"Pearl Harbor without war"

[Skybird]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...517060,00.html

(...)
So far Beijing has behaved like the benevolent shopkeeper who willingly extends credit to his customers. The Americans receive shipments of Chinese-made television sets, toys and underwear, but the Chinese do not import a comparable volume of US goods. The gap between buying and selling amounts to about $5 billion every week.

The Chinese are satisfied with buying US treasury bonds, partly to keep their most important customer afloat. The central bank in Beijing already holds currency reserves of $1.4 trillion.

The Chinese have looked on with great patience as their best customer has gradually lost its ability to supply goods.
(...)
For the United States, a Chinese decision to abandon the dollar would be tantamount to Pearl Harbor without the war. It would represent a challenge to the world's biggest economy by the world's fastest growing economy. Millions of people would see their standard of living suffer as a result, and American self-confidence, already shaky, would crumble even further. The United States would suffer a serious blow on its very own turf, the economy.

Americans can hardly blame Beijing for their troubles. The Chinese aren't exactly kamikaze politicians, concocting some secret plan to attack the dollar. On the contrary, the preparations are taking place in full view. Translated into Texan, what the Chinese politely told the Americans last week simply means: Unless something happens, all hell will break loose.

For years the US economy has suffered one dramatic setback after another. A historic trend reversal began with the rise of the Asian economies -- first Japan, then China and now India. The United States, a once-proud exporting nation, became the world's biggest importer. In only 15 years, from 1992 to 2007, the US balance of trade deficit has surged from $84 billion to $700 billion.

Within a single generation, the world's biggest lender has become its biggest borrower, a circumstance the United States has made no serious attempts to change. And what has been Washington's standard take on the shift? The dollar is our currency, but it's your problem.

Thus, the tone of the US government's callous and thick-skinned reaction to China's announcement last week came as no surprise. There was a reason the dollar became the world's reserve currency, US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said in a slightly offended tone.

But the truth is that the United States would be better off if Paulson and the administration of President George W. Bush would take decisive action instead of sulking. The US's ability to deliver goods should be increased and its industrial base should be reinvigorated. Government and consumer spending, which in reality is doing nothing but eating away at the country's future, should be curbed. Although growth would decline as a result, it would be a more sustainable form of growth.

Last week's remark by a Chinese central bank official should be interpreted as a warning, not a threat. Indeed, China has no choice but to respond, given the dollar's ongoing weakness.

For these reasons, an attack on the US economy is probably the most easily predictable event of the coming years. And if it happens, the attacker will even be able to justify its actions as self-defense.

What is the difference between the US government in 1941 and the administration in Washington today? Perhaps there is none. A Japanese attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor was unimaginable, even though US intelligence had picked up clues that it could happen. Washington, at the time, was convinced that the Japanese wouldn't dare stage an attack on a target 5,000 miles away, and that they wouldn't succeed if they did.

With regard to this essay I linked:

Will The US Wage War Against Their Creditors Instead of Paying Their Debts? - http://www.currentconcerns.ch/index.php?id=179

and these threads we had:

the curse of cheap money - ttp://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=124370

US vs The world - http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=124669

[Happy Times]

The writer has summed it up well, these are worrying times economically.

[AntEater]

I'd say it would be a little less worrying if the US administration didnt have its eyes that widely shut as it has.

Sometimes it seems to me that the current US economy is just a huge pyramid scheme waiting to blow.
Don't take this anti-americanism because I don't actually want the US economy to collapse, because it will have profound economic effects for the whole world and everybody would suffer.
On the other hand, the current system of conning the world into investing in a dollar worth less and less can't last forever.

But the term "economic pearl harbor" is somewhat wrong, as it seems the Interest of the Chinese is more to warn the US than to actually strike economically.
The Chinese (and the Japanese, and the Taiwanese and the Saudis and who else) have as much to lose in this as the US, or even more.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by AntEater

On the other hand, the current system of conning the world into investing in a dollar worth less and less can't last forever.

But the term "economic pearl harbor" is somewhat wrong, as it seems the Interest of the Chinese is more to warn the US than to actually strike economically.

No, it is right, because at one point the Chinese will have almost no other alternative than to abandon the dollar. They suffering huge losses in value due to the dollar weakness. And america has no moral right to demand them to accept that forever, at even growing disadvantages for them. when the trend brings more disadvanatge to the Chinese than does further supporting of the "sick old man" on the other side of the Pacific - that will be the time they will turn their back on him.

