The Strong Dollar Policy
In the mid-1990s, the Clinton Administration, led by an economic team comprised of Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Franklin Raines, instituted something called the "strong dollar policy." This policy was maintained by the Bush Administration, which held over in the first term many of the key players in policymaking positions, including George Tenet, Jerry Hawke (Comptroller of the Currency 1998 - 2004) and Charles Rossotti (45th Commissioner of the IRS).

The smoothness of the transition between administrations ostensibly led by political parties in opposition to each other belies the ruse and underscores the strategic nature of the centralization of economic and politic power under way.

While the game of trying to figure out what in the world the strong dollar policy really is has gotten increasingly Orwellian,6 the basics are pretty simple. We have kept the dollar's value high relative to other currencies - and far above what fundamental economics would warrant - by asking the consumer and taxpayer to shoulder extraordinary and rising levels of debt financed by increasing amounts of dirty money. This has enabled elites to move off shore and into private hands virtually all the real financial equity in the country. The US is not alone in experiencing "disappearing equity" - it is part of a global equity-centralizing and asset-control process.

The strong dollar policy was characterized by a series of financial and market manipulations:

Four Secretaries of the Treasury refused to produce audited financial statements and reported a total of $4 trillion in "undocumentable adjustments";7

The Clinton and Bush Administrations rejected policies that would build American productivity and employment8 in the face of the plan to move employment abroad while permitting the growth of debt and immigration quotas at home;

The Clinton and Bush Administrations promoted federal credit policies that turned American homes into ATM machines and led to a mortgage market characterized by increasing levels of fraud;

The Clinton and Bush Administrations in concert with the central banks (most notably the Federal Reserve) and bullion banks (including JP Morgan-Chase, Citibank and Goldman Sachs) manipulated the gold and silver markets to suppress the price of precious metals while large inventories were moved out of governments and central bank accounts worldwide and into private hands;

US pension funds and 401k and IRA retirement savings accounts lost value by waves of accounting and other financial frauds at widely held corporations (such as Enron, Worldcom and Tyco);

US Congress and regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted corporate controls, ostensibly to protect investors from further acts of corporate fraud, that operate as a subtle form of capital control, limiting the ability of entrepreneurs on Main Street to raise capital in financial markets;

Military force was used to ensure that global investors would continue to purchase US Treasury and mortgage agency securities and the US dollar would prevail as the currency of international choice;

The federal budget, federal credit, and federal contracting were operated to favor corporate profit making at the cost of small business and labor productivity;

US Treasury and Federal Reserve market intervention was used to ensure low cost of capital for favored global corporations; and,

The types and amounts of outstanding financial derivatives exploded, far beyond the ability of most public and private leaders to understand or explain.

No one has made a count of the deaths that resulted worldwide from these various financial manipulations. The death toll from the pincer movement of military warfare and economic warfare is far greater than is generally understood.

9/11: Strong Dollar Policy Steroids?
While floating the global dollar economy on a sea of debt and easy money worked well for the economic hit men and women through the end of the 1990s, by the summer of 2001 the game seemed to have run its course. Defense appropriations had stalled that summer. Members of the media were asking questions about $3.3 trillion missing from HUD and DOD. Shortly before 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld admitted that DOD could not account for trillions of taxpayer dollars. On September 9, 2001, From the Wilderness issued an economic alert warning that the global financial system ran the risk of meltdown.9

With the events of 9/11, however, the US government was able to garner support for the extraordinary financial market interventions necessary to continue the strong dollar policy and for keeping the lid on the various financial frauds and manipulations. America and the global financial system have stayed afloat for another three years.

The answer to the question Cui Bono? ("Who benefits?&quot from the strong dollar policy suggests that allegations that members of the Bush Administration fully expected, welcomed and even facilitated 9/11 should be taken seriously. Trillions of dollars have been moved out of the US economy under the umbrella of the strong dollar policy - much of it in what appear to be criminal ways. The 9/11 tragedy conveniently necessitated a sudden, centralized control over government and theretofore private activities in the name of protecting national security interests and addressing the threat of terrorism. 9/11 diverted attention from and shut the door behind that money movement. It ushered in a wave of legislation rushed through Congress that would make it much more difficult for the American people to do anything about it. The events of 9/11 have acted as a "lock-down" on a financial coup d'état at the core of the "strong dollar policy."

In the Machiavellian tradition, it turns out that the "strong dollar policy" is a policy that intentionally destroys the value of the dollar.

Justifying the End of Markets and Democracy
Traditionally, the faith of the US working class in democracy has been one of the most powerful supports for democracy worldwide. It is not enough to bankrupt the American middle class and the American government. The current effort to move to more centrally controlled governance also requires removing this faith that underpins support for global democracy. Part and parcel of doing so is establishing popular support for the notion that the economic supports for democracy - sound money, open and transparent markets and government, and access to equity - are somehow bad.

An example of this is Marjorie Kelly's The Divine Right of Capital, which neglects to integrate the covert revenue streams into the equation and instead attempts to explain problems and resolutions in terms of overt cash flows only. According to Kelly, the editor of Business Ethics magazine, free markets, not organized crime and black budgets, are the problem. Hence, the problem is that shareholders want to make money, not that insiders rip off small investors of their savings and retirement investments using criminal means, protected, not obstructed, by governmental intervention. Kelly's bio mentions her speaking engagements at Harvard, without concern for Harvard's leadership in Enron, Harken, the rape of Russia, HUD corruption and other criminal frauds.

In the latest escalation of the Orwellian nightmare, we have entire networks of good-hearted progressives and socially responsible investors promoting a framework of "problems-solutions" that provides the perfect intellectual camouflage for their opponents' control over national and international resources. Now that the so-called "New World Order" has stolen all of the money, those who are most appalled at this state of affairs unwittingly promote policies that will prevent the ordinary person from communicating with integrity or creating and accumulating wealth. Even worse, they crave the credibility conferred by the foundation, church and university investment syndicates most richly rewarded by economic and military warfare. Their behavior and the policies they promote --- if allowed to triumph --will ensure our descent into a 21st century war economy.