Hooray for America's Trade Deficit

Hey Muirgeo,

I think the trade deficit is less than $1 per square meter of land. But soon it may surpass that level. What do you think?

Area of land in square meters = 148,326,000,000,000 or 148 trillion square meters of land on Earth. Trade deficit is less than $1 trillion.

Oh wait, you said it would be 148 trillion people on earth, that's right. And you defended your statement twice. Brilliant.

Many of the things I believe would weaken the government not strengthen it.

No way. There's no way in hell that you wrote that and believe this.

Posted by: lowcountryjoe

LCJ,

Would you say that George W Bush has opened up our government? Would you agree he has concentrated the power of the executive in a significant way. Now of course I hate the man with passion but my argument is easily generalized

If it was up to me the day Obama becomes president I would want every official communication he makes to be recored and posted real time for all to see. No private meetings concerning our governance except for the most secure of issues. This would go for every government official/ I'd hold them to the highest of scrutiny and punish them severely when they abused the public trust. They'd not get to classify every single document they want. I make a system where whistle blowers would be free to have instant access to a public broadcast real time to air issues of abuse. They would get to choose WHICH press people and when they get to answer questions. There would be regular press briefings and the questions would come from all the people of this country.

The idea that a guy like Dick Cheney could hold our energy policy meeting in private is absurd beyond belief.

With out a doubt by my rules the governments power and ability to be bought would be markedly decreased. And even though I might support greater degrees of public service and support for proven things like early child education and health care the system would be so efficient and transparent it would be easily supported and would ultimately be a boom to our economy by maximizing the greatest resource of all....human capital. The current system is very uncompetitive and artificial... oligarchic indeed.

Capital is defined as "cash or assets capable of producing future income."

That's definitely not how I define the word. Capital is a real means of production. Cash is an accounting device, a ledger entry, a credit, an entitlement to purchase things, including real means of production. Confusing cash with capital is a capital mistake, because monetary authorities can create as much cash as they like.

We've all been muirgeo'd. Why do we persist in punching at the fog?

"Who runs the economy muirgeo?"

lowcountryjoe

That's the big question. I have to admit that I really believe with perfect discipline not a single rule would have to change and people could take back a lot of power just by the decisions they make. From the things they buy to the timing and number of kids they have.

If every child went to pre-school, studied hard, completed high-school, avoided drugs and teen pregnancy.

If every parent planned and had a child ONLY when they were truly ready on all fronts the work force would become more competitive and values and prosperity for he average person would soar with far less massive concentrations of wealth.

However, in the real world many ignorant people exist, the cycle of poverty grinds on, people are controlled by the mass media and consumerism. People of other countries are controlled by poor governments. And concentrations of wealth lead to the wealthy tilting the system through monetary policy, through monopoly, through regulatory policy, through trade policy and through organization like The World Bank and the WTO.

Lowcountryjoe, do you believe there are many poor children who if adopted at birth to a well to do family could have been extremely successful but in actuality dropped out of school or went to jail and just never made it.

And do you believe that a guy like George W Bush born to even an average middle class family would have a net worth of more then a couple hundred thousand at this point in his life...selling cars or maybe some sort of second rate businessman drunkard.

In fact most don't even bother to ask the details of the things I believe.

Because you offer up your beliefs on a regular basis. And you condradict yourself more often than most people on this forum do. Some contradiction is understandable and is usually cleared up by the people who do it. You, on the other hand, are all over the place and you do not clear these things up.

Many of the things I believe would weaken the government not strengthen it.

No way. There's no way in hell that you wrote that and believe this. I want examples. I want you to pick a persona and stick with him/her during the answering/example giving of this issue THAT YOU RAISED. No ducking this time.

You have so many questions outstanding on this blog, that for you to accuse ANYONE of ducking reasonable discussion is absurd and hilarious. ~ brotio to muirgeo

Lyrics to Genesis | No Reply At All

Listen to me, you never listen to me,

Ooh, and it seems theres no way out,

Ive been trying, but we cannot connect,

And theres no reply at all,

Theres no reply at all,

Theres no reply at all,

No reply at all.

muirgeo,

Would it be fair to say that your fear is not in the fact that foreign money invests in America it's that the foreigners who happen to invest in America might exercise command and control over their assets to the detriment of America?

Posted by: babinich

My fear is that as is playing out before us trade as set up is simply a way for more and more money to be concentrated among a smaller and more powerful elite.

