Niall Ferguson’s 4 Reasons Why US Dominance Is Over

08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Threats, Waste (materials, food, etc)
DefDog Recommends....

Missing is the lack of integrity of the US Government…..

Niall Ferguson's 4 Reasons Why US Dominance Is Over

Jeff Cox, 12 May 2011, CNBC

LAS VEGAS—The era of US economic dominance is rapidly coming to an end as an “American Gothic” age sets in and China becomes the new global leader, economic historian Niall Ferguson said.

. . . . . .

01  The “mother of all Keynsian fiscal binges” in which the government spent nearly $1 trillion on stimulus from which there will be a “hangover” with only the timing at question.

02  A “massive monetary binge” in which the Federal Reserve ultimately will print money to the tune of nearly $3 trillion.

03  An ensuing spike in commodity prices, a process that has gone on virtually unabated since the beginning of Fed intervention and for which there has been a recent pullback.

04  China “is not the Soviet Union,” meaning the nation doesn’t have the same destabilizing economic conditions that brought down the former Communist republic.

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: Mr. Ferguson is correct on his four factors, but leaves out much more.  The loss of integrity across not just the US Government but across every major “tribe” comprising the US nation-state (see our “Paradigms of Failure” and also “Legitimate Grievances“) is the root problem  Within that is the collapse of education, the ruthless export of jobs that could have been kept in the USA if infrastructure had been developed properly, the looming private debt collapse (defaults of credit cards and everything else), and the deep social challenge of dealing with several hundred thousand returning veterans who are mentally and physically ill, facing unemployment, and rapidly discovering that their pain and suffering was for nothing.

See Also:

Preconditions of Revolution in the USA Today

Worth a Look: Community Land Trusts — Coming Home with E. F. Schumacher & the Reinvention of the Local Economy (A Video Gift, 37 Minutes, from Christopher B. Bedford)

01 Poverty, 07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Policies, Strategy, True Cost, Videos/Movies/Documentaries
Home Page

Phi Beta Iota:  Kudos to Christopher B. Bedford for his many contributions, this one in particular is most timely now as a global movement for redirecting the manner in which land (and water) are “owned.”  As with our native forebearers, land can no longer be owned by individuals–community land trusts are the essential way forward.  This is the practice in many countries.  This 37 minute DVD is revolutionary.

Amazon Page

See Also:

E. F. Schumacher Society

Small Is Beautiful, 25th Anniversary Edition: Economics As If People Mattered: 25 Years Later . . . With Commentaries

Arturo Valenzuela Quits–US Ignoring South

01 Brazil, 07 Venezuela, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy, Threats
Arturo Valenzuela

The head of the U.S. State Department’s Latin American and Caribbean will resign this summer.

Arturo Valenzuela announced he will leave his post of Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs to return to Georgetown University, where he taught before his appointment by Barack Obama in 2009.

The United States currently doesn’t have ambassadors in Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. There are only rudimentary diplomatic relations with Cuba.

No Difference

Phi Beta Iota: As with Anne Marie Slaughter, he no doubt has a two-year limit or he loses tenure.   It does not really matter who is in the office.   Those of us who care about the Caribbean, Central, and South America have known since 2008 that there is no difference between the policies or lack thereof of the Bush-Cheney Administration, and those of the Obama-Clinton Administration.  When Huge Chavez handed Barack Obama a copy of Open Veins of Latin America–Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent it became the duty of every person of integrity to read that book.  Evidently Barack Obama chose not to read it, and just as he misled all US citizens into thinking that he represented change, so also has he failed the entire Southern Hemisphere.

See Also:

Reference: Empire of Lies & Secrecy

Guest Post: Analysis of the Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic Domination and the Coming American Rebellion

Review: SAVAGE CAPITALISM AND THE MYTH OF DEMOCRACY–Latin America in the Third Millennium

Defense and the Deficit–Busting the Defense Bubble, Ending Defense Entitlement

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Peace Intelligence, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Winslow Wheeler

Last Saturday's issue of Barron's ran a cover story on the deficit and their own take on how to address it.  In contrast to the recent recommendations from President Obama and the House Republicans, defense was actually “on the table,” not “at” it.  In the absence of any adult thinking on the deficit since the Deficit Commission in December, Barron's addresses a void that remains vast and empty in Congress and the Executive branch.  The article puts on the table a defense recommendation — which I urged to them — that goes significantly deeper than even the Deficit Commission's — in truth fuzzy — recommendation on “security” spending.

Almost immediately, Forbes published at its website a related piece on defense spending and The Pentagon Labyrinth that contains some interesting private sector views on how the public might be beginning to perceive the current size of the defense budget and condition of our armed forces: note the references to “defense entitlement,” “defense bubble,” and “parade ground military.”  It would seem that the paradigm is changing, at least outside Washington DC.  (If you think that the recent killing of bin Laden proves the “parade ground” moniker wrong, I urge you to read the introduction essay in The Pentagon Labyrinth: Why Is This Handbook Necessay?.

Bursting The Defense Bubble: End The Entitlement Mentality
Steve Denning, Forbes, 30 April 2011

Grow Up, Guys!
By GENE EPSTEIN
Barron's Cover SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2011

While the President and GOP sling mud at each other, the debt crisis is growing. Barron's offers some tough-but necessary-ways to alleviate it.

