Expecting the Expected: History Rhymes

As Mark Twain once said, "History rhymes." Nevertheless, the mainstream media and a great many individuals in the United States are enthralled by the current debt ceiling debates taking place in Washington. We should know well, by now, that no matter what decisions are or are not decided upon by August 2nd (assuming there is even enough time left for our politicians to arrange an agreement),  the plight of the United States will not change.

We've seen this before when Washington has been engulfed by the debt ceiling discussion. We should all know that, if the debt ceiling is raised, then in the near-future, we will see this drama, once again, played out in Washington. The nation will wait to see: does the US, yet again, raise its debt ceiling? Eventually, supply of the US Dollar to the world will far outpace demand. Hyperinflation will set in.Or, if the debt ceiling is not raised, we will continue our path of overshoot, and, eventually, the same results will come to fruition.

We have been on a new currency since the early 1970's, when President Nixon decoupled the then US Dollar from gold: the Vietnam War had cost so much money, that we now had to fire up the printing presses. And so today, the fiat US dollar is right on schedule for certain devaluation, just as a considerable amount of production capacities in-country have been exported abroad.  That means as the US dollars loses its value, the US will have no goods to offer the rest of the world.

How has the US solved problems in the past? Under Clinton, with unemployment increasing, the Federal Government altered the way in which it measured unemployment. Based on U6--the overall measurements of everyone without a job--the unemployment in the country is around 20-25%. Further, the solutions we see today touted by Washington revolve not around alleviating the debt (the way to do so would be to simply default ASAP), but, instead, altering the way in which we measure inflation.

The global economic crisis is a worldwide phenomenon.  The crisis is systemic and foundational, and so therefore, as the reserve currency of the world, the US dollar and the US stand at the epicenter. But, still, the collapse of the Dollar is merely a symptom of another problem. This problem being enormous amounts of capital, wealth, and therefore power, being consolidated in the hands of paper-bug money-changers.