If nothing else please admit we hopefully have the same fear. That being, concentration of power among a few individuals who control the rest of us.

Most here fear it from the perspective of concentrating power through government entities while I fear it....

well actually I fear BOTH concentrations of "private and public power. " Further rarely does private power gain its strength without use of the public sector.

People like to call me a socialist because it makes them feel better. In fact most don't even bother to ask the details of the things I believe. Many of the things I believe would weaken the government not strengthen it.

It's BS that the issues I raise are not grounded in some of the views of the worlds best economist with what little I know of them. But I have studied many and I am learning more all the time.

For instance the father of comparative advantage, David Ricardo, I think, would hardly agree that our trade system is set up in a proper fashion. In fact, pitting the Americvan worker against the child laborer or the communist laborer results in an absolute advantage that distorts the effectiveness of true free trade.

As I understand it for free trade to work capital should not cross borders, trade should be generally equal and employment should be close to full. None of those conditions are met in the current situation.

So don't argue with me I'm only repeating the ideas of the great economist David Ricardo.

... opponents of the dictatorship of the proletariat that you yearn for ....

Posted by: brotio

Well here again I'm talking about democracy (representative democracy), not dictatorship, which the overwhelming majority of Americans and citizens of the world believe in. It's you who is the outlier of both political thought and reality. It is you who is surrounded by surrogates singing the same delusional song that has convinced himself he sits with a rational majority because thats what all you see when you look around. It is you who can only argue with intellectual dishonesty against my position by calling it something it is not and believe yourself to have made some significant statement that wouldn't even hold up in the 4th grade school yard debates.

have some very significant questions on the details of our trade agreements.

Theory of relativity:

It is better to have restricted (NAFTA) trade rather than no trade.

It is best to have FREE trade rather than restricted trade.

Don Boudreaux says "This capital helped to create and modernise many US companies, to fund research and development, to train workers, and to ease the burden imposed on Americans by Uncle Sam's profligacy."

Come on! You cannot believe in this… considering the fact that it is the consumer and the public sector who has run up debts while corporations have in fact been repurchasing their shares because not knowing what else to do.

And by the way I am not against either NAFTA or CAFTA since if you absolutely got to lose a job you are better of losing it to a neighbor of yours.

The trade deficit is not a "capital surplus." We may have a capital surplus, but you can't tell by looking at the trade deficit figure.

Capital is defined as "cash or assets capable of producing future income." If you're just looking at cash, then the US annually exports about as much as it imports, so that's a net wash. So, you have to look at the nature of the goods flowing back and forth.

I suggest that if most of what's flowing into the US is, say, Happy Meal toys, then, from a "capital" standpoint, we do not benefit nearly as much as we would if it were laboratory equipment, computers and such. (You can make a similar comparison for outflow -- are we shipping productive capacity overseas or just stuff?)

The trade deficit is meaningless; what matters is what we get in return.

... the foreigners who happen to invest in America might exercise command and control over their assets to the detriment of America?

Buying U.S. Treasury securities is not what I call "investment" at all, because entitlement to tax revenue is not a means of production. If anything, it's an impediment to production. Many other entitlements labeled "capital" are similar.

Supporting genuine, free market capitalism (the holding and exchange of productive means for profit) is not equivalent to championing everything any statesman labels "capital".

Those reserves are US gov bonds. China earns interest on these. But, they have to issue their own bonds to finance the purchase of the US Bonds.

China need not sell its own bonds to finance the purchase of U.S. bonds. It can sell its currency. U.S. demand for Chinese goods is great, so the exchange of dollars for yuan is great. Most of the currency exchange occurs through the Chinese monetary authority, because China sells yuan for dollars below the market to fix the price of the yuan in dollars. In the process, China accumulates dollars and buys U.S. Treasury securities with dollars while U.S. interests purchase Chinese goods with the Chinese currency.

China has an extraordinarily high saving rate, reportedly as high as forty percent, compared with a U.S. saving rate of roughly zero percent. This high domestic saving rate probably accounts for most of the sale of Chinese state securities, since the Chinese buy their own state securities and not U.S. securities.

So China sells yuan for dollars, and Chinese authorities purchase U.S. Treasury securities. U.S. buyers of yuan exchange them for Chinese goods. Chinese recipients of the yuan exchange them for Chinese state securities.

