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It’s Not The Dollar that’s Dead, It’s the USA!
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going” is a wonderful piece of linguistic wizardry. It can be read in two different ways. Either the 'tough' become fully engaged in combat and fight it out till the bitter end or the ‘tough’ up sticks and move out. It was supposedly Joseph P. Kennedy (father of US President John F. Kennedy) that gets the praise for having said it first. Once upon a time, in a far off place called the United States of America where that became a historical byword to describe exactly how they did business, it was once the first meaning that always held true. These days, however, it’s more like they are jumping ship with the rats before they are totally decimated, ripped into tiny pieces and scattered by the winds to the four corners of the Earth.
But, we only have ourselves to blame. I can understand patriots, but right now it looks very much like the USA is its own worst enemy. Congress is doing little all that procrastinating and sitting tight till the storm blows over. Washington is killing the USA, stunting growth. By 2040 we’ll be well behind the rest as China hits a staggering high of 40% of world GDP. The USA is estimated to be at about 14% by that same year. The EU will be baby-portion size at only 5%. Not much in comparison, is it? But we’ll probably carry on thinking ourselves to the top of the roost. What is it that the French say as to why they have the rooster as their national emblem (although it’s not actually the real reason)? It reads like this: the rooster is the only animal that still carries on singing even when it’s knee-high in cow shit. The US is still cockaldoodledoing, isn’t it? I never thought they would take a leaf out of the Frenchies’ book on how to do business.
China is investing in their future. It has an army, hoards of workers that are just begging to get into the factories as the USA has workers struggling to get out and do a runner. It’s a hit and run game in the USA today. Do the dirty and make a run for it. China’s economy will hit the $123 trillion mark by 2040. The USA is at just 1% of GDP growth and saddled with debts that are far too big to even lug over their shoulders and drag along with them. They are standing still right now. China will get to $85,000 per capita income. That’s double anything that the Americans and the Europeans are capable of doing.
The boys from Shanghai are laughing at us and our over-rated pride. I thought we used to tell people to stop living in the past. Sorry, officer, put the cuffs on me. I’ll plead guilty. We are not just living in the past; we’re living in a different century. We’re living where we used to be at the top, where we used to say jump, and people jumped. We didn’t even need to say ‘Simon says’ and people did it. But, that’s a child’s game. Long gone. It’s a better man that admits that he has lost the fight. But, instead of griping, we need to get our act together. Start changing the way we produce, the way we take decisions, the way we run the markets.
And please: Before you start getting your John Wane walk on and telling me to get off my high horse, look at the US without the tainted rose-coloured glasses that you normally wear and start listening and watching what’s actually happening. It only adds fuel to the fire, and pleases China and the rest of the rising fiery dragons that are breathing down our necks. Figures are wonderful; they are like snapshots of history. The camera doesn’t lie. Smile, guys!
Originally posted http://www.tothetick.com/its-not-the-dollar-thats-dead-its-the-usa
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Americans used to solve problems.
Now we manage them.
Au contraire mon ami. Ever hear of the Helgelian dialectic?
Solving problems is what we do..
Nonsense... The Chinese have as corrupt a government as any on Earth... To suggest the world is in some kind of race to the top is to completely misunderstand the global political and economic environment...
There are many ways for this to end... the big three being disease, economic collapse, and war... My money, as I have stated here frequently,mis on war... Although any one of these could will a most certainly bring on the other two...
If the Chinese end up with 40 percent of the world's GDP it will only be because said GDP will have shrunk to minuscule proportions as one way or another we are about to experience a massive kill off of people...
Not the best article to have read with my coffee first thing in the morning...
What a sad excuse for writing. Where did you get your statistics from? IMF? BLS? Better still, China? LOL!!!
Thanks wmbanzai7: http://www.prisonplanet.com/royalty-and-statesmen-to-descend-on-watford-hotel-for-secret-bilderberg-summit.html
Hunter S Thompson saw all this..wrote this article the night of September 11-12 and published it the next day on ESPN website
I
By Hunter S. Thompson
Page 2 columnist
It was just after dawn in Woody Creek, Colo., when the first plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City on Tuesday morning, and as usual I was writing about sports. But not for long. Football suddenly seemed irrelevant, compared to the scenes of destruction and utter devastation coming out of New York on TV.
