the game of political musical chairs is over and Republicans will control the House next year, the banksters are busy at work whittling away at provisions contained in the financial regulation bill pushed through Congress earlier this year by the Democrats. As should be expected, the corporate media is mostly mum, although McClatchy ran with a story.

	Goldman and the bankers let Congress know who is in charge.

“Lobbyists for Big Finance are working hardest to neutralize the so-called Volcker Rule, which would force big banks to spin off their lucrative proprietary trading operations, in which they invest their own capital in speculative deals,” Kevin G. Hall writes for McClatchy Newspapers.

The measure is named after former Fed mob boss Paul Volcker. It prevents the banksters from betting against trades they made on behalf of their customers, a popular practice until the fuse was lit on the global economy beginning in 2008. Goldman Sachs sold customers overvalued mortgage bonds and then turned around and made secret bets those bonds would default.

Lobbyists are crawling all over the district of criminals like blood thirsty ticks on a swamp dog. They are working to “soften” requirements that Wall Street firms put more “skin in the game” by retaining more mortgage bonds on their books to guard against shoddy lending. They’re also trying to undercut the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to McClatchy.

Bailout watcher Elizabeth Warren said the Financial Protection Bureau is the strongest financial reform in Obama’s bill. However, considering the bureau’s proposed makeup, it is destined to rolled in like a Trojan horse. “The bureau will consolidate employees and responsibilities from a host of other regulatory bodies, including the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and even the Department of Housing and Urban Development,” the New York Times reported in September.

The Federal Reserve was established by private bankers — banks and associated businesses owned by the Rockfellers, J.P. Morgan, the Rothschilds, Lazard Freres, Schoellkopf, Kuhn-Loeb, the Warburgs, Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs — and exists solely to manipulate and control the nation’s money supply.

Goldman Sachs was a top Obama contributor along with Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. “Goldman’s connections to the White House and the Obama administration are raising eyebrows at a time when Washington and Wall Street are dueling over how to overhaul regulation of the financial world,” McClatchy reported in April. “Several former Goldman executives hold senior positions in the Obama administration, including Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Mark Patterson, a former Goldman lobbyist who is chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; and Robert Hormats, the undersecretary of state for economic, energy and agricultural affairs.”

From the very start, the Barry Obama administration was stacked like a crooked card deck withbankster insiders. Out of 14 top cabinet selections, 9 are affiliated with the Bilderberg group, 10 with the Council on Foreign Relations and 5 of are affiliated with the Trilateral Commission.

Now that the mid-term election is safely behind us, the elite plan to dump aspects of the so-called financial reform bill — like protecting consumers from loan sharks and shady investment hucksters — and continue their plan to slow motion implode the economy and take blindsided tax payers to the proverbial cleaners.

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The Death Of The Dollar? 11 Signs That We Could Be On The Verge Of A Global Currency Crisis

It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it! George Carlin (VIDEO)

THE AMERICAN DREAM

Over the past several decades, the U.S. dollar and other major currencies around the globe have been continually devalued, but they have still remained stable enough for trade to flourish and for the world to enjoy an unprecedented era of prosperity.  However, that all may now be changing.  Many analysts now fear that the new $600 billion program of quantitative easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve may set off a round of "competitive devaluations" across the globe that could precipitate a global currency crisis.  If that happens, it might not just be the death of the dollar that we are talking about.  Instead, we could potentially see the death of fiat currencies worldwide in the coming years.  Under the current system, nations have a built-in incentive to devalue their national currencies because it gives them a competitive advantage in world trade.  In fact, quite a few countries have been doing this for years, but in 2010 currency devaluations have become a "hot button" issue and the extreme actions taken recently by the U.S. Federal Reserve and other global central banks have pushed us to the brink of a global currency war.

The U.S. dollar was the first fiat currency to ever be used as a true reserve currency literally all over the globe.  For decades, nearly the entire world has had a tremendous amount of faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. government debt.  If the world was to lose faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. government debt, the entire global financial system would crumble.  Unfortunately, thanks to the foolish actions of the Federal Reserve, it looks like that is exactly what is starting to happen.

The following are 11 signs that we could be on the verge of the death of the U.S. dollar and of a global currency crisis....

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