That Chinese state securities yield a higher interest rate than U.S. state securities makes little difference, because Chinese authorities tax their own resources to pay this interest. They don't pay it with interest earned on U.S. securities. To do so, they must exchange the dollar interest for their own currency, but they corner the market on the exchange of dollars for yuan themselves, so they'd be exchanging this dollar interest for yuan with themselves.

The Chinese hold U.S. securities as a consequence of the fixed exchange rate which is part of a mercantilist trade policy. They accept losses on U.S. securities, because these losses are the price of increasing their share of U.S. markets, and they're willing to pay the price.

If the U.S. may simply stop purchasing so many Chinese goods at some point and begin producing the same goods domestically or purchase them elsewhere, then I don't worry about the Chinese accumulation of U.S. Treasury securities. Basically, they give us discounts on everything they produce, and we give them paper entitling them, at best, to future purchase of our agricultural products as more Chinese resources leave agriculture.

On the other hand, if we're selling the Chinese and others exclusive rights to produce goods we consume, I'm not so sanguine about the prospects. The U.S. is a leading economy. We dedicate more resources to the bleeding edge. It's called a "bleeding edge" for good reason. Most new business models fail, because planning doesn't create success. A process more like natural selection occurs.

If we're selling exclusive rights to "businesses processes" and other vaguely broad categories of production (and we are), we aren't selling the failures. We're only selling the successes, and the earlier we sell them, the less we earn from them, because their future value is less certain earlier and their current value is correspondingly low.

The less sanguine theory is that we're selling these entitlements early presently, because an unusually large proportion of salesmen near retirement. People nearing retirement trade growth for income.

The Fed recently stopped reporting M3, because (according to skeptics) M3 is rising rapidly. It's rising rapidly largely because of large denomination CDs (which don't contribute to M2). The volume of money in these CDs is rising, because many investment dollars seek income over growth at this time.

The growth of M3 doesn't imply that we're selling more long-term business success cheap for short term gain (to invest the gain for income), but it seems to indicate a similar process at work.

muirgeo,

Would it be fair to say that your fear is not in the fact that foreign money invests in America it's that the foreigners who happen to invest in America might exercise command and control over their assets to the detriment of America?

The rantings of a lunatic at 5 A.M.

In muirschizo's defense, he is on Vacaville time...some three hours before us. Perhaps its the thorazine mixed with the methane mixed with the battery emmissions from all those electric cars and their kool-aid drinking owners.

You can tell Adam hasn't been around the home all that much. Adam can't tell the patients from the staff.

Buchanan said that $1,400 bn are used as reserves.

Those reserves are US gov bonds. China earns interest on these. But, they have to issue their own bonds to finance the purchase of the US Bonds. Right now China is losing money on their recent reserve purchases, because their rates are higher than the US bond being purchased. China may get hurt more than us if this unravels.

I've read enough to understand that the great economist from Smith to Ricardo and Malthus, Mill, Marx, Marshall, Schumpeter, Keynes and Friedman never came to any grand conclusion about how best to run the economy.

Who runs the economy muirgeo?

Ignorance should likewise not be a reason to celebrate blind optimism.

Ignorance should likewise not be reason to post onto a blog that you actually know something about the topic that you step into. Your last reply to me shows that you really do not know very much and those things that you do know have been shaped by a scaremongering media who only knows enough to be in the business of scaring folks like yourself. The markets in those so-called counter points that you made are working as they should...until the political marketplace decided to get involved: courtesy of the ignorant participants that call this society a pluralistic democracy.

Do any of them here understand why global trade balances always shows a net surplus of exports to imports. I believe we are talking trillions of dollars of difference.

That's quite a statement. Which source did you pull that beauty from? Will you duck this question, too?

Their models don't work and for that reason do not exist in the real world so the best they can do is claim that "free trade" is good as if what we have is in any way free trade as opposed to a morass of rules and regulations specifically set up by those in power to further their grip not by competing fairly but by controlling markets and avoiding competition.

So, do you favor free(er) trade, one with very little rules and regulations. You cannot ust write what you did without coming down from fence sitting. Either you favor free trade or you oppose it. And, since I know that you're quite fond of regulation -- through our pluralistic democracy -- it would appear that you're talking out of both side of your pie hole here. Pick a side and stay there, muirschizo.

It's pretty telling how you all never have anything of substance to counter on the legitimate issues I bring up.

I just cannot belive how squeezably soft the Charmin is here.