Even ESPN was broadcasting war news. It was the worst disaster in the history of the United States, including Pearl Harbor, the San Francisco earthquake and probably the Battle of Antietam in 1862, when 23,000 were slaughtered in one day. The Battle of the World Trade Center lasted about 99 minutes and cost 20,000 lives in two hours (according to unofficial estimates as of midnight Tuesday). The final numbers, including those from the supposedly impregnable Pentagon, across the Potomac River from Washington, likely will be higher. Anything that kills 300 trained firefighters in two hours is a world-class disaster. And it was not even Bombs that caused this massive damage. No nuclear missiles were launched from any foreign soil, no enemy bombers flew over New York and Washington to rain death on innocent Americans. No. It was four commercial jetliners. They were the first flights of the day from American and United Airlines, piloted by skilled and loyal U.S. citizens, and there was nothing suspicious about them when they took off from Newark, N.J., and Dulles in D.C. and Logan in Boston on routine cross-country flights to the West Coast with fully-loaded fuel tanks -- which would soon explode on impact and utterly destroy the world-famous Twin Towers of downtown Manhattan's World Trade Center. Boom! Boom! Just like that. The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives. It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. Osama bin Laden may be a primitive "figurehead" -- or even dead, for all we know -- but whoever put those All-American jet planes loaded with All-American fuel into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon did it with chilling precision and accuracy. The second one was a dead-on bullseye. Straight into the middle of the skyscraper. Nothing -- even George Bush's $350 billion "Star Wars" missile defense system -- could have prevented Tuesday's attack, and it cost next to nothing to pull off. Fewer than 20 unarmed Suicide soldiers from some apparently primitive country somewhere on the other side of the world took out the World Trade Center and half the Pentagon with three quick and costless strikes on one day. The efficiency of it was terrifying. We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them. This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won't hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force. Good luck. He is in for a profoundly difficult job -- armed as he is with no credible Military Intelligence, no witnesses and only the ghost of Bin Laden to blame for the tragedy. OK. It is 24 hours later now, and we are not getting much information about the Five Ws of this thing. The numbers out of the Pentagon are baffling, as if Military Censorship has already been imposed on the media. It is ominous. The only news on TV comes from weeping victims and ignorant speculators. The lid is on. Loose Lips Sink Ships. Don't say anything that might give aid to The Enemy. Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's books include Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, The Proud Highway, Better Than Sex and The Rum Diary. His new book, Fear and Loathing in America, has just been released. A regular contributor to various national and international publications, Thompson now lives in a fortified compound near Aspen, Colo. His column, "Hey, Rube," appears each Monday on Page 2.
Any religion that tells you to murder your own children and call it honor killing comes from the devil. It does not come from God.
I'm not up on my bible these days, but didn't God allegedly tell Abraham to murder his son Isaac?
He did, but it turned out that it was a prank and Abraham got punk'd by God.
Also...Old Testament bro...New Testament...learn the difference. Christians follow the latter, not the former.
So not true. Every other week at church my wife tells me the lesson was on one of the OT scriptures. And just because Abraham got punk'd doesn't mean he would not have done it. Same Bullshit, different day.
Getting going, as in out of the U.S.S.A., might be a better path.
I don't see much hope in turning things around, and have spent almost 35 years doing the right things and getting shafted for it.
I'm more inclined to leave altogether, or live out the time I have left in a quiet rural spot somewhere deep in the woods.
Not me.
I'm staying put and putting claymores in my garden gnomes.
I like your spirit Shovelhead.
Also, we CAN turn it around.
It's just another social construct.
Here's one I like for these times...
"Left-wing" proposals call for society to achieve equity by redistributing most of the wealth. No distinction is made between the sources of income (land, labor or capital), and individuals control only a small portion of the wealth. In most cases this entails a large measure of social control, and a "planned economy."
"Right-wing" proposals hold that efficiency requires more wealth to remain in private hands (also making no distinction between rent, wages and interest), and that society, or government, should only get the minimum it needs for necessary services, e.g., the role of "traffic cop." This implies leaving the running of the economy to private interests.
"Middle-of-the-road" proposals seek a "balanced system" in the distribution of wealth and power between individuals and society - but make insufficient distinctions between earned and unearned incomes, and do not carefully define the proper spheres of society and the individual. The result is a hodgepodge in which efficiency and equity always appear to be at odds.
The Georgist proposal is different from all these ideologies in that it makes a distinction between the unearned income of land (rent) and the earned incomes of labor and capital (wages and interest). Rent to society, wages and interest to the individuals who earned them.
The proper spheres of society and the individual are clarified. The Georgist proposal achieves the goal of "left-wingers" for security and social action, but without restrictions on liberty. It achieves the goal of "right-wingers" to attain freedom, but without privilege and monopoly. And it achieves a balanced system sought by "middle-of-the-roaders," but in a just rather than arbitrary way.
Put them in the little jockeys on the rich people's lawns...
Currently things are only tough for people trying to earn a living, for people with checks from the govt. and susidizeed housing ,EBT cards, free school for their kids, free health care, free phones and freedom from jobs, things are very comfortable. There is no place for the tough to go, their backs are against the wall with armed and dangerous IRS and DHS agents threatening them.
A few decades ago many people thought Japan's growth would go past the US. Not now. China's future in this article is Projected too far into the future to be reliable.
