The "UNITED" States is an empire. It's the third largest entity on the planet. The British Empire was a trade entity. America is land and the third largest population. Canada is as well with smaller population problems and fewer states with more land capital. Canada's potential is amazing once they get rid of their aristocratic class sentiment. The physical capital of America and Canada is larger than the physical capital of Europe. Sometimes companies go into debt but as long as they have ample physical capital they are not broke. Europe has the potential to be an Empire just as America is but it's like the Koch brothers here. They are too busy suing each other over their inheritance to do much of actual worth. All they can do is start think tanks, do politics and talk.
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2010 7:41 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] Something big in the offing I feel that something big is happening behind the scenes -- either a world-wide row or an agreement. Larry Summers, Obama's chief economic advisor was in Beijing three weeks ago (but has now resigned from Obama's cabinet). Three weeks ago, half-a-dozen of the major Western banks, such as HSBC and JPMorgan, are now joining with China promoting the renminbi as an international trading currency. Tim Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary was in Beijing last Thursday. Meanwhile, Premier Wen has visited France and Germany for the second time in the last two or three weeks. Subsequently, the European Monetary Fund has said that there'll be no more quantitative easing (while America can think of no other policy). China is laying down massive port facilities in Greece and also buying their euro bonds (and probably also those of Spain and Portugal if necessary). Last week, 24 countries devalued their currencies in attempts to maintain trade surpluses -- a war that could expand to many other countries and continue to the bottom very quickly. Hedge funds, investment funds and pensions funds are buying gold now whenever there's a momentary dip, as are China, Russia and some of the Middle East countries, all with plenty of dollar funds (while they have any value at all!). Consequently the price of gold is rising at a fast rate -- but steadily. Two days ago, the (Washington dominated) IMF is saying that they want a world currency (and they want to be in charge of it! -- that is, with America in charge, which of course China would never agree to!). Meanwhile, all Western currencies are spiraling downwards in value (against commodities) and it's debatable whether any Western country can ever recover from their government debts, even with years of austerity, and will soon start double-dipping into a Japanese style deflation. We are now close to a world-wide economic crunch more severe than that of 2008/9 so it seems to me that there are two alternatives, which will become very clear quite soon: 1. Some sort of world trading currency is in the offing to replace the American dollar, probably based on a revised price of gold (so that, at its institution, all government debts can be wiped out); 2, An increasing de-coupling of trade between America and the rest of the world will be taking place from now onwards with the major Western banks increasingly servicing the latter, and America experiencing the same sort of downgrading that the UK did (and still does) during the decline of the British Empire. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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