Yeah Adam I could be wrong but their are plenty of modern day well known professors of economics who have some very significant questions on the details of our trade agreements. Considering the current state of the economy 15 years into our trade agreements and relative deregulation of our markets have YOU every considered you might be wrong. Why is the economy doing so bad when free trade and deregulation are supposed to be doing us so much good. And why should any rational human being ignore the fact of all the increase productivity going to the people at the top. That's a fact and all the indications tell me it's got a lot to do with how the game is set up and very little to do with who is productively contributing to society and the economy. And the simpleton idea that Smith's principals apply to our current complex economy is very suspect to me.

If I or anyone else replied to this and spent some time on it to try and educate would it make any difference to you. I just know that if there were any rhetorical questions being asked, you'd duck the questions. If the points being made were solid, you'd never reply to the post. Nope, instead, it would be the last that we would see from you on this particular permalink and you would resurface on the next thread and continue to spew the same nonsense as though you were never here. We all know your M.O., M.D. Is your schizophrenia Permanente, Doc?

This is hilarious:

"we're in the middle of a massive sub-prime and general credit crisis"

"as to weather some financial trickery occurs when free trade goes"

"Their models don't work and for that reason do not exist"

"what we have is in any way free trade as opposed to a morass of rules and regulations specifically set up by those in power to further their grip not by competing fairly but by controlling markets"

The rantings of a lunatic at 5 A.M. You would think that that nurse Ratchet would have upped the dose of thorazine so the poor guy could get some sleep!

Goshdarnit muirgeo! Please at least put 'Classic' in front of 'Liberal' when referring to Libertarianism! You don't want to besmirch the good name of Liberalism do you? ( }>:P )

brotio - helium breathers are underrated. Don't diss it until you try it! :-)

I'm not an isolationist. If it were up to me, anyone from Canada could move to the U.S. and apply for my job tomorrow, but NAFTA doesn't have this effect. It does globalize entitlements that were previously less global.

Posted by: Martin Brock | Mar 8, 2008 2:24:48 PM

So Martin, do you favor integrating Canada into the United States as one nation? Do you favor US sovereignty? Borders either mean something or they don't. Borders exist everywhere in nature, even our own bodies have a border as protection.

Murthaduck,

I commented on the closest thing to 'legitimate' in your post.

You have so many questions outstanding on this blog, that for you to accuse ANYONE of ducking reasonable discussion is absurd and hilarious.

Sam, Vidyohs, Python, Methinks, LCJ, Randy, Russ, yours truly, and countless other opponents of the dictatorship of the proletariat that you yearn for have countered your socialist tripe with substance time-and-again throughout the threads of this blog.

You are a helium-breather. Your mind cannot comprehend substance.

Brotio,

It's pretty telling how you all never have anything of substance to counter on the legitimate issues I bring up. That you are satisfied with your trite points on dollar amounts and square meters makes it's clear YOU guys are often the ones who are not interested in discussing uncomfortable details of oversimplified concepts. You really have NO interest in having your positions challenged and that's why you sit uncomfortable in my presence wishing you could only be around fellow choir members.

Adam,

I've read enough to understand that the great economist from Smith to Ricardo and Malthus, Mill, Marx, Marshall, Schumpeter, Keynes and Friedman never came to any grand conclusion about how best to run the economy.

Yeah Adam I could be wrong but their are plenty of modern day well known professors of economics who have some very significant questions on the details of our trade agreements. Considering the current state of the economy 15 years into our trade agreements and relative deregulation of our markets have YOU every considered you might be wrong. Why is the economy doing so bad when free trade and deregulation are supposed to be doing us so much good. And why should any rational human being ignore the fact of all the increase productivity going to the people at the top. That's a fact and all the indications tell me it's got a lot to do with how the game is set up and very little to do with who is productively contributing to society and the economy. And the simpleton idea that Smith's principals apply to our current complex economy is very suspect to me.

"Maybe the $200,000,000,000 billion of newly printed dollars."

Murthaduck ("the children they've killed in cold blood"), that number you posted is 2 SEXTILLION dollars. I know that you and Daily Kos are ignorant, but do you realize that's probably close to a million dollars per square meter of America? I suppose we'll get to that level of spending in the 'not too distant' future.

Muirgeo, do you ever stop and ask yourself if it's even remotely possible that you might be wrong? I'm guessing you have no formal training in economics. I recall that in another thread you mentioned you're a doctor. Would you even give the time of day to an economist who diagnosed a patient and then proceeded to counsel a particular treatment regime? I hope not.

