September 26, 2007
Elaine Meinel Supkis
The Central Bankers of the Oil Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are meeting to discuss the dying dollar and the absurd interest rate our government has contrived. Bankers all over are having secretive meetings. I sense a crisis here. And the new Federal Reserve raw data shows a severe banking glitch, one that signals destabilization so the Fed is getting together all the top foxes, geese, hell hounds and pirates of the Caribbean and asking them to figure out how to prevent looting within the banking system, HAHAHA. Right! And inflation roars along as the price if iron ore doubles vis a vis the dying dollar but not the euro. And the US wants to have the most money ever for our failing wars in Iraqorama: Deathly Hollows Eat The Treasury.
There's a Central Bank meeting going on right now in Saudi Arabia. Recall last week that the dollar got thumped hard when the U.K. newspaper, Telegraph, printed an article that said the Saudi Central Bank had not lowered interest rates along with the U.S. thus signaling a break of the peg to the dollar. Well... I guess we'll find out today if that's really the case or not... If the Central Bank says that they intend to keep the peg, the dollar could get some love... But if the Central Bank doesn't even mention it... The conspiracy bugs will come out of the wall boards, and the dollar will lose more ground... Or, at least, that's how I see it!
The Chinese are a'courting the King of Saudi Arabia. They have private conversations with the Royals there and are anxious to replace the US as the Good Buddy Boy there. The Federal Reserve has injured the King's bank accounts and he is sitting down, figuring out the damage and swearing. Also, the Iran Kitty next door is laughing at him and at the US even as everyone condemns this loudly. The cat is pointing out that that Burma is bad! As well as Saudi Arabia which tortures women who show their face in public. In evil Iran, women can go about unveiled and hold regular jobs, for example. And drive cars, even! And VOTE!!
So here we are, once again trying to cheat the Saudis out of the dollars we give them for oil and they are none too pleased about this and then there is Iraq: it will fall into the grasp of the Cat next door who is laughing at them. The US is being forced to stay there but this means the budget will be bad and the dollar will die and this is yet one more vicious circle and the US is involved in many such bad circles, our circles of Hell as our empire collapses.
Just a short while ago, from the Gulf Daily News:
DUBAI: Gulf central banks have greater freedom to set interest rates after they agreed to develop separate policies to tackle rising inflation, Oman's central bank governor said yesterday.Central bankers from the GCC agreed on Saturday that each country would decide on its own policies for containing inflation, Saudi Arabia's central bank governor said after the meeting.
The dream of a single currency to counterbalance the declining dollar has failed. But I believe that it is simply being replaced, slowly or in the case of the last 24 hours, rather rapidly, with the euro. One way to see trends and discover what is really going on, I visit the main banks and other data collection points to see what the numbers say and in this case, it was very fruitful. The Saudis have a lot of useful information available. I wish our own Treasury would be so forthcoming.
Here are the Saudi bond rates:
Look at those numbers! All of them around or above 5%. And the US Feds want to drop our rates from parity with Saudi Arabia to below 4.50%. And down and down and down. Note how our stock market went insane with all this money pouring in via the magic of banks making up loans out of thin air and then selling these loans to the hell hounds who then rip them up with their teeth and then pile the tattered carcasses into chests and sell those to Saudi Arabia who now has NO INTEREST in buying garbage carrying rates below 5%! Take that! China: ditto. The Japanese don't care about rates dropping: theirs are insanely low so anything is better than their own rates.
But we have some rather serious problems with Saudi Arabia that involve oil. Oil we need to run our empire. The Pentagon gulps down huge amounts of oil.
Here is the data from the official Saudi Royal Central Bank showing imports and exports:
The Kingdom sells lots of oil. A tremendous amount. The top chart shows their imports from 1992-1999. During that time frame, the price of world oil fell dramatically due to the Japanese recession and the entry of Russia into world oil markets. Saudi Arabia nearly went bankrupt. When the BBC covered this news, the British ambassador was recalled as the Saudis got really pissed. Later, the king had to order all the wives of his extended families to stop buying jewels and living in Europe all the time.
