Guardian UK: A shattering moment in America's fall from power

A shattering moment in America's fall from power
The global financial crisis will see the US falter in the same way the Soviet Union did when the Berlin Wall came down. The era of American dominance is over

John Gray The Observer, Sunday September 28 2008


Our gaze might be on the markets melting down, but the upheaval we are experiencing is more than a financial crisis, however large. Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over.

You can see it in the way America's dominion has slipped away in its own backyard, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez taunting and ridiculing the superpower with impunity. Yet the setback of America's standing at the global level is even more striking. With the nationalisation of crucial parts of the financial system, the American free-market creed has self-destructed while countries that retained overall control of markets have been vindicated. In a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of government and the economy has collapsed.

Ever since the end of the Cold War, successive American administrations have lectured other countries on the necessity of sound finance. Indonesia, Thailand, Argentina and several African states endured severe cuts in spending and deep recessions as the price of aid from the International Monetary Fund, which enforced the American orthodoxy. China in particular was hectored relentlessly on the weakness of its banking system. But China's success has been based on its consistent contempt for Western advice and it is not Chinese banks that are currently going bust. How symbolic yesterday that Chinese astronauts take a spacewalk while the US Treasury Secretary is on his knees.

Despite incessantly urging other countries to adopt its way of doing business, America has always had one economic policy for itself and another for the rest of the world. Throughout the years in which the US was punishing countries that departed from fiscal prudence, it was borrowing on a colossal scale to finance tax cuts and fund its over-stretched military commitments. Now, with federal finances critically dependent on continuing large inflows of foreign capital, it will be the countries that spurned the American model of capitalism that will shape America's economic future.

Which version of the bail out of American financial institutions cobbled up by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is finally adopted is less important than what the bail out means for America's position in the world. The populist rant about greedy banks that is being loudly ventilated in Congress is a distraction from the true causes of the crisis. The dire condition of America's financial markets is the result of American banks operating in a free-for-all environment that these same American legislators created. It is America's political class that, by embracing the dangerously simplistic ideology of deregulation, has responsibility for the present mess. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/28/usforeignpolicy.useconomicgrowth

just like he did the Texas Rangers baseball team. I hope everyone who voted for him is happy with themselves.

The fate of empires is very often sealed by the interaction of war and debt

Traded Sammy Sosa. Couldn't find oil in Texas. What a dumbass.

for more money.. Poppy only Looted $500,000,000, the Shrub Looted $700,000,000 and for no extra charge destroyed Social Security, universal insurance, wall street.. and ended the free world as we know it. he also killed 680,000 people in Iraq.. 180,000 more than his Poppy did..

well he was look'n for a Legacy.. he Fuck'n got it and Karma is a real Bitch, i am sure he has managed to piss off the wrong people. i think they will Martyr the Bumbass, he's worth much more as an October Surprise than a further liability. and they will have the benefit of the custom of not speak'n ill of the demised.. not having him around to compare McSame to will be a big plus

I think that time will show that the Bush administration was THE most successful administration in history. They didn't screw anything up. They didn't make any mistakes. They accomplished precisely what they set out to do, on an unprecedented scale, without any meaningful or successful resistance or opposition.

9/11, Katrina and all of their other supposed fuckups were not mistakes due to incompetence. They were successful illustrations of the party's philosophy toward the role of government.

"Mr. Chimp, tear down this Wall(Street)!"™

It only took you 30 years, to do what our enemies have been trying to do to us for over a century.
Destroy us.

Nixon
Reagan
Bush
Bush

Thanks a lot.

You and your free market, anti-regulation, anti-freedom, pro-religion, Democratic hating asses, have ruined it for us all.

I hope you all die, and go to hell you bastards.
And, I sincerely hope hell is in your beloved Ronald Reagan's deeply buried, rotted, worm filled sphincter, you S.O.B's.

As long as we can defend ourselves and ensure prosperity for our own citizens, why do we need to also be the top dog? T'hell with that. It's more trouble than it's worth.

(But of course the neocons in charge right now don't think so and they won't give up without a fight.)

I want rid of all of mine too. A couple of changes of clothes and I'm good. But I can't do that because I have a son to think about. He needed to be edumucated!

after reading Emmanual Todd in 2003.

http://www.buzzflash.com/hartmann/05/04/har05004.html

The main thesis of Todd's book is that America is posturing, playing the role of the leader of the "free world" and head of the new American Empire, when, in fact, we are militarily, economically, and morally bankrupt -- and the rest of the world knows it. In fact, he suggests, much of the posturing is for the consumption of the domestic American audience, as the rest of the world (with the exception of a few dependent Third World nations) knows we're already in decline and perhaps even ready to implode.

The result (of years of Reaganomics) is that the US "has become the center of a system in which its number one job is to consume rather than produce."

...Todd suggests the world won't -- or can't -- long continue to support our "parasitic" lifestyle by loaning us money to sell us goods, while we export our manufacturing industries and hollow out our internal productivity. "The most likely scenario" he sees as a result of this "is a stock market crash larger than any we have experienced thus far that will be followed by a meltdown of the dollar -- a one-two punch that will put an end to any further delusions of 'empire' when it comes to the US economy."

The problem is, even if we started from scratch, the "Maverick American" mindset is too deeply ingrained. Alas, we'd ultimately end up here again.

bankrupting my country. May there never be another Republican who unpacks his bags in the White House, ever.

sw

almost $700 Billion this YEAR on the military. Counting black ops and off-budget items and black-bag jobs, we do at least an equal amount to the bail-out every fucking year into military spending.

At some point, somebody is gonna have to say that we just can't afford this shit any more.

Read "Re-inventing Collapse" by Dimitri Orloff.... chilling. He compares how the Soviets collapsed with what has happened and is happening to the US.

Another problem.... lots of people hate us and will dance in the streets as we circle the porcelain bowl.

These free-market notions are not really 'American'. They come from the Republican party. Read the Constitution, it clearly states there is no extreme free-market mentality, but instead, something completely open to regulated commerce. If we eliminate the Republican party, restore true Americanism, we will be fine.

Political physics 101: Structures must be built from the bottom-up (unlike the Republican top-down, or trickle-down economics causing the current failures). It is simple physics... the weight on the top constantly pushes down on whatever is below it. If the bottom cannot sustain the weight, collapse. Think of humans carrying a train.

Unlike the Soviet Union, which was built from the top-down, the United States was built properly (bottom-up), and will itself not collapse. The 'American' economic model, which is largely un-American, and only touted by descendants of Confederate ideology, is what we find currently collapsing. It is a second victory, against the Confederacy (or more accurately, a second loss, as they brought this on themselves). The original civil war was damaging, as is this, but we can finish them permanently, replace what was lost, and have the true nation our Founders and ourselves have fought for.

:hi:

Hekate

Makes me sick.