Why does every Tom, Dick and Harry think he can spew off about the economy without ever reading a single thing that's ever been written about it?

I thought liberals (classic) are supposed to be deep thinkers. Do any of them here understand why global trade balances always shows a net surplus of exports to imports. I believe we are talking trillions of dollars of difference. That you all take the simplified version without looking into the implications of the details is rather amazing.

The idea that people here are incurious as to weather some financial trickery occurs when free trade goes from bartering apples for oranges to exchange of global securities and all sorts of market speculation and wizardry is laughable. When one realizes that truly productive services and goods account for maybe 10% of the trillions of dollars traded everyday, the rest being financial paper transactions, and assumes this is the same sort of thing Adam Smith was talking about I have to be stunned with the sheer over-simplification of it all.

Liberals, IMO, have the problems of wanting the world to be far simpler then it is or ever could be. Their models don't work and for that reason do not exist in the real world so the best they can do is claim that "free trade" is good as if what we have is in any way free trade as opposed to a morass of rules and regulations specifically set up by those in power to further their grip not by competing fairly but by controlling markets and avoiding competition. And here the supposed liberal thinkers abandon their ideology for the closest monstrosity in the real world that they can call their own....." FREE TRADE, IT'S ALIVE....IT'S ALIVE!!!!!"

"Lonable funds with very reasonable interest rates for American borrowers..." lowcountryjoe

Wow... to be able to write this as if you're to be taken seriously while we're in the middle of a massive sub-prime and general credit crisis. Whatever you say LCJ.

, ...shares of stock in American companies,..."


lowcountryjoe

Eh hemm!

"...properties owned by foreign interests which get rented out to American tenants, or foreign owned plants and other types of businesses that employ American workers."

lowcountryjoe

Foreigners are buying our property and our companies and we get to rent it and work for them???......Do you know the way to serfdom...i've been gone so long I could go wrong? Optimism is GREAT when tempered with realism. Ignorance should likewise not be a reason to celebrate blind optimism. A mouse is very optimistic as it bites into the cheese.

Buchanan said that $1,400 bn are used as reserves.

So, $1.4T is under the matress not being put to work? Sounds like Pat is contemplating a new book: The Death of the Brain Cells: Where Logic Went Wrong.

Hmmmmmm,

"Doesn't look like those dollars are coming back here to be invested in America. Besides the Federal government is picky about what the chinese government can buy here.

Posted by: Kent Gatewood | Mar 8, 2008 9:22:43 PM"

Let's look at that:

China flows dollars into the Clinton 96 presidential campaign and after victory, Clinton flows super computer and missile guidance technology back to China. Appears to me as if free trade exists

I would think that if we send dollars to China to buy goods then it deosn't matter what the Chinese does with those dollars, use them in recip trade, use them to buy stuff from South America, or sit on them, ultimately the only place in the world those dollars can be redeemed is here in the USA.

Perhaps it is a simple view but to me the greatest value for the Chinese would be to turn around and buy something in America or produced by America, such as a democratic president or democratic New York senator.

Last of all, no rational argument can be made for the Chinese to have billions in USA dollars and be working to reduce their value? Anyone who thinks that is saying they think that the Chinese are totally stupid, and outside of some 60 years of rabid communism there is no evidence that in business they can't hold their own. After all they got a US President and senator really cheap.

If we have lots of stuff (due to our prior trade deficits) and other countries have lots of green pieces of paper (because they own all our dollars and dollar denominated assets), who's in trouble if the dollar plummets in value?

Buchanan said that $1,400 bn are used as reserves. The funds China gets for selling the socks I'm wearing underpin the yuan. Doesn't look like those dollars are coming back here to be invested in America. Besides the Federal government is picky about what the chinese government can buy here.

"invest" in the U.S. when they purchase entitlement to tax revenue from the U.S. Congress,"

Martin is on to something here! bingo!

He looses his clarvoint thinking though:

"and I don't buy the idea that foreign producers "invest" in the U.S. when they buy some other statutory monopoly sold to some U.S. entity."

There is a distinction between entitlements that are bestowed on voters ir-regardless of any reciprocal return of value and "statutory monopoly" which even Martin defines as "property earned" as capital and both a store of value and a generator of wealth. Martin, again confuses the two as the same.

Can some one tell me where those investment surpluses are?

Lonable funds with very reasonable interest rates for American borrowers, shares of stock in American companies, properties owned by foreign interests which get rented out to American tenants, or foreign owned plants and other types of businesses that employ American workers.

