[68908]

The Slippery Slope Just Tilted A Bit More

Did you see that China and Russia have decided to drop the dollar altogether and trade in their own currencies? This is not a complete abandonment of the dollar, just an agreement that all dealing between their two countries will be carried out in their own currencies. To enable this, they will allow exchange rates between them to be set by an open market.

As I've previously reported, China has been getting rid of their dollars. They are doing so in a prudent manner, so that their dollars don't become worth sheets of Charmin in their hands, but they are clearly doing so. This is probably best seen as another step to the BRIC, the composite currency apparently on the way to replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency. BRIC is an abbreviation of Brazil Russia India China, the four nations whose currency will make up the BRIC.

In a related story, JP Morgan predicts the dollar will likely become the world's weakest currency as a result of the Federal Reserve Quantitative Easing programs.

“The U.S. has the world’s largest current-account deficit but keeps interest rates at virtually zero,†Sasaki said at a forum in Tokyo yesterday. “The dollar can’t avoid the status as the weakest currency.â€

Much more: http://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com ... -more.html

The Communist, Russia and China, two world super powers have decided to drop the dollar and trade in their own currencies. This isn't going to end well for us. Zimbabwe here we come!

 

[68908]

Our government is preparing for economic collapse... maybe we should be, too. Got ammo?

They even did a news story about it on CNBC. Not exactly hearsay...

Pentagon, Military Actively War Gaming ‘Large Scale Economic Breakdown’ and ‘Civil Unrest’

The Army, in a year-long war games series called Unified Quest 2011, is looking at a variety of possibilities and how to deal with them, including:

* the implications of "large scale economic breakdown" inside of the United States
* how to maintain "domestic order amid civil unrest"
* and ways to deal with fragmented global power and drastically lower budgets

Clearly, the U.S. government is making contingency plans to deal with a worst-case, all-out-collapse scenario of not only the economy, but our social and political systems.

The war gaming, according to reports, began in 2008 at the onset of the economic crisis, but planners from not just the United States, but around the globe, may have been aware of the dire possibility of economic collapse even earlier.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/slavo/slavo23.1.html

 

[CoffeeMate]

Our government is preparing for economic collapse...

I'd say it's hastening it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again... the United States is the greatest economic engine ever known to mankind. If folks would just quit meddling with it, stand back and just leave it alone instead of chronically changing things mid-stream for the sake of "doing something", then the economy would recover on its own more quickly than people realize.

 

[AEKDB]

Coffeemate is dead on. It was not government that made America great and the Governments of other countries can not make their country great. It is people that make countries great. It is the American people (and a few other countries which themselves depend on America) that drive the economy of Russia and China. Russia (Soviet Union) has played this game before and the media told us that they would be the world's greatest economy.

The real threat is China and Russia understanding that government regulation slows economic growth. When China wants to beat us in a market sector they waive even the few environmental and labor laws they have. They sacrifice the environment and human life to grow the economy. With just a few less laws, we could easily out pace these economies and do significantly less damage.

 

[68908]

I completely agree.

 

[CoffeeMate]

 

[Thorsen]

You guys are not seriously holding up China as an example to emulate when it comes to the environment are you? Crazy!

Due solely to pollution, approximately one-third of China's fresh water supply (which already is too low for their population levels) is now undrinkable. One-fifth of their fresh water supply is so polluted that it can not support any life whatsoever.

Chinese air quality is so poor due to pollution that even with the complete cessation of all factories, strict controls on transportation and the planting of thousands of trees still did not bring air pollution levels down to acceptable standards during the Olympics. Air quality in all of China's cities are well below acceptable levels, all due to high pollution levels. To put this into context, by western standards only 1% of the population breathes air that is of acceptable quality. According to the Chinese Ministry of Health air pollution has now resulted in cancer deaths being the leading cause of deaths in 30 cities and 78 counties.

Chinese solid waste disposal has reached critical level with the country needing an estimated additional 1400 waste disposal sites. This has resulted in China now having more illegal dumping sites than legal.

You see there are costs associated with production, and for decades China has been burying those costs and leaving them for future generations to deal with. We have had similar issues in our past, which resulted in massive superfund cleanup costs.

So you really want to emulate China when it comes to the environment? I thought, especially with this group of people, that any fostering of costs off to future generations to deal with would not be thought upon kindly. I mean you guys do argue against fostering off deficit spending to future generations. Burying production costs into the environment for those generations to have to deal with is exactly the same thing.

 

[ookoshi]

Well, China's environmental policies certainly have a lot of holes, but not everything that happens is the result of environmental policy.

China's water supply problems are definitely due to the lack of regulation and the weak enforcement of China's factories and other industrial waste that were being dumped into the water supply. Combined with their natural shortage of water as a country, the problem is pretty severe. If any of you guys ever travel there, be prepared to buy bottled water for your entire trip.

Air pollution in major cities, on the other hand, is not completely the fault of their environmental policy. China's big cities are extremely densely populated. The top 15 or so cities in China are all more populated than all of NYC. And even with a good, highly utilized, subway system in most of those cities, traffic is still so overwhelming it's unbearable. This is what happens when you cram the majority of a 1 billion+ population into major cities.

This is not done by choice. China's land is largely uninhabitable, and the rest are urban and farmland. Trying to feed 1 billion+ people is really tough, so they do everything they can to maximize the amount of food producing land that they have. This means cities have to be built small and as a result very dense.

 

[AEKDB]

You guys are not seriously holding up China as an example to emulate when it comes to the environment are you? Crazy!
...
You see there are costs associated with production, and for decades China has been burying those costs and leaving them for future generations to deal with. We have had similar issues in our past, which resulted in massive superfund cleanup costs.

So you really want to emulate China when it comes to the environment? I thought, especially with this group of people, that any fostering of costs off to future generations to deal with would not be thought upon kindly. I mean you guys do argue against fostering off deficit spending to future generations. Burying production costs into the environment for those generations to have to deal with is exactly the same thing.

That is not the point we (at least I) am making. I was explaining why China and Russia appear to be unstoppable, they simply are playing a different game with a different set of rules. In order to have a clean environment and cheap goods the American people have passed the pollution costs to these countries. They are simply willing to destroy the environment for compensation. I would argue that America could produce just as much cheap crap with less pollution if we lowered are standards. This would start to move us to a Pareto efficient point.

 

[CoffeeMate]

Who said anything about emulating China's environmental policies?

AEKDB understaood the point I was trying to make. If our government wants our economy to recover and thrive again then it needs to stop meddling with it.

 

[GAGunOwner]

This thread is very frustrating to read due to the pictures.