Since then, after the US went bezerk after 9/11 and then decided to 'Go to Disney World and go shopping' while going to war, the price of oil has shot up from $12 a barrel to around $80 a barrel today. Saudi Arabia recently, before this summer, said they would try to drive down the price of oil and to do this, they would pump more oil. This proved to be pure bluster. But since 7/17/7, Saudi Arabia has had to deal with a classic horns of dilemma: they love the high price of oil but they have many investments in the US which needs cheap oil but if they make oil too cheap, they will end up losing everything. These import numbers show us that the Saudis are spending like crazy at home.
Today, home consumption is 3X what it was in 1995. Like the US, they are enjoying a spending spree with on very significant difference: they are making money, we are deep in debt...to them as well as a host of other nations. Below is a break down of some or our major trade rivals and owners of huge amounts of our debts and dollars we have poured all over the planet showing how much they sell to the Saudis:
The nations selling the most stuff to Saudi Arabia are...the European Union. This pushes Saudi Arabia towards the euro. But the number two place selling stuff to them is...all of Asia. Of that place, the Japanese used to sell more to Saudi Arabia than China in 2000, more than twice as much. But look at just seven years later! China is #3 behind all of Europe and North America! And climbing very rapidly. And our European allies sell twice as much as we do to the Saudis. And I must point out that a tremendous amount of what we sell to the King are weapons and such. We have a mainly military relation with that harsh king who oppresses women and gays. By the way, I am still very amused at how the US has been hammering Iran Kitty about gay rights but won't say a thing about the atrocious rights situation in the Desert Kingdom! Or at home, for that matter.
But we must buy and sell no matter how vicious the King is. Just like we call Britain our 'ally' even as the Queen runs tax havens off our shores that strip us of revenue and which are making our country run in the red more and more.
This chart shows exports of oil to various places. An amazing amount of money, it is much greater this last 7 years than expenditures. Note that Europe, the biggest beneficiaries when it comes to selling stuff---think luxury items---to Saudis! They import one third the oil Asia uses but sell somewhat more than Asia. The US imports or rather, buys over 100 billion riyals but sells only 40 billion riyals. So we are short by 60 billion riyals.
Asia is worse off, by far: Japan sells only 20 billion riyals of goods but buys over 100 billion riyals of oil. China buys only 40 billion riyals of oil but sells over 20 billion riyals of goods so their balance is off by only 20 billion riyals. This is 3X smaller than Japan's deficit. Japan's deficit is identical to ours. Because of this, I am assuming the US and Japan are united when it comes to finding some way of getting oil while not paying so much for it. China and Europe are content with their deals, they can make up the difference elsewhere. But the US and Japan are in a double-trouble hole here: they both are desperate to make both the yen and the dollar very weak!
This insane operation by the world's #1 and #2 economies are, in light of these statistics, dreadfully stupid. For Saudi Arabia must retaliate by fleeing to the euro and this doesn't mean they want to buy stuff from Japan and America with cheap yen and cheap dollars, they want to SELL to Europe, more. So they just might shift everything towards Europe but then there is the Asian Dragon.
China has bought more and more oil from Saudi Arabia for the last 10 years. Japan's oil imports have doubled in the last 7 years...some depression there, eh? Hahaha. But China has been on a tear: They went from 5 billion riyals to 40 billion riyals of oil imports in just 7 years! And 8X increase that isn't slowing down, it zooms onwards! This is still half of what Japan and the US buys but the point is, the Chinese balance of trade is twice as good as both Japan and the US. So their deficits are much less compared to their top trade rivals. Percentages and spreads matter. Ask any capitalist!
Now back to the really bad news: the US and our wretched finances. I poke around the various government agencies and find all sorts of garbage. They just redesigned their website so I had a frustrating day today. But I found something of interest. Here is the Treasury chart that shows our total public government debt.
