More war...

[Sun]

I forgot they had futures and margin spreads in the 1800's....in the 1800's we had technological advances like the cotton gin that caused a deflated dollar....The world was far less globalized and there was way less importing and exporting...Try explaining Moores law to a person from the 1800's.

Ah, but militarism has the same effect regardless, or in spite, of any of those things. The Roman Empire, the Mongol Empire...doesn't matter when, or wut specifics of economy are involved, when you militarize too much (read as wasting resources) and spread yerself too thin, sooner or later you collapse. Even colonization din't turn out too well fer our European neighbors in the end. No matter how sophisticated you make yer economy, militarization will bring you down.

The Zionist banking cartel will bring you down too.....it's not like I'm pro militarization

[Butcher Bob]

wait a second,
your ignoring the matter of scale.

the us engaged in ww1, but came out a supreme victor in terms of credit and economic value,

a matter of the functions of its gnp to war expenditures x borrowing,
compared to it allies economies and the same factors

the us won the first world war handedly...

and reaped market dominance only seconded to what it managed to assume after ww2...

Scale makes no difference....percent does.

We gain the credit cuz, number 1 we saved the world, and secondly cuz we had a upper tax rate of 70+% until 1922....that's why our credit wuz good. We gain economically cuz it wuz other folks' playin field that got leveled, not ours.

WW II is the same...savior of the world, 70+% tax until 1982. And agin, other playin fields leveled, our's intact.

The Zionist banking cartel will bring you down too.....

You git an "A" Sun...you are startin to understand who pushes this militarism on the world.

[Sun]

Perpetual war is only one of many tools they use to rape us.

[bentech]

really fellas,
the jew talk is quite uninstructive...

[Sun]

Who was talking about jews...?

[bentech]

One toxic impact of the anti-German lies told by First World War propagandists was that when, 20 years later, the Nazis did embark on mass slaughter, the evidence of their crimes was at first treated with extreme skepticism.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/19" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Butcher Bob]

really fellas,
the jew talk is quite uninstructive...

Biden has repeatedly confirmed he is a zionist. I wuz unaware that he's Jewish.

Perpetual war is only one of many tools they use to rape us.

Yes, but it is by far the biggest tool in their box.


But we're not talkin aboot war in general, we're talkin aboot over-militarization and it's economic effects. According to many sources, we spend more than everyone else on the planet combined.

We easily spend more...
We easily have more experience...
We....kin kick everyone's ass...

...or can we?

Our biggest competitor fer decades wuz Russia, as evidenced by the Cold War build up. But since the wall came down, and the Russian economy collapsed...they alone are no serious threat. So who's next?

Enter, the sleeping tiger...China.

Like our change with the Fed in 1913, the Chinese went thru a similar political change in 1912, becoming the Republic of China. But aside from confrontation with Japanese during World War II, China's military actions are limited to domestic use & border conflicts....and they seem to be rare & limited. A very different military strategy than our own.

Let's compare some stats revolving around this whole debt/war theme...



Now ya gotta take those stats with a bit of skepticism, cuz I got 'em off the CIA site... But I wanted them to be comparable. Also note that the current military conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, & Libya, are not "on the books", so that will be additional cost & debt. Neither on the military costs are CIA ops, DEA ops, nor private contractor ops.

We're still following the old play book on warfare...pumpin iron & lookin bad ass. Meanwhile, our adversary has taken note of Sun Tzu...

"...the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field.

With his forces intact he will dispute the mastery of the Empire, and thus, without losing a man, his triumph will be complete.

This is the method of attacking by stratagem."

China's debt bomb: America's No. 1 creditor holds the ultimate weapon

'He who pays the piper calls the tune": That old saying captures perfectly America's growing dependence on our No. 1 creditor in the world, Communist China.

By their carelessness Congress and the Obama administration are steadily handing over control of America's economic and financial future to a handful of Chinese officials and generals in Beijing. Those who think the Chinese won't use that control if they feel they have to are ignoring history -- and the Chinese.

The ancient military strategist Sun Tzu said that the best strategy was to render an opponent's army helpless even before the battle began. America may still have the biggest and best military in the world.

But many at the Pentagon are starting to realize that, thanks to our growing fiscal irresponsibility, we may be surrendering control of America's destiny to a rival superpower -- and all without a shot being fired.

Consider the scale of the problem.

With President Obama's 2010 budget, 42 cents of every dollar the federal government spends will have to be borrowed. In the last decade, foreign investors have wound up lending us roughly half of all federal debt -- with just two countries, China and Japan, providing nearly half of that sum, or 44 percent, through the purchase of US Treasury securities.

China now tops Japan as our biggest lender by some $30 billion a year, at $789 billion. (By comparison, our No. 3 lender, Great Britain, comes in at a measly $277 billion).

But that's not all. As its booming economy becomes more global, China is also the world's largest holder of foreign-currency reserves. Most of that is in US dollars. Indeed, without most Americans realizing it, China has become the largest foreign holder of US dollars in the world. How many dollars foreign exchange traders at the Bank of China decide to sell or buy on any given day is increasingly determining whether the dollars in our purses and wallets buy a little or a lot.

Seen from one angle, this dependence on China for the value of our national currency and the funding of our debt is like our dependence on inexpensive Chinese exports for our standard of living: the inevitable fruit of today's interlocking global economies -- and poor planning on our part.