America could see it coming, and should expect it coming. But still it does not react. Like US intelligence ha dpicked up hints of a Japanese attack, and officially, the American government played the unknowing. Both events, Japan and China, were and are unimaginable for a nation thinking of itself as being invincible and irresistable. So how could anyone doing these things...?

And AntEater, you made some constructive comments in a non-hostile, non-offending way. If somebody would accuse that to be anti-americanism, then the problem is with him, not with you. The problem has serious implications for nations in europe and elsewhere, that's why our (nations, economies) comments and concerns regarding the way america handles certain issues is absolutely legitimate.

[Iceman]

Ya know it's funny in the link ...

The Americans receive shipments of Chinese-made television sets, toys and underwear

all of which I can live without...well underwear is a must but wow...what do you know Skybird....you know what is growing in the big huge field next to my home...what do ya know cotton...imagine that?

To me it is like the stock market adjusting itself....my countrys rich a-holes need to get took to the cleaners and have the chips called in to put em back in place.

Granted I know all to well what will really happen...crisis....well good ,crisis forces choices.Granted again the choice of Amercian leaders will not to lay down and take it but to go to what they know best...war....not just American but all War and Death is what people feed on...even Germans.

and your hinting twords some American conspiracy to let Pearl Harbor happen is retarded , but each man will reap what he sows now doesn't he...no thing is hidden.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Iceman

and your hinting twords some American conspiracy to let Pearl Harbor happen is retarded , but each man will reap what he sows now doesn't he...no thing is hidden.

No historic docu I ever saw or read denies that the intelligence services had strong indications that the Japanese had something in the making. The commander at Pearl even ordered the carriers into manouvers so that the fleet would not be completely massed in one place - by chance, if I remember, they returned too late too become targets of the attack. So what do you want, Iceman? Use the search to find the historic threads we had were Pearl Harbour was mentioned. In this thread above, I did not even refer to my suspicion I voiced in earlier threads that Roosevelt even needed the Japanese to strike first to get America into the unpopular war in europe.

Also, the reference to Pearl is not by me, in the original essay. It is the author's. and he is right in another thing: still today, Pearl remains to be almost unimaginable for americans - like the possebility that China would abandon it'S dollar reserves. But as an American general, Franks I think, said just a couple of years ago: Hope is not a strategy.

[Skybird]

Latest news is the joint economic committee's calculation of hidden war costs, making the war twice as expensive, and in ten years will have reached 3.5 trillion $US. It calculates the current direct costs to be 10.000 $US per average US family, and another 10.000 $US in hidden costs per average family.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/h...07_us_iraq.pdf

This study mainly examines potential future costs over a ten year window, up to the year 2017,
similar to the budget spending window that the CBO used. The paper focuses on a scenario corresponding
to the recent statement by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that a protracted “Korealike”
presence would be required in Iraq. This scenario involves a drawdown in Iraq troop levels
of 66 percent by the year 2013, and a smaller drawdown of 33 percent in Afghanistan forces. The
scenario also assumes that some active conflict with insurgents continues over the period (CBO
2007a).
In recent testimony, the nonpartisan CBO detailed Federal direct appropriations and interest costs
for this scenario (CBO 2007b). These CBO estimates are used as a base for the analysis in this
report. Once the full economic costs of the war are added to the approximately $2.4 trillion in
Federal spending forecast under the CBO scenario, the total economic cost of the wars in Iraq and

Afghanistan rise by over $1 trillion to $3.5 trillion.

I wonder if the Irsq war would have taken place without people in 2003 still pumping their money into investements in the US. It is a war on tick, not beign waged by America's own finacial muscle. While foreign investors and natioins pay for it, all they get in return is more of already frightening many promissory notes, and the weak dollar meaning mounting problems for the european economies. The latter producing the usual consequences in our own European nations as well. the booming economy in germany has massively lost in momentum, since the low dollar is hurting it seriously by now. together with the high energy prices in Germany due to the energy cartel over here, it could make the economy fumble. the slowdown already has been put into numbers.

Since the consequences are felt and must be made up for not only by america alone, the costs of the Iraq war, and the financial situation of it's national budget and trade deficit is no internal American issue alone, but an issue that a great part of the global community and economy has a legitimate interest in, too. It is foreign money America is burning. That's why the call to America to bring it's finances and deficits back into a healthy order are absolutely legitimate, too.