IF oil remains high, so do the profits of the global oil companies, too, apparently.
It's always interested me just how the US gets away with more debt than other countries. However, the Japanese government has had a fairly free hand in printing up yen in the past 15 years, too. The alarmism about the economic rise of China echoes what was common about Japan in the 1980s and Clinton 1990s.
What makes them invest in the USA? It seems to me that it comes down to faith in the US Empire, past and present (past faith is important, too, because of high costs of transition for countries like Japan and China that have accumulated lots of dollar reserves), and absence of an alternative.
Japan did move to try and make the yen more important to the management of Asian economies after the 1997-8 crisis. A basket of currencies leading to a common currency was also proposed. The hegemonic US stepped in and said NO WAY, don't even go there. There are all sorts of benefits to Japan to pacify the hegemon. Token support of the invasion of Iraq along with not pushing greater importance of the yen means that the US and Japan work to keep the yen-dollar relationship stable (I think--now watch the dollar tank or something). At least it seems that way to me, compared to the Clinton years where it really churned up and down. A lot.
What sustains faith in the US empire? Is there anything other than US hegemony in the final instance backed by US military power? That is why Washington can't easily let go of Iraq, for defeat can erode the faith in the empire, though staying there longer can also erode it, too. What a double bind!
It can no more let go of Iraq than it can Rammstein or Kadena or Yokosuka or Iwakuni or Leghorn etc etc. It wouldn't want to. Under what conceivable sun would it even want to bring them all back to the US. It only means much larger social and economic costs, and then a collapse in the budgets that support the militarism (while the militarism interferes in the politics to get the budgets that etc etc). If the US manufactures some sort of profound crisis with China, it will use that to get to to re-value the currency upwards. That is about the only thing it will do. CJ