Seen from another, more strategic angle, it may spell disaster.

History shows that nations that can't control their economic fortunes don't control much else. Debt freezes destinies -- as every credit-card holder knows.

Europeans discovered that after World War II, when they lost the power to make major decisions without first checking with their lender-in-chief, the United States. At that time, we used our economic dominance to rebuild Europe, not reduce it to impotence.

On the other hand, If US-China relations continue to deteriorate -- over arms sales to Taiwan, Internet freedom issues, Chinese industrial espionage and a Chinese military build-up that looks more and more like it's directed at challenging US power in Asia -- our lenders-in-chief in Beijing may not be so scrupulous.

Indeed, back in 1999, the Chinese literally wrote the book on how to use economic asymmetries as a blunt instrument, entitled "Unrestricted Warfare."

It draws no meaningful distinction between military, economic and political force (including using cyberspace) as means to defeat an enemy. Instead, it shows how a nation can dominate its opponents not with planes, ships and soldiers, but with foreign exchange rates, trade embargoes and armies of computer hackers.

Suppose that in retaliation for some slight China decides to stop buying Treasury bonds, forcing our debt to cost us even more. A furious US Congress hits back with trade sanctions. China then responds by driving up the price of the dollar, crippling US exports -- or, alternately, it crashes the dollar by dumping its foreign reserves, even as Chinese computer hackers slow down our banks' ability to respond to the crisis.

No one will call this a war. But it will certainly fit the classic definition of war as politics by other means. And the Pentagon knows it.

Last March, the Pentagon held its first-ever economic-warfare war game, with China as the putative opponent and with economists and bankers (including from UBS) helping out.

Details of what unfolded are still classified. However, sources told Fox Business News that the scenario played out as planned. That was the good news.

The bad news is that China won.

Today, some experts argue that rational self-interest will prevent China from waging this kind of economic warfare, because crippling the US would also severely wound its own economy. However, on an issue like Taiwan or Japan, rational judgment can take a backseat to national pride, and the desire to reverse old humiliations.

That war game was almost a year ago, when the Federal deficit was half of what it is today. And China is moving out of its short-term debt positions -- although slowly enough not to roil the credit markets.

In any case, Bracken and others argue that we need more coordination between the Treasury and the Pentagon on ways to deal with a vulnerability that seemed entirely theoretical then, but now seems all too real. Still others are pushing for rules restricting the future sales of Treasury securities to foreign buyers.

All this, however, is only playing catch up. The real issue is whether we get our fiscal house in order, and realize that a $12 trillion national debt and a crippled economy could leave us as vulnerable as we once were on a December Sunday morning 69 years ago, at Pearl Harbor in 1941.


http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/op ... 7gTLkrwSpL" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's not like we're unaware of this stratagem...through military means we successfully economically suppressed the Soviet Union into submission. The difference is that the Chinese are a step up the ladder...they have taken heed of the Zionist bankers, and have adjusted their actions accordingly.

We, however, continue to flex our muscles & throw our weight around, without even realizin the damage we are doin to ourselves.

[Sun]

Yes, but it is by far the biggest tool in their box.

I would say interest is their biggest tool and even media control is a bigger tool

[bentech]

The problem is systemic not due to some personal flaw or political idiosyncrasy of the moment. The structures of the US economy and military institutions are oriented ‘outwardly’ to conquering foreign financial markets and building a military empire. The ideology which informs strategic policymakers is imperial-centered not republican: They do not speak of developing and deepening the economy and security of ‘ middle America ’. Every member of the political and corporate elite talks of ‘world’ or ‘global’ leadership – a thinly veiled euphemism for the drive to sustain world dominance. Within the imperial framework the entire ‘security’ budget is directed toward maintaining offensive military supremacy. No wonder there is a steep decline in all spheres of domestic security – natural, social, personal, health and employment –a phenomenon that proceeds with little public debate. The only exception is when threats to security impinge most directly and forcefully on a significant sector of the population.

[bentech]

Conclusion

One might argue that community storm shelters won’t break the Treasury or reverse the empire. More to the point, their absence, from the federal, state and local political agenda, is emblematic of the total subordination of domestic America to imperial Washington . The ‘cost’ of building community shelters at the strip malls and trailer parks in Joplin , Missouri is less than a regional training outpost in Kandahar , Afghanistan . It is not a question of money.

Conquering Afghanistan villages enhances the prestige of the Generals, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and NATO officials. Can saving 145 lives in Joplin , Missouri match that in terms of world politics or the politics of imperial leadership? For Afghanistan , Washington builds a thousand military shelters and bomb proof bunkers .For the Americans living in tornado alley and the flood plains of the Mississippi people must make do.

When you hear the tornado warning, it’s up to you. As a proud, free American you can find a rock to crawl under and say your prayer: the Federal government and Homeland Security have the Endless, World-wide War against Terror to fight and cannot be bothered by a Joplin , Missouri nursing home in the path of a tornado.

We exaggerate: Obama will jet in and speak before the cameras in solemn terms of the ‘tragedy’ and ‘courage’ of the people of Joplin ... But will any local politician stand up and speak truth to power? Most of these deaths and (many more to come) are avoidable; under a democratic American republic, the government ‘intervenes’ to provide protection, health and employment for its people.

In the meantime, as the empire continues to grow it destroys its own people, just like the sow that devours its offspring.