What's that gurgling sound I hear?

Might it be the sound of the US dollar being flushed down the international drain?

The Enronic embezzlement which vaporized billions from pension funds and individual investors was but a pale reflection of the institutionalized thievery of a financial system which sells puffs of wind as gold nuggets.

Bushwhacking the commonweal...

"In 2000, when Bush took office, gold was $273 per ounce, oil was $22 per barrel and the euro was worth $.87 per dollar. Currently, gold is over $700 per ounce, oil is over $80 per barrel, and the euro is nearly $1.40 per dollar. If Bernanke cuts rates, we’re likely to see oil at $125 per barrel by next spring."

Defrauding its Lenders ...

“The US Federal Reserve's cuts of 50 basis points ... sent the greenback into a tailspin, while stocks surged. The cuts also put China, with its massive wad of cash kept as US dollars, in a fix. But the Fed, despite the debasement of its own currency and the defrauding of its lenders, can be expected to keep the party going with more cuts next month.”

Gurgle ... Gurgle ... Gurgle...

Lifeline or hangman's rope?

The Fed cuts the Benchmark Rate by half a point ...

Monkey Slide show from Jill Greenberg, The New Republic

Now...Let's see how much cash can I throw in the pot ...

After Funny Money, the deluge?

The Fed wouldn't let financial prestidigitators squirm while the house crumbles ... would it?

A RATE CUT WITH A SHOESHINE AND A SMILE

"The Fed has already fired off two of its big guns, open market operations and, on August 17, a discount-rate cut, to little avail. The next step is a cut in the Federal Funds target rate, the benchmark overnight interest rate used by big banks to lend one another money."

Answer, tomorrow at 14:15 EST.

Round and Round the Bushie-Merry-Go-Round

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

Last night, unashamedly, in front of his TV audience, Mr. Bush relieved himself of another barely disguised "Mission Accomplished" speech.

In a no holds barred refutation of Mr. Bush's delusions, Michael Ware provided, point by point, a more realistic appraisal of the situation in the field:

"The president said that:

If America were to be driven out of Iraq, extremists of all strains would be emboldened.
They are [emboldened] now.

Al Qaeda could gain new recruits and new sanctuaries.
They have that now.

Iran would benefit from the chaos and be encouraged in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons and dominate the region.
It is now.

Iraq would face a humanitarian crisis.
It does now.

That we would leave our children a far more dangerous world.
That's happening now."

***********

"Take that, you fools"

With his usual unbridled hubris, Mr. Bush put the world on notice that imperial America is in Iraq to stay!

"This vision for a reduced American presence also has the support of Iraqi leaders from all communities. At the same time, they understand that their success will require U.S. political, economic and security engagement that extends beyond my presidency."

*************

Saigon yesterdsay, Baghdad while the oil lasts, upheaval tomorrow...

The United States have officially declared military bases in 146 countries strategically located to counter a resurgence of Russian influence and an assured economic and probable military confrontation with China.

While Mr. Bush and the neocons are moving their imperious agenda inspite of any and all warnings of impending disaster, I agree with Morford on the stark reality of our predicament.

"Because the truth is, we are well past the point of salvaging anything noble or honest from Bush's massive, historic debacle. We have only this brutal reality: Iraq is, and forever will be, one of the most extraordinary wastes in all of American history."

The blogosphere and the polls hint at an awakening, a revulsion against Bushism stirring the populace.

And the US Congress wallows in its self-inflicted self-serving political inertia, bound and gagged by its paymasters in the corporate and special interests kingdoms.

Round and round the Bushy-Go-Round.

Sine Qua Non

To read Scott Horton's "No Comment" is to adopt it.

Care to see for yourself?

Click here!
for Horton's brief comment of today on the classical "New World Order":

"Novus Ordo Seclorum...When the American Founding Fathers turn to this classical phrase, they are making a proud claim-that the introduction of democracy in America would mark a new age for mankind-just as the Augustan age saw its law-based state as the natural next step in the evolution of humanity from the Homeric world..."

