Falling off the cliff
Motorola make things, the problem is that they aren't making money, according to results published today, the world's 2nd biggest mobile phone manufacturer lost US$181 Mn in the first quarter as sales declined.
J P Morgan the 3rd largest US bank make nothing, they shuffle huge volumes of money around and around and report record profits (net income rose 55% to $4.79 billion) , - even after losses on their Sub prime Loan portfolios and bad credit card debts, mainly through fee income.
IBM, Yahoo lead a tech slide on Wall Street.
Behind this the US$ slid further in Europe against Sterling and the Euro where interest rates are expected to rise to suck in more dollar funds.
The question on no-one's lips is ..
What will collapse faster the US dollar or the US economy ?
The private bankers who run the Fed, don't give a flying fuck, somewhere will be a safe haven for their funds, which are fleeing fast, helping to boost stock markets in Europe and Asia.
Meanwhile in Baghdad the surging insurgents have (so far today) killed somewhere near 170 (no-one has added up the injured) people in city wide car bombings.
There has to be a correction to the US trade deficit, the dollar slide, the potential for a stock market slide led (again) by tech stocks.
There has to be a re-examination of what the US led effort in Iraq and Afghanistan is doing.
The longer these moves take, the deeper the shit, the longer the recovery, the steeper the drop in real wages in the US as the 7 months stock of houses stand unsold.
For further reading Counterpunch
Doomsday for the Greenback? Dollar madness -By Mike Whitney April 19th 2007
2 comments:
"There has to be a re-examination of what the US led effort in Iraq and Afghanistan is doing."
A hugely successful heist. The US taxpayers/dollar holders are paying to the US army USD 8 billion per month. CIA proxies are successfully perpetuating the heist by committing atrocities whenever there is a chance that the US troops may be deemed to be a position to withdraw.
Note that smuggled oil at USD 6 million per month is small change (not all of that is going to the US army, anyway).
Consider the Ferris-wheel speech in Orson Welles' The Third Man. Do the maths (8 billion divided by 650,000 not forgetting to multiply that with the No of months of occupation) and compare the result with the figure that was suggested to Harry Lime. (Also take into account that this was before Nixon removed the gold peg) ... after doing all of that, one can see how much GW was prepared to receive each time "one of those insignificant dots down there ..." was rubbed out.
A subject worthy of invetigation is the Iraqi Dinar.
Before the Gulf War of 90-91 & the economic embargo of Iraq, an (1) Iraqi Dinar was worth USD$3.22 .
Iraqi Dinar currency printed before the 90-91 Gulf War was often called the Swiss dinar, after the Swiss printing technology that produced banknotes of a noticeably higher quality than those later produced under the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after the first Gulf War.
Between October 15, 2003 and January 15, 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority issued the New Iraqi Dinar (printed by De La Rue), which were issued at a a rate of 150 new Iraqi dinars for one Swiss dinar. (Non-Swiss, poor quality Iraqi dinars were exchanged for new (DeLaRue) dinars at a one-to-one rate. Applying this exchange rate, a New Iraqi Dinar is/was worth $3.22/150=2.1467 US cents (i.e. a devaluation of the Iraqi Currency).
The present value of 1 New Iraqi (De La Rue) Dinar is $1USD to 1272 New Iraqi (De La Rue) Dinar ie 1/1272=$.00079 (8 hundreds of a US cent).
The comparison of previous (pre-war & embargo) (Swiss) Iraqi Dinar to the current New Iraqi Dinar is therefore 0.079cents/2.1467cents = 3.68% of previous value
Now, I'm no economist & the subject needs further study by the sort of experts in Lord Patel's parlour, but Where has all that Iraqi wealth/value gone?
I'd say it has gone into propping up the US Dollar.
Have I got it wrong? More research is needed..........(but I do believe that anyone can buy new Iraqi Dinars, but just try selling them back to a bank!!!)
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