Phi Beta Iota: It is possible to eliminate the deficit by making Medicare prices honest and stopping the borrowing of money for corporate pork that feeds political pork.  It is possible to eliminate personal income taxes by adopting the Automated Payment Transaction (APT) Tax, which actually produces a great deal more revenue which is desperately needed to bail out the equally irresponsible state governments and pension funds (both government and corporate).   America is hosed.  It is not possible to “reset” until Washington can combine intelligence and integrity, and that may require a public revolt on both taxes and the fraudulent corrupt Electoral System that keeps the two-party tyranny in a position to continue looting the Commonwealth.

See Also:

Seven Promises to America–Who Will Do This?

Serious (Honest) Thinking About US Budget

$500 Billion in Cuts is Minimal Mandatory….

US Goverment 2011 Revenue, Costs, & Debt–Two Party Tyranny Lies Straight Up, Media Goes Along

Right-Sizing the US Military–Doug Macgregor

10 Security, 11 Society, Intelligence (government), Key Players, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Peace Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy, Threats
Winslow Wheeler

Although there are important elements I disagree with — in some cases strenuously — US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor (Ret.) has written an important piece on the fundamental changes and massive budget reductions that are needed to improve America's ability to survive into the future.

Macgregor gets the three essentials right, I believe:

1) the threat America faces is now massively reduced; its future character may very well not be what conventional wisdom expects, and Americans need to fundamentally change how we interact with the rest of the world,

2) before any changes are effected in the size, character and funding of our armed forces, a comprehensive audit must be successfully and immediately completed to understand how we spend our money, and funding should be withheld unless and until that is done, and

3) massive changes are needed in our armed forces and their leadership, organization, staffing, weapons, and more.

Macgregor's two part article, “Lean Mean Fighting Machine” and “A Radical Plan for Cutting the Defense Budget and Reconfiguring the Military.”  Both are published by Foreign Policy; I believe they merit your thorough reading and consideration.

Phi Beta Iota: The US Marine Corps understood all this in 1989, and sought to change the defense paradigm from worst case to most likely in 1992; then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and his subordinates were not at all interested.  Right-sizing defense–and the whole of government–is not that difficult, provided that one has absolute integrity rooted in real-world truthful intelligence.  That cannot be said of the US Government today.

See Also:

2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated

2009 Perhaps We Should Have Shouted: A Twenty-Year Restrospective

2008 Rebalancing the Instruments of National Power–Army Strategy Conference of 2008 Notes, Summary, & Article

2008 U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century

2001 Threats, Strategy, and Force Structure: An Alternative Paradigm for National Security

2000 Presidential Leadership and National Security Policy Making

1998 JFQ The Asymmetric Threat: Listening to the Debate

1995 GIQ 13/2 Creating a Smart Nation: Strategy, Policy, Intelligence, and Information

1993 On Defense & Intelligence–The Grand Vision

1992 MCU Thinking About Revolution

1992 E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, & intelligence (An Alternative Paradigm)

Reference: 1992 USMC C4I Campaign Plan

1991 MCG Intelligence Support for Expeditionary Planners

9-11 Truth Can End Your Career….

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, 9/11 research, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Intelligence (government), IO Sense-Making, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Breathing a word of truth about 9/11 will kill your career

Scoop Independent News, Monday, 18 April 2011, 12:22 pm

Interview by Kourosh Ziabari

Kevin Barrett is a renowned American journalist, writer and former university lecturer. He has taught English, French, Arabic, American Civilization, Humanities, African Literature, Folklore, and Islam at colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay area, Paris, and Madison, Wisconsin. Being a Muslim convert, Dr. Barrett is a founding member of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance (MUJCA) and member of the Scientific Panel for the Investigation of 9/11 (SPINE).

Worth a full read….

See Also:

Kevin Barrett's TruthJihad.com

9-11 Truth Books & DVDs (29)

Review: The Attack on the Liberty–The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship

Search: integrity integrity integrity

Safety Copy Below the Line

Continue reading “9-11 Truth Can End Your Career….”

Massive Fraud, Common Crime, No Prosecutions

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Michael Ostrolenk Recommends...

Why haven't any high-profile execs been prosecuted for their role in the financial crisis?

In Financial Crisis, No Prosecutions of Top Figures

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON and LOUISE STORY

The New York Times, April 14, 2011

It is a question asked repeatedly across America: why, in the aftermath of a financial mess that generated hundreds of billions in losses, have no high-profile participants in the disaster been prosecuted?

Read full article….

See Also:

Neil Weinberg, Corrupt Bank Oversight Is Creating New Immoral Hazard, Forbes, 14 April 2011

To me the moral of this story is that Washington has created a vast immoral hazard. We are all truly in a world of peril when regulators and law enforcers believe our financial institutions are too big to be brought to justice—and when our leadership in Washington is so gutless that its response is to let these same institutions emerge bigger and more beyond challenge than ever.

Read rest of this hard-hitting article…

Tip of the Hat to Lynn Wheeler at LinkedIn for the clean links.

Phi Beta Iota: It is our view that the President, the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Treasury, and most Senators and Representatives are immediately impeachable for failing to uphold their oaths to the Constitution  and failing to represent the public interest in the face of massive legalized fraud on the part of Wall Street.