"War on Humanity" Reality Check ...

"...For water is dry, black is white, skyscrapers fall down for the wrong reasons, the sun revolves around our world formed only six thousand years ago and our stupidity is not burning it up..."

Apology to my grand children

"To you, Gavin, and my still-unborn grandchild, I am sorry that I have failed you.

I have failed you for not, as the wise philosopher once advised, leaving the world a better place than I had found it. When I was younger, stronger and more idealistic, it seemed so much easier to pull off.

Because surely one person can make a difference. Look at George Walker Bush, a man installed rather than elected into the White House. Never mind that three quarters of us did not want him or that he got less votes than the other guy. That is just the way it is, children, and this is the world that I have bequeathed to you.

You were and will be brought into the world into a country that does not care if democracy becomes fascism, cannot rouse itself to action if our government is stolen or even actually support the suspension of constitutional rights given to us by infinitely wiser men than we have today, rights that millions have died protecting so we can shelve them like unwanted Christmas gifts.

Forgive me for not jumping into the breach sooner, an abyss created by the holes burned out of the Constitution by four jetliners, white phosphorous, bombs and mortars and the flame of religious and political bigotry.

Less and less makes sense in this world I hand to you like a worn-out heirloom. We have helped fashion a world in which water is dry, black is white, skyscrapers fall down for the wrong reasons, the sun revolves around our world formed only six thousand years ago and gravity doesn’t exist.

This is your world and you must atone for our sins.

And as you sit on my knee with a room-brightening smile on your unblemished face, you are trusting that I am easing you into a world where all faces will always smile at you and voices will always be soothing and everything is soft. And it breaks my heart that I have to disappoint you.

Because, you see, this is a world in which humans kill each other over differences in politics and religion, wars that get babies like you killed without much if any apology.

This is the ugliest of realities, my darling grandchildren, offered in the most perishable of mediums. But for now, I can continue smiling and dandling you on my knee, pretending that all is well and good in the wonderful expanding world. But, God help me, I cannot maintain it for much longer.

For fiction is overtaken by truth. Yet the truth is, the truth has been overtaken by the fiction.

For water is dry, black is white, skyscrapers fall down for the wrong reasons, the sun revolves around our world formed only six thousand years ago and our stupidity is not burning it up."

Let'em eat cakes

On Krugman ...

"Two years ago today, Americans watched in horror as a great city drowned, and wondered what had happened to their country. Where was FEMA? Where was the National Guard? Why wasn't the government of the world's richest, most powerful nation coming to the aid of its own citizens?"

The US government has not come to the aid of its own citizens because the country's governance has been hijacked...by parvenu millionaires wielding the power of imperious Roman senators and by members of that House on the hill filled with social and historical illiterates mired in arguments over the best ways in which to dismember and bury the American democratic experiment…for the greatest profit of a coterie of elitists empowered by the rapine of Enronic thugs.

... The question is whether any of this will change when Mr. Bush leaves office...

The unconstitutional [fascist] powers which Mr. Bush has arrogated at the expense of a supine, self-serving Congress and with the help of a complicit judiciary will remain at the disposal of the next White House puppet.

The real question is : Does not the lesson of the last seven years prove the adage that "GOP power corrupts and Bushist power corrupts absolutely"?

There’s a powerful political faction in this country that’s determined to draw exactly the wrong lesson from the Katrina debacle — namely, that the government always fails when it attempts to help people in need, so it shouldn’t even try [...] And I’m not sure that faction is losing the argument. The thing about conservative governance is that it can succeed by failing: when conservative politicians mess up, they foster a cynicism about government that may actually help their cause."

The job is just about done: the country is industrially, politically, infrastructurally, ethically and internationally bankrupt. While the US is still "banking" on its formidable array of armaments to pillage foreign resources and threaten the planet, an equally formidable assemblage of emerging economic powers and military alliances are poised to remind the American emperor that he really has no clothes...

Hear the Russians ... Chinese ... coming ?