It’s a permanent political change. The next president isn’t gonna get less bloodthirsty. All the leading candidates, Republican or Democratic — Clinton, Guiliani, Romney, Huckabee– are backed by the same world-dominationist neocons (who are not a free-floating political faction, but agents of powerful private-sector allies, among them those who got the Iraq oil. They dominate both political parties now, if you’re willing to believe.) I hate to sound “conspiratorial” on half my posts (it’s why I get banned regularly), but that’s the actual situation now.

The main cause of dollar drop: central bank expansion of M3. M3 has more than doubled in past ten years. Referring to Macroeconomics textbook, doubling money supply halves currency value by 50%, holding all else equal. E.g.: Japan holds $1,000 billion in treasuries, loses $500 billion due to depreciation. Who gets the wealth? The person/persons who printed the dollars out of nothing, or the ppl they extend credit to. The rest of America and the world suffer inflation (”dollar depreciation”, as you put it).

Secondary cause: the decades-long outsourcing of manufacturing, which increases the trade deficit. The non-WASP (hint hint) megabucks plutocracy (owners of capital, in econ terminology) increase profits by outsourcing. Some outsourcing’s natural, but this is something else, too long to explain.

IMO, a properly governed U.S. should generate a massive structural trade surplus with the rest of the world, cuz U.S. workers hold absolute advantage in most goods and services, especially the high-value-added.

I don’t want to explain the causes in detail cuz it’d take too long. But it’s deliberate policy, and they know what they’re doing. In other words, there is no problem, at least not for the U.S. (For other countries holding U.S. dollars, yes, they’re being screwed.)

Btw, if you’re interested in these things I could send you an invite to the econ forum when it’s up. We’re gonna cover this sort of econ theory & more.

What the U.S. is doing, I’m afraid, is basically overrunning the world with one arm and nine fingers tied up, using only its free pinkie. That’s why I pretty certain they’ll never leave Iraq, and probably do in Iran soon, too, cause the wars cost the $13 trillion dollar economy almost nothing. Nobody there even notices.

Yea, i wouldn’t mind so much the theft of Iraqi oil if they split the loot among U.S. citizens equally, but these handful of Rockefeller & Rothschild firms took full control of the reserves themselves, so us ordinary “Americans” got screwed, too. We pay for the war through our taxes, serve in the armed forces, but get no oil. Double-penetrated, we are.

Han: Nice breakdown you have there. I totally agree with your last paragraph.

I know of two country deals, and the terms were so lopsided that Western firms practically owned the oil outright:

1. In pre-Mossadeq Iran, BP took something like 95% of revenue, gave Iran 5%. Then Mossadeq was elected president, demanded 50%. CIA killed him, installed the Shah.

2. Ecuador (or was it Peru?…) where the revenue was divided as follows:
70% to the U.S. oil firm
25% to other U.S. firms in services and loan interest
5% to Peru

The 5% went mostly to corrupt officials who took orders from the U.S. Any opposition leader that arose was liable to assassination at any time.

If I were to guess, the situation in Iraq probably resembles the Ecuadorean deal. U.S. firms basically stole Iraq’s 110 billion barrels of oil due to Bush’s war, and will keep it.

For now, I just have to refrain from taking the car out when it’s near empty, as the last user always have to top it up…

$100 minus $5 means a $95 surplus, split among the named parties.