The top line is the Social Security part that is paid for by raiding our retirement funds and replacing it with IOUs which Bush so charmingly said, 'This is just a piece of paper!' Minus the Social Security surtax that is milking the working stiffs of America to death, we are well over the debt ceiling, the one just voted in by our reckless Congress Russian Soviets. Heedlessly, they raise the ceiling and claim all is well as all is sick, sick, sick. Our oil deficit with Saudi Arabia is all about overspending via our military, for example. We use of huge amounts of oil, patrolling the seas and invading the lands on the other side of the planet, in Asia as well as the Middle East. This is to protect the oil there...so China can suck it down while beating us with the trade stuff.
The Treasury is coming to the rescue!
The President's Working Group on Financial Markets announced the chairs, members and mission statements for two private sector committees, one comprised of investors and the other comprised of asset managers. These private sector committees will assess and foster a private sector dialogue on issues of significance to their industry and the market. The first task of the committees will be to develop best practices using the PWG's principles-based guidance released in February. The committees will create and publicly release the best practices so market participants may enhance investor protection and systemic risk safeguards consistent with the PWG principles and guidelines."These groups are drawn from among the industry's finest in their respective areas," said Treasury Secretary and PWG Chairman Henry M. Paulson, Jr. "The market will benefit if experienced participants develop and implement best practices."
The President's Working Group is encouraging market participants to move beyond the status quo as they work to strengthen market discipline. The committees represent a milestone toward a more competitive U.S. marketplace with the world's highest standards for protecting investors and safeguarding against systemic risks.
All these geniuses were running things before 7/17/7. And I didn't see any of them do anything to stop the train wrecks. So many trains are wrecking at this point, the train station has been annihilated and the tracks are littered with mountains of wrecked cars and engines! But who will fix this? The same engineers and conductors who created this wreck! Wow. I wish they would invite me. I will draw up lots of charts and then hammer home the need for us to stop importing everything and destroying our industrial base and our working class. But they won't look at the things I worry about, they studiously will ignore all this mega-global stuff and will announce that Free Trade is Great and Elaine is Stupid! Ha!
But this won't stop the trains that are plowing into each other! The cure so far is for the magicians to make money out of thin air but this is irritating the guys selling us twice as much more oil than we sell them in goods! We can't irritate our energy providers too much or they might cut us off. Note how our Congress Knesset has taken their sweet time, voting about MoveOn ads that displease them, about more sanctions on Iran that drive up world oil prices even higher, or how they can vote on all sorts of insane financial things like raising the ceiling for our epic-huge Godzilla debts...but they can't pass a budget at all, for example.
The House voted 404 to 14 this afternoon to provide money to keep the United States government functioning after the federal fiscal year ends this Sunday.The measure provides money at the current levels for federal agencies until Nov. 16, giving Democrats and President Bush time to work out their considerable differences over spending for the next fiscal year, which seem as wide as ever.
“I’d simply suggest we sit down and try to work out these differences between us so that we can leave town at a reasonable time,” said Representative David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who heads the House Appropriations Committee.
Included in the emergency measure is money to keep the popular State Children’s Health Insurance Program going until mid-November. The House and Senate have already agreed on expanding the program, but Mr. Bush has threatened to veto the bill emerging from Congress on the ground that it would depart from the program’s original purpose of helping poor children.
Sigh. We are killing hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq and starving others in Gaza but we are also debating whether we should keep our own children alive, eh? This really enrages me. We spend half a trillion, plus, on our military that is mostly stationed zillions of miles from here and has a woeful record of protecting us at home, and we are going bankrupt doing this and the people we are protecting in Saudi Arabia and Japan and all of Europe and all of Asia, all have trade SURPLUSES with us and are bankrupting us and we can't find two nickles to rub together to keep our precious children alive and this military is making enemies all over the world while we kill children in Iraq?
Time to vote on Iran! Time to debate Iran! Time to slit our wrists with the help of a very claw-prone cat.
Here is the Federal Reserve data for ths last three months! WOW! Click on the image to enlarge...it was rather faint.