1.5B Chinese meet 1.5B Muslims. Shaken, not stirred. Enjoy the show.
It is a sad twist of fate that the USA's only hope to escape from being part of a caliphate is for Chinese communists to fend off the muslim jihadis. What reason will decent people have to live?
Conventional war, on the ground, moving, taking and keeping land, are won by protecting and maintaining suppy lines.
The primary reason China has never- never-never- won a war is they have never had the excess capacity of food and resource production to support the effort.
The Great Wall is the most significant symbol of this.
Nothing has changed.
Some Chinese are muslim, courtesy of the silk road legacy. Refurbish your framework, mon.
Muslims are not defined by where they live or were born.
Muslims are defined by the one and only god Allah who revealed his teachings to his prophet, peace be upon his name Mohammed.
The Koran is the unfailing and perfect word of Allah. Muslims base their life and their relationships with others from the teachings contained within the Koran, which contains no errors or mistakes. The Koran is perfect, without error and has no need of change because it contains no mistakes as it is the perfect word of Allah.
Muslims who do not follow the Koran are not real Muslisms and the real Muslims can kill them without fear from Allah because they are apostate.
Non Muslims are not followers of Islam and as such are not treated the same by Allah. Non Muslims should be made aware of this. Non Muslims need to become Muslim so that they can see the error of their ways. The death of Muslim by a non-Muslim is not the same as the death of non-Muslim by a Muslim. Sharia law makes this clear. The punishment is not the same. A non-Muslim killing of a Muslim will most likely result in the execution of the non-Mulsim. At the most a Mulsim killing a non-Muslim will be requred to pay some type of financial penalty but his or her life will not be in jeopardy.
This is why it is better to be Muslim.
How about we just kill everyone who claims to know the truth about the universe?
"What do you despise? By this you are truly known" - Frank Herbert, Dune
"Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous." - Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
Any "God" that has a "Chosen People" is a local god. The Jews and Muslims worship minor deities which are the equivalent of tribal leaders. If they understood that there is a Spiritual Energy that permeates all matter, then they would discard the dogmatic tethers that tie them to hate and might begin the process of dissolving the egos that cause such hatred towards their fellow travelers. Christianity has a slightly different problem. They worship a being who perfected himself through alchemy not realizing that he set an example for all so that they can take up the Work and advance spiritually and by many lifetimes of effort become gods themselves. They too worship a local god and spread hate towards the non-converted and justify this by being in the "club" (just as the CIA and Mossad justify their killings because they are in the club and know what is right for the world).
Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Quetzacoatl and others are all perfected beings who took the direct path (recognizing and listening to their inner divine being, comprehending then destroying their egos and doing service for all beings regardless of race, color, creed, planet or dimension) and transformed themselves. We should stop worshiping these perfected beings and start emulating them.
which muslim are you talking about : Hanafi Sunni, Shia, Ismaili, Druze, Alawite, Sufi, Qadiani, Salafist Sunni...?
Never has a religion been more divided over history, its blood spilt in internecine feuds, it kings killed by assassination, its Qanuns trampled, its policies decided in harems, its women kept as slaves, its children denied education.
Islam had hope upto to 1260, it was beacon of reason and science. It died as progressive faith around 1400 and never recovered; except as gunpowder empires doomed to be destroyed in the sands of time by a resurgent west.
Nothing has changed today. Dogma has killed its spark of learning; again and again. And killing in name of dogma is a disease worse than the proverbial "non believer".
Wake up to reality. And calling the "other fella" apostate means there is no OUma...you are but a pariah in your own world, condemned to die in Islam hating the "other fella's islam".
Now ain't that just what every infidel on earth thinks is just right smack on the button.
You are your own head up ass apostate, ideal useful fool for "divide and rule" bait.
Winston Churchill would disagree with you:
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!
Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia
in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many
countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods
of commerce and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the
Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and
refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan
law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as
a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the
faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion
paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde
force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant
and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising
fearless warriors at every step, and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the
strong arms of science, the science against which it (Islam) has vainly struggled,
the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”
Charlles Martel stopped the onrushing Muslim empire at Tours, France in 731 AD; otherwise Europe was the next to fall to Islam. It took the Europeans until 1492 to free Spain of the influence of Islam.
Spainish was very heavly influenced by Arabic and accounts for the differeence in part from Portuguese which is arachic spanish and the pronouncements of the two languages is quiye different in some ways Milestones
well put eb...
Allah is a pimp
Mo-hammed liked goats, too, and not for food.
The more people believe China's eventual superiority is inevitable, the less likely it will happen.
Of course... that's when you start moving the goalposts, reinterpreting the rules, and rolling out the inquisitions to make everybody believe that the game will last longer than it really will.
People believed the world was round before they ever saw a photo of it...
The more people think China's eventual superiority is inevitable, the less likely it is to happen.
