The most important meeting of the 21st century so far

[viking]

By Chris Hedges

This week marks the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful.

Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America’s imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze.

There are meetings being held Monday and Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia, (formerly Sverdlovsk) among Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance. Watch what happens there carefully. The gathering is, in the words of economist Michael Hudson, “the most important meeting of the 21st century so far.”

It is the first formal step by our major trading partners to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If they succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value, the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket, interest rates will climb and jobs will hemorrhage at a rate that will make the last few months look like boom times. State and federal services will be reduced or shut down for lack of funds. The United States will begin to resemble the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe. Obama, endowed by many with the qualities of a savior, will suddenly look pitiful, inept and weak. And the rage that has kindled a handful of shootings and hate crimes in the past few weeks will engulf vast segments of a disenfranchised and bewildered working and middle class. The people of this class will demand vengeance, radical change, order and moral renewal, which an array of proto-fascists, from the Christian right to the goons who disseminate hate talk on Fox News, will assure the country they will impose.

I called Hudson, who has an article in Monday’s Financial Times called “The Yekaterinburg Turning Point: De-Dollarization and the Ending of America’s Financial-Military Hegemony.” “Yekaterinburg,” Hudson writes, “may become known not only as the death place of the czars but of the American empire as well.” His article is worth reading, along with John Lanchester’s disturbing exposé of the world’s banking system, titled “It’s Finished,” which appeared in the May 28 issue of the London Review of Books.

“This means the end of the dollar,” Hudson told me. “It means China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran are forming an official financial and military area to get America out of Eurasia. The balance-of-payments deficit is mainly military in nature. Half of America’s discretionary spending is military. The deficit ends up in the hands of foreign banks, central banks. They don’t have any choice but to recycle the money to buy U.S. government debt. The Asian countries have been financing their own military encirclement. They have been forced to accept dollars that have no chance of being repaid. They are paying for America’s military aggression against them. They want to get rid of this.”

China, as Hudson points out, has already struck bilateral trade deals with Brazil and Malaysia to denominate their trade in China’s yuan rather than the dollar, pound or euro. Russia promises to begin trading in the ruble and local currencies. The governor of China’s central bank has openly called for the abandonment of the dollar as reserve currency, suggesting in its place the use of the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights. What the new system will be remains unclear, but the flight from the dollar has clearly begun. The goal, in the words of the Russian president, is to build a “multipolar world order” which will break the economic and, by extension, military domination by the United States. China is frantically spending its dollar reserves to buy factories and property around the globe so it can unload its U.S. currency. This is why Aluminum Corp. of China made so many major concessions in the failed attempt to salvage its $19.5 billion alliance with the Rio Tinto mining concern in Australia. It desperately needs to shed its dollars.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/...re_is_bankrupt

viking

[Seashore]

... And what is to come will be very, very painful...

In his radio talks, Alan Watt often points out that the military is planning for 30 years of rioting...

[Northern Boy]

what will be ........... will be the sooner it starts, the sooner it ends

[Seashore]

Originally Posted by Northern Boy

what will be ........... will be the sooner it starts, the sooner it ends

I've been feeling the need to stay home, where I'm safe!!

[oldpaganfreak]

a question....if this is true, is now the time to dump any investments and buy silver?

[Seashore]

Originally Posted by oldpaganfreak

a question....if this is true, is now the time to dump any investments and buy silver?

You need a well-functioning crystal ball!!

[NorthernSanctuary]

The rise in price of silver and gold has been stated in terms of US. dollars. The rise in $Can will be slower, so it is not clear how much that will be. In the recent gold rise over the past few weeks, the price of gold in $CAN actually didn't do much, and may have dropped a bit because of the rise of $CAN compared to the $US. So to say that gold will rise to $3000 per oz, will actually be much less in other currencies, as most of it is the actual drop of the $US dollar against all other measures.

[Northern Boy]

Originally Posted by oldpaganfreak

a question....if this is true, is now the time to dump any investments and buy silver?

I would get a hard copy of all investments weekly. If the grid were to go down at any point soon you can rest assured disputes will arise as to how much you actually had , in some cases some would never be able to recover any thing , here`s something else if you are worried and decide you want to bug out later make sure you get your gas now ........... later there won`t be any

[Humble Janitor]

It'll only happen if we make it happen.

I think we can avoid the riots and general collapse and find a way out of this.

[pyrangello]

Cheap energy HJ, we have an enterpenuer here in michigan that has designed an engine with the right attitude, 110 miles per gallon at 500 horsepower. He's building a huge facility now for production. We have the technology, now we have to apply and embrace it. Come on #7, throw those dice, were better than this.