- "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the
farmers."
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- So Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon advised Herbert Hoover
in the Great Crash of '29.
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- Hoover did. And the nation liquidated him and the
Republicans.
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- In the Crash of 2008, 40 percent of stock value has vanished,
almost $9 trillion. Some $5 trillion in real estate value has disappeared.
A recession looms with sweeping layoffs, unemployment compensation surging,
and social welfare benefits soaring.
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- America's first trillion-dollar deficit is at hand.
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- In fiscal year 2008 the deficit was $438 billion.
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- With tax revenue sinking, we will add to this year's
deficit the $200 to $300 billion needed to wipe the rotten paper off the
books of Fannie and Freddie, the $700 billion (plus the $100 billion in
add-ons and pork) for the Wall Street bailout, the $85 billion to bail
out AIG, and $37 billion more now needed, the $25 billion for GM, Chrysler,
and Ford, and the hundreds of billions Hank Paulson will need to buy corporate
paper and bail out banks to stop the panic.
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- As Americans save nothing, where are the Feds going to
get the money? Is the Fed going to print it and destroy the dollar and
credit rating of the United States? Because the nations whose vaults are
full of dollars and U.S. debt China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf
Arabs are reluctant to lend us more. Sovereign wealth funds that
plunged billions into U.S. banks have already been burned.
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- Uncle Sam's Visa card is about to be stamped "Canceled."
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- The budget is going to have to go under the knife. But
what gets cut?
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- Social Security and Medicare are surely exempt. Seniors
have already taken a huge hit in their 401(k)s. And as the Democrats are
crafting another $150 billion stimulus package for the working poor and
middle class, Medicaid and food stamps are untouchable. Interest on the
debt cannot be cut. It is going up. Will a Democratic Congress slash unemployment
benefits, welfare, education, student loans, veterans benefits in
a recession?
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- No way. Yet, that is almost the entire U.S. budget
except for defense, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and foreign aid.
And this is where the ax will eventually fall.
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- It is the American Empire that is going to be liquidated.
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- Retrenchment has begun with Bush's backing away from
confrontations with Axis-of-Evil charter members Iran and North Korea over
their nuclear programs, and will likely continue with a negotiated peace
in Afghanistan. Gen. Petraeus and Secretary Gates are already talking "reconciliation"
with the Taliban.
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- We no longer live in Eisenhower or Reagan's America.
Even the post-Cold War world of George H. W. Bush, where America was a
global hegemon, is history. In both relative and real terms, the U.S.A.
is a diminished power.
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- Where Ike spent 9 percent of GDP on defense, Reagan 6
percent, we spend 4 percent. Yet we have two wars bleeding us and many
more nations to defend, with commitments in the Baltic, Eastern Europe,
and the Balkans we did not have in the Cold War. As U.S. weapons systems
are many times more expensive today, we have fewer strategic aircraft and
Navy ships than Ike or Reagan commanded. Our active-duty Army and Marine
Corps consist of 700,000 troops, 15 percent women, and a far higher percentage
of them support rather than combat troops.
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- With so few legions, we cannot police the world, and
we cannot afford more. Yet, we have a host of newly hostile nations we
did not have in 1989.
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- U.S. interests in Latin America are being challenged
not only by Cuba, but Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Honduras.
Brazil, Argentina, and Chile go their own way. Russia is reasserting hegemony
in the Caucasus, testing new ICBMs, running bomber probes up to U.S. air
space. China, growing at 10 percent as we head into recession, is bristling
over U.S. military sales to Taiwan. Iran remains defiant. Pakistan is rife
with anti-Americanism and al-Qaeda sentiment.
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- The American Empire has become a vast extravagance.
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- With U.S. markets crashing and wealth vanishing, what
are we doing with 750 bases and troops in over 100 countries?
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- With a recession of unknown depth and duration looming,
why keep borrowing billions from rich Arabs to defend rich Europeans, or
billions from China and Japan to hand out in Millennium Challenge Grants
to Tanzania and Burkina Faso?
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- America needs a bottom-up review of all strategic commitments
dating to a Cold War now over for 20 years.
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- Is it essential to keep 30,000 troops in a South Korea
with twice the population and 40 times the wealth of the North? Why are
McCain and Obama offering NATO memberships, i.e., war guarantees against
Russia, to a Georgia run by a hothead like Mikheil Saakashvili, and a Ukraine,
millions of whose people prefer their kinship to Russia to an alliance
with us?
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- We must put "country first," says John McCain.
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- Right you are, Senator. Time to look out for America
first.
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- COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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