If we were to pinpoint the key to America’s success through the two World Wars and the standoff with the Soviet Union, it would be its vibrant economy and impressive manufacturing capabilities.
This self-evident economic prowess has been reduced to that of an enigma. A substantial portion of the American empire’s value today is imaginary.
If we relied solely on the academic discipline of economics for interpretation, it would be difficult to reason how a heavily financialized nation can convince other countries to continue producing real, physical products for a heavily indebted nation’s citizens to sell to one another and consume at rates not balanced out by net exports.
It is a struggle to rationalize — though economists, through repetition and assertion, try — how the New York Stock Exchange can be worth $32.7 trillion dollars when there are only $2.3 trillion dollars in circulation if it isn’t a glorified Ponzi scheme riddled with securities and accounting fraud.
There are maybe plausible, albeit farfetched, explications for how WeWork’s stock value rose from $4.4 billion to $47 billion in a three- month time span, but we are left at a loss for words when investigating how 50% of this company’s reported wealth vanished from the national economy in one day.
All roads lead back to the US dollar, the world’s reserve currency, and another enigma to unravel. From 2008 to 2011, it was discovered that the Federal Reserve wired $16 trillion dollars of cheap credit they imagined into existence to prop up several banks and corporations around the world — a story the private, runaway cash-printing entity fought to keep secret from the public.
For years, the dollar flourished under a regime of 0% percent interest rates, massive trade deficits, and record levels of federal borrowing and spending. The US dollar remains a juggernaut, and inflation — while being felt more so today — is not causing the apocalyptic balance of payments crises seen in recent years in Argentina or Greece.
The reasons for this go beyond conventional economics, which generally lack an examination of power and politics. The real force behind the omnipotent dollar derives from imperial conquest and the establishment of economic rules and institutions that the victors created after World War II. Some call this system post-industrialism, globalism, or neo- liberalism, but it all describes the same program: the world must trade in US dollars, denominate their debts in US dollars, liberalize its markets and continue borrowing under often usurious conditions from US bankers.
This new order was established at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference. At that meeting of 44 nations, two Jews — Harry Dexter White and Henry Morgenthau — established the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which would act as a predatory, Dollar-centered loan structure for all of humanity.
Not everyone was keen on this radical transfer of power, including members of the Grand Alliance. At Bretton Woods, White and Morgenthau encountered resistance from British economist John Maynard Keynes, who suggested the establishment of a global central bank that would issue a neutral currency, the Bancor, to avoid the predictable abuse of the power of currency monopoly that Washington and New York would go on to enjoy under the IMF system. Though Keynes was far better known, more internationally respected and more persuasive in the debate against White and Morgenthau, his idea was discarded due to the fact that, through the Lend-Lease Act, America became the British empire’s creditor. The Soviet Union adamantly refused to sign this agreement, but its economy was devastated by the war so it also lacked leverage. With the German Mark and French Franc destroyed or in the gutter, the exhausted and broken European superpowers had no choice but to agree to dollar dictatorship.
It was here that White and Morgenthau, strongly motivated by their Jewish ethnic identity, forged a skeleton key that would enable the Jewish- dominated world of high finance to crowned king of the world.
Keynes’ worst fears came true as soon as the war ended. The United States suddenly cut off all of Britain’s credit lines after VJ Day and demanded re-negotiations in exchange for continuing to aid the militarily sapped and bankrupt supposed ally. The extortionary terms of the new loan included muscling the British empire’s vast protected markets open for US corporations to take over, neutralizing the Pound Sterling through attacks on its convertibility, and various reforms aimed at dismantling the UK’s empire and the living standards of British workers. The Anglo- American loan, as it came to be known, now required interest to be paid as well as an agreement that would allow US military bases to be housed on British territories. The House of Lords protested this takeover by US- based money and military power, but the ailing and demoralized Keynes was forced by the fragile Labour government of Clement Atlee to eventually capitulate. It took 50 years for the UK to pay off these debts.
Washington found itself in possession of infinite opportunities after the military subjugation of industrial powerhouses Germany and Japan, the safe and sound American manufacturing base, and the transformation of Britain into a vassal state. The “rules-based liberal order” — where Washington makes the rules and breaks them whenever it sees fit — was born.
Under the initial Bretton Woods agreement, Washington promised that the new economic order would peg the dollar’s value to gold to prevent its exploitative use. This would not last.
The gold-backed dollar was a source of consternation for New York and Washington throughout its run, but things came to a head by the 1960s.
In the lead up to his overthrow during the infamous Jewish-led color revolution of 1968, General Charles De Gaulle sought to re-assert French sovereignty against the “exorbitant privilege” of the US dollar by dumping his nation’s dollar supply for its value in gold. Though De Gaulle was brought down in 1969, his rebellion against the dollar successfully depleted the US Treasury’s gold reserves. This culminated in a run on the US dollar — the “Nixon Shock” — which forced the desperate White House to arbitrarily end the Bretton Woods gold standard in 1971 to avoid economic collapse.
Since then, the dollar has counter-intuitively grown in prominence. America’s post-industrial, finance-driven economy has led to grave economic suffering for the working and middle class at home, but it simultaneously provides a tempting “get rich quick” incentive for the oligarchs of the world. Foreigners now possess 40% of equity in the US, which makes acquiescing to Washington and New York’s political and imperial whims a price many are willing to pay.
For risk-averse foreign governments and elites, it is also profitable and safe to purchase American debt. When a debtor owns the machine that can print the money he owes, it’s a sound bet to assume creditors will be paid back, at interest. In China’s case, keeping the US dollar strong while devaluing the Yuan by purchasing Washington’s debt has traditionally served as a win-win keeping American consumer demand for Chinese goods high.
As plutocratic forces in Washington grow more aggressive and misanthropic, multiple nations are beginning to reexamine their entente with the American empire. The politicization and weaponization of the US dollar and American power over financial institutions, as seen in recent years with total sanctions regiments and asset freezes aimed at countries such as Iran and Russia, is leading many to question their relationship with the US economy.
It is a matter of time before America’s growing list of enemies decide to pull the rug out from underneath US economy. Such a maneuver could cause chaos in global finance and trade, but the gravest consequences will be reserved for America’s ruling class at home as living standards for ordinary people free fall.
Unprecedented interest rates have given the appearance of the dollar as being stronger than ever before, but this is an illusion built through the cannibalization of Europe and Japan. On its own merits, the deindustrialized American economy is neither competitive or sustainable. Declining Living Standards
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