Note how all the numbers are in a very narrow range until that fatal week in July, the Key Day in our little melodrama. These numbers are signifiant because it shows big instabilities. We know from the news that near chaos broke out within our banking system. The seeming quiet today is an illusion. The fundamentals that created this mess are very much still in the room. We just applied heroic amounts of fake money to the problem and the new problem, hyperinflation, is just beginning to bite.
The Defense Department is seeking an additional $42.3 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing the total request for 2008 to nearly $190 billion, according to prepared testimony Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is to present to Congress this afternoon.The yearly total of $189.3 billion includes $141.7 billion for the wars requested in February and $5.3 billion for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles -- one of the main added expenses that is pushing the cost of the war higher than projected.
Seeing that our Knesset wants more and more war and wants to kill Iranian children as well as Palestinian and Iraqi and Afghani children...the Pentagon thought they could use another $50 billion! Why keep our children alive? Who cares if they die! Kill, the madness of death and war: we will destroy everything so we can sit in this dark cave we escavated and we can roll a big stone in front of the entrance. 'Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here.' So off to Congress they went, with more requests. This is more money than any year in this stupid clone of the Vietnam War. And this is causing global inflation like all our wars in the past.
Cia. Vale do Rio Doce, Rio Tinto Group and BHP Billiton Ltd., the world's three largest iron-ore exporters, may increase prices by 30 percent next year as demand driven by steelmakers in China outpaces growth in supply.Prices for benchmark shipments from Australia will rise to a record $66.40 a ton next year from $51.47 in 2007, according to the median forecast of eight analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Sales may climb 11 percent this year as supplies gain 8 percent, Merrill Lynch & Co. estimates. Mining companies and customers begin annual contract talks next month for shipments from April.
I do hope Japan doesn't strip down their own workers further. Cutting children's lunches, cutting pensions, cutting heating and cooling in offices. Looks like we will get the same depressing treatment here as the unpopular war rages onwards, making the Iranian Cat richer and the Russian Bear estatically happy.
The House Ways and Means Committee, seeking revenue to help homeowners in foreclosure, unanimously approved higher taxes on the sale of vacation homes.
A bandaid on a gaping wound. This will do what to the housing market? Kill it further? I don't see much good coming from this. People using this tax loophole love it and they will wait 3 years and then rip apart anyone who renews this thing. I live where there are many second homes for wealthy Manhattanites. A fine mansion goes for what a small 2 room apartment on the Upper East Side near the Park.
Merrill Lynch & Co., the third biggest U.S. securities firm, may record losses of as much as $4 billion on fixed-income assets, resulting in the lowest quarterly earnings in almost six years, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst William Tanona said.
And pray tell, how will we not have a recession if the guys making the top money in America are being beggared? If the workers are losing benefits and getting wage cuts, who will be the buyer of all the world's goodies? Of course, we are well into a recession and stocks rising are more an act of faith and desperation since nothing else in the US is bringing in profits.
I have assembled more data and commentary about the connection between inflation and war but this will have to appear in the next article. This connection is very connected to the price of oil and the destruction of our currency which is always under severe pressure during wars. The oil wars are double trouble which is why this small war in Iraq which is a popular uprising against a foreign looting expedition, is hammering us so hard each passing day. And why this may destroy our economy in the end.
This gay/Iran matter is the definitive proof that will be a war with Iran.
To defend gay rights is to please the US left/liberal people. The US Gov need to do this to get support to war with Iran.
PS: I think gays should have freedom to be like they want, but I really don't like gay people.
Posted by: PJSV | September 27, 2007 at 07:04 AM
PJSV's comments are at the least uninformed. The current US govt. does NOT defend gay rights in any country even its' own. Yesterday, General Peter Pace declared that homosexuality is immoral.
There was a lot of focus on Ahmadinejad and his country's anti-gay stance at the UN but no one ever mentions that the leader of Turkmenistan spoke right before the Iranian president. Turkmenistan bans all political organizing, jails dissenters, tortures prisoners, restricts religion, and is second