slip sliding away1
Original Content at
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_len_hart_071112_america_begins_slide.htm--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 12, 2007
America begins slide into third world status
By Len Hart
The sum of all three trends equals the loss of US empire. The policies of three GOP administrations have not merely failed to reverse the trends, they birthed them and made them worse with ideology, bigotry and incompetence. Those who called a new Bush regime a "banana republic" during the 2000 election debacle could not have known how prescient they had been. All has come true. The "empire" is lost.
The dollar has dropped 12 percent since the start of the year. My own sources --European bankers --tell me the dollar will continue to fall until the US has what they have termed a "credible" regime and credible leadership. Smart money all over the world is dumping the dollar for the Euro. Until Bush is retired, the American people will continue to pay for his incompetence and his lawlessness. Bush is content to finance the trade deficit on the backs of American consumers.
At the very root of the problem is the fact that in 2004, the US topped the list of oil importing nations with imports of 11.8 million barrels of oil per day. That's more than the next three --China, German, and North Korea --combined. The problem is not only oil. The US Department of Commerce reports that the US "trade deficit" --our total exports vs our total imports --has increased 18% from 2004 to a record $726 billion in 2005. US dependence on oil is responsible, says the US commerce department, for some two-thirds of the increase in the US trade deficit in 2005.
Technically, price hikes due to trade imbalance is not inflation but to a consumer trying to make ends meet with a dollar that buys less and less, what difference does it make?.......more.......