Allright you guy's...You can stop the "John Wane" walk!...
it might stick
I figure the "John Wane" walk is when you just sort of fade off into the sunset.
Our domestic factories don't even want US workers to work. We have a decade of top engineering grads who, despite submitting their resumes hundreds of times to employers that claim a need for more engineers, don't even receive the courtesy of a response. Yet we continue to glorify the financial industry and finance.
Dude we need "financial engineers," not electrical!
Oh, the American Dream: Chinese workers and US customers. It worked really well for the first few who got on board.
Saw and experienced this first hand in 2001.
I kept trying to get a computer/networking job and after a while I began to suspect that my main issue was that I was a WASP American.
My last attempt was at a very large insurance firm near Chicago. Went up for their onsite job-fair and was one of only four non-foreigners and the only male. I got called back the next Monday only to be left waiting and then given an "interview" after they realized that my call-back was a mistake. This time I was the only non-foreigner and the hiring department head was a foreigner.
When I found myself half-seriously considering changing my name to Gupta or something I stopped looking and started a business and created my own position.
Disclaimer: Employers can hire and discriminate against anyone they please, I will not hire blacks or foreigners myself, but it was just disheartening to see that they were mostly interested in foreigners. I am also not whining that being a non-foreigner was the only reason I did not get hired. However, after sometime it began to become apparent that foreigners were their main interest.
Here's the article by Robert Fogel the origination of 40% number for China's share of world GDP by 2040. The article was published january, 2010 in Foreign Policy magazine.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/04/123000000000000
Here's a telling quote from Mr. Fogel's analysis:
"Even China's own economic data in some ways actually underestimate economic outputs."
Joseph P Kennedy
Smuggler, rum runner, bootlegger. Speculator.
Made his big score during prohibition, plowing his illegal gains into the stock market, as a true insider.
Sold out at huge profits before the crash of 29. Bought companies and properties during the Great Depression for pennies on the dollar. Spread the dough around Washington DC libererally, ensuring his sons would be well received by the established politico crowd.
Yep. The "good ole Amurican way!" Huh? Corruption from the word go.
Except his sons would not follow the dictats of the Wall Street oligarchs and look what that got them!
Yep. That "good ole Amurican way" again!
Weak.
the problem for washington isn't finding the old jobs, but defining and creating new jobs (not latte makers at starbucks either, not with a 40k student debt.) the first computer class they offered at the JC where I was, was entirely theoretical. Thank goodness drivers ed is still hands on, imagine spending a semester in a shop class learning about the plantary gears. Education in computers was (and probably still is) irrelevant. this is why Bill Gates dropped out of college. China is a centrally planned economy, which the US has become, and that's the issue. The university system lives off MIC, and HIC (Healthcare Industrial Complex) which is the next war according to Obama. Right now some guys should be genetically modifying POT to allow the analgesic effect to work without the side effects. Someday it will happen but not while Big Pharma controls washington. (to end my rant there is nothing economically productive about any of these Apple products that i can see)
I was told a long time ago if you use the Script type and use it in a quote the comments won't work in the first sentence it will not register. Milestones
Your up/down vote link doesn't work for me so +1
i always thought the quote was .... when the ...' the weird get going'. i'm turning pro. i really think so.
Yet another article that doesn't know what this crisis is about, which is basically about below :
http://iiscn.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/laherrere_all_liquids_productio...
But not too surprising when most Americans don't even know that they went through their oil production peak in 1970 :
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/US_Oil_Production_and...
(or maybe you buy the current propaganda regarding US shale "boom", even forgetting the associated price ?)
I don't know who you think you are preaching to Pilgrim. Just a week ago you were gushing about Americas nascent bullshit recovery.
Maybe you should put this on HuffPo.
Down on the Pivot Farm...
Credit bubble amidst export trouble or not, China is still more optimistically active economically than the US at the moment even if the rate of growth is slowing. Was just there recently Shanghai, Xian, and Guangzhou.
But c'mon Pividiot Farm Boy, what are you saying? This piece contains some rank nonsense. "China will get to $85,000 per capita income" would imply a $110 trillion GDP. Only way that happens is if the US goes the way of Zimbabwe and if that happens $110 trillion US will be like Zimbabwean paper. And China won't be very wealthy at $85K per capita, will they?
Take care that you don't slip and fall amidst all of the bullshit down on the Pividiot Farm.
Pretty stupid article. China is further down the credit event horizon than we are, they lack basic natural resources to feed and keep the energy flowing for their people, they are poisoning their lands, and they are ageing faster than we are. Oh, and no social safety net. Their corruption and malinvestment makes us look downright prudent and efficient.
Also, does anyone think we will let China become 40% of world GDP. Europe is already choking on Chinese imports, and we are one military incident away from shutting trade down with them.
Let's see how China copes with the next food famine before you rant off on their supremacy