| Divider |
First, of course, there's the war in Iraq, which is
getting nastier by the day for the U.S. Hungary is
the latest to leave the coalition of the willing, and
Poland, the third largest "ally" after Great Britain,
with its 2000 troops, won't be far behind. Soon it
will just be stop-loss indentured American troops
doing the fighting and dying, with a few British
soldiers standing near the gangplank in the port city
of Basra, ready to beat a hasty retreat. The
election, in which the administration professes to
place such stock, will be a sham exercise, with Sunni
Iraqis either boycotting, or unable to vote because
their polling places have been flattened by American
bombs. If the remaining balloting is honest, a
fundamentalist Shi'ia coalition will triumph and
order the U.S. out of the country. Alternatively, in
the more likely event that the January plebiscite is
orchestrated by the same folks who brought us the
2000 and 2004 election charades in the U.S., we'll
see the victory going to a U.S. puppet who will have
no popular support, thus further empowering the
insurgency. Any way you cut it, it's only going to
get worse and bloodier and more costly.
Then there's the U.S. dollar. In case you haven't
noticed, it's been sinking like a rock, trading at
roughly 100 Japanese yen to the dollar and $1.30 to
the Euro. Today, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan
Greenspan, who in the run-up to the election was
pooh-poohing any concern about the U.S. dollar and
the ballooning trade deficit, told European bankers
that he is worried that foreign investors, who have
been propping up the greenback for decades, are
finally showing signs of giving it up for dead.
Should that happen, we can expect to see in short
order a major economic disaster here in the U.S.
The first thing that would likely happen is that the
big oil exporting nations--Russia, Saudi Arabia,
Nigeria, Venezuela and Iran--would, along with the
rest of the producing countries, switch their pricing
away from dollars to Euros, or perhaps a basket of
currencies. That would have the effect of
undercutting all support for the dollar, while
causing energy prices in the U.S. to go through not
just the roof but also the stratosphere. The impact
on the U.S. economy would be immediate and
drastic--akin to your SUV runing out of gas on the
freeway.
Yet another storm cloud on the horizon is the U.S.
budget deficit. As long as the economy stays
marginally healthy, this is a problem deferred, as
incomes and tax revenues keep rising or at least
holding steady, and as the stock market keeps
attracting foreign investment (necessary to keep the
dollar afloat and interest rates low). But should the
economy founder, as it already shows signs of doing,
and as it surely will do over the course of the next
four years, government revenues will plummet, leading
to deficits that will dwarf anything seen in history,
even relative to the gross domestic product. (With
the dollar in collapse, there would be no option to
lower interest rates. In fact, interest rates will
soar.) Such a crisis would lead to demands for
massive cuts in social programs and government
services--everything from highway repair to postal
services, from school funding to veterans' care. Nor
would state and local governments be able to pick up
the slack--they're all cutting back services and
raising taxes already. |
| concrete |
Solidna e i mnogu realna , no so nekolku if:
Inaku od naebuvanje na ekonomii kako nasata nema nisto,
neka mu mislat tie sto imaat ekonomija.
Koga rekov prirodata, ama ic ne mislev na filmot. nekolku irevirzibilni procesi veke tecat
podolgo vreme,prv pat se detektirani (se steknalo soznanie deka postojat) nekade vo 1960, a sega se dobrano naprednati. Nema informacija dali se ciklicni ili ne.
naprednati |