The cynical (correct I think) view is also that Bush will invade. Yes he is perfectly capable of even more idiotic blunders. He doesn’t care what we think about it, other than giving us a collection of facile but transparent excuses (dutifully reported by the Ministry of Prop - er, I mean, mainstream media). And there will be more trampling of civil rights. And Hillary will continue this charade; once she gets in any talk of withdrawal will evaporate.

And nothing that they do to “defend” the dollar will help. The fundamentals there too are unchanged.

In addition, American voters overall are a militant bunch. Despite some reservations over the recent wars, they could care less about bombing and occupying other countries.

In reality, the dollar’s fall from the world’s reserve currency is a self inflicted one. In time, this will force the US empire to “sleep with the fishes.”

Sorry to dissappoint, but we have more than enough juice to bomb Iran’s infrastructure (nuclear, electric, whatever) to mere wreckage. All you need are B-52s from Diego Garcia (Indian Ocean) with cruise missiles and thousands of targets could be hit. Quite economical and the attack could easily cause the shallow Iranian economy to crumble. Now the ramifications for those of sitting within a stone’s throw of the Iranian border would definitely feel the wrath of SCUD missiles; still we are just pawns in the US struggle to maintain grasp on hegemony.

Once, dollars could be scarce in the rest of the world. We exported more goods than we imported. So the rest of the world was always anxious to find dollars to pay for the goods they wanted to buy from us.

Now that’s changed. Our multiple deficits, trade, govt borrowing, corporate borrowing, consumer borrowing, are all flooding the rest of the world with dollars. Now, if you want to hand someone in the rest of the world dollars to pay for anything, that person has to stop and think a bit about whether they really want many more dollar bills. How many are the already holding? And what are the other massive holders of dollars around the world going to do? If a country like China, which is collecting huge amounts of dollars every quarter due to our trade deficit with China were to start dumping these on the world markets, you wouldn’t want to be a Persian gulf oil sheik holding lots of dollars when this happened. The value of the dollar would plumment, and that sheik’s holdings would rapidly trend towards being worthless. If the US dollar eventually had the same worth as the old confederate dollar, you wouldn’t want to be holding lots of those dollars.

Oil is a big part of this of course. Since we pay lots of dollars for our oil addiction, its obviously one area where you’ll see this concern. But this isn’t just about oil. Its about an entire world that is rapidly loosing faith in a US dollar that in reality is only backed by the full faith and credit of the US govt.

The inflation in the Gulf is just another sign of this. First, as the dollar falls the sheiks would be likely to pull some of their dollars out of the US markets and put them in local investments. Real estate would be a common one. Thus the spike in land prices as well. Then, as both trends continue, they’d tend to accelerate each other. To pay for a higher cost of living at home, they’d tend to take more money from the US and bring it back home. And the speculation in local real estate and their own real estate bubble would then see the same sorts of speculation we saw in the US a few years back. They’d see a much larger rate of return in investments like that, while at the same time their rate of return in the US would be flat or maybe even going negative. The combination of a shaky US stock market and a falling US dollar would mean that their investments in the US would be losing money. So why not instead cash out and make money off the local real estate bubble. And those acts bring the US stock market down some more, bring the dollar down some more, and raise local real estate prices and inflation higher, thus feeding the trend even more.

The one thing you’d want to avoid would be staying in the dollar and the US markets for too long. If others keep lowering the markets and the dollar by cashing out, you wouldn’t want to be staying put. Instead, the advantage goes to the person who cashes out the most fastest in getting out of US investments and dollars.

BTW, don’t pay much attention to the words. Yeah, Bush’s visit probably silenced some of the talk that’s been around lately. The most notable being the open mic at a private OPEC meeting that let reporters here some of this discussion going on amongst the oil ministers. Bush’ s visit could quell the loose talk. And as long as the Saudis still get dollars for oil, they actually have a stake in not talking about the dollar and driving it down further. Bush probably reminded them of that.

But Bush’s visit didn’t change the global economic factors described above. It didn’t change the growing US govt deficit to pay for military oil and the wars. It didn’t change the growing US trade deficit as we pay the cost of dismantling our native manufacturing capability and sending it and the jobs overseas. Those are all forces much bigger than Mr. Bush and any threats he delivered. So the overall trends of the dollars will continue. And no matter how the talk changes, the Sheiks still have a financial interest in holding fewer dollars. So while it got a little quieter, its probably very likely that they never really changed their actions.

The fact of the US being the world’s ‘reserve currency’ is what lets the Federal Reserve just print money the way they do. Our entire system of finance is largely based on this. Its been that way so long, we’ve become very dependent on it. We count on the fact that we can run deficits without really having to go borrow money from anyone else by relying on the fact that everyone in the world was always happy to get a US $100 bill. That’s going to change if we keep going the way we are. And its going to be a rude shock to this nation when it does change.

And, while the shortsighted might think that bombing Iran to stop their oil market from selling oil for Euros might change this fact, it won’t. One of the large strategic problems the US has is that the way we fight wars is very, very expensive. All those vehicles and jets and helicopters and well-stocked PXs and Burger Kings to make the troops feel like home make the US military the most expensive military operation in the history of the world.

So, expanding the middle east wars to include both the Shiite areas of Iraq and the 3x larger country of Iran would really just make the problem worse. US government deficits would spike, and this would just flood the world with more dollars from our deficit spending which would drive the value of the dollar even faster which would hasten the end of the US dollar being the world’s reserve currency.

I’m not saying the Bush administration is not capable of doing something that stupid. Any doubts about that went away when it became obvious the fools were going to attack Iraq. Its just that if they are doing it because the Iranian Bourse is trading in Euros or other currencies, then they are being incredibly stupid … again.

Of course.

Will it matter who is in the White House?

Probably not.

That, no matter how you try to say it, is the scary reality of our 21st century reality.

Now, if the damned stock market would lose 5% per day of its value for a couple of weeks … and the US would evolve into about ten separate little satrapies, maybe the 130 countries with our troops stationed in them could hope for a pullout. Alas, like most rapists, withdrawal is not a likely option.

Tom Hagen didn’t do the dirty work. However, tThe book, nor the movie, ever hinted that Luca was involved. It was some unnamed Corleone family functionary, or a group of said.

I don’t think the Iranian Oil Bourse has anything to do with this. The Iranians have already insisted that Japan pay in Yen for its oil and there are probably other similar cases that didn’t get into the press. I would guess that the EU is paying Russia in Euros for its oil and gas. The Gulf monarchies are probably just waiting for Bush to leave office to move to their basket of currencies and the French military presence is designed to help them by offering an alternative to US power. All that is the consequence of the collapse of US power, not the cause of it.

Nor would I pay much attention to Israel. Fundamentally, the Jews are ceasing to believe in Israel and more people leave each year than immigrate in. For that reason, the Israeli extremists would like nothing better than to provoke an attack, regardless of wherefrom, because they could then pose as the defenders of Jews worldwide, the guardians of the sanctuary, so to speak, and rally support by painting the Jews as the Perpetually Persecuted People.

All this is just the Bush strategy for 2012: put Hillary in the White House and leave such a mess that she is still bogged down in it in 2012 and can then be taken out. Bush is revenge-driven (not very Christian …!). He went after Saddam because Saddam brought down Daddybird. What sweeter revenge than to put Hillary in the White House and then deprive her of a second term as Bill deprived Daddybird? As for the people, let them eat cake!