These have all been spelled out for you before on other threads. Perhaps this time you'll committ them to memory and stop complaining about the trade deficit known by its other name: the investment surplus.

Now, will you tell me a little more about your optimism, Doctor?

"Can some one tell me where those investment surpluses are?"

Take an econ class.

(Oh hell, I just got muirgeo'd)

Such people clearly don't understand they can't have both a net investment inflow and a net trade outflow. It is mathematically impossible.

I understand this analysis, but the specifics of what crosses borders is certainly relevant. I don't buy the idea that foreign central banks and others "invest" in the U.S. when they purchase entitlement to tax revenue from the U.S. Congress, and I don't buy the idea that foreign producers "invest" in the U.S. when they buy some other statutory monopoly sold to some U.S. entity. The devil is in the details.

"Since Nafta, we have run $5,000bn in investment surpluses."

Can some one tell me where those investment surpluses are? In the housing values? In the Commodities bubble? In pieces of plastic we bought at WalMart? In the falling Stock Market? Are they represented in the current strength of the dollar? Maybe the $200,000,000,000 billion of newly printed dollars. Is it there? Are they to be found hiding in the current value of the gas and food we own?

Me I'm investing in food and gas. I buy whole bunch of it cause the value is going up. Problem is my gas evaporates and my bread keeps getting moldy.

My favorite is when someone (e.g. Lou Dobbs) is simultaneously upset about both our trade "deficit" and about American firms that invest overseas.

Such people clearly don't understand they can't have both a net investment inflow and a net trade outflow. It is mathematically impossible.

Free trade is foundational for libertarians. Anything less is statist and interventionist, readily found in the political Left and Right.

I'm not an isolationist. If it were up to me, anyone from Canada could move to the U.S. and apply for my job tomorrow, but NAFTA doesn't have this effect. It does globalize entitlements that were previously less global.

Hear, Hear! Goddamn Ohio!

Martin:

I didn't figure you for an isolationist.

Why brought Martin Brock into this Libertarian?

"Trade Deficit." Anyone smell an oxymoron?

Here is the matter laid out by the brilliant Peter Schiff vis-a-vis the conventional wisdom represented by Arthur Laffer (and Don Boudreaux). And not the date of the interview:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LfascZSTU4o

The "trade war with Canada" threatened by Clinton's posturing over NAFTA is incredible, and anyone familiar with trade disputes knows it. Clinton only "demands" NAFTA revisions that Canadians already want, revisions that Clinton's political opponents in the U.S. oppose more than Canada's state trade negotiators (the folks with whom Clinton would discuss "free trade").

Beneath the vague, political chatter, talk of NAFTA is always about managing trade, and the various proponents of "free trade" typically avoid the substantial issues, i.e. the particular restraints of trade they prefer over others. Buchanan at least is honest enough to reject the chatter altogether.

Buchanan writes:

"Since Nafta, but by no means solely because of Nafta, we have run $5,000bn in trade deficits. Three million manufacturing jobs, one in six in the US, have disappeared under George W. Bush. Mexico now exports more cars to us than we export to the world. The US has become the world's greatest debtor nation and the dollar has lost half its value against the euro, while China has piled up $1,400bn in reserves and, with other Asian and Opec nations, is starting to buy up our country. Under global free trade, we borrow $2bn a day to consume foreign goods we used to produce ourselves."

All of this is indisputably true and is the result of international wage arbitrage stemming from a "dollar"-induced global monetary fraud that, after 37 years of robbing people blind via the "stealth tax" of inflation, is unraveling before our eyes.

Bottom line: There is no such thing as free trade in a world dominated by irredeemable paper currencies. Instead, what you have is a free-for-all that has made the US government's increasingly worthless currency the country's chief export. And when those "dollars" inevitably return, there is going to be hell to pay:

"[If not] for systemic intervention and manipulations by the Federal Reserve, it appears we might be contemplating a collapsed U.S. banking system and a looming deflationary great depression that could have dwarfed the bad times of the 1930s. Such is the good news. The bad news is that with those same systemic interventions, the Fed is locking in a hyperinflationary great depression in the decade ahead, with the turmoil possibly breaking by 2010 or earlier." -- Economist John Williams, www.shadowstats.com</p>

I'm still quite upset by the fact that Ohio sells far more products to Texas than they buy. Pisses me off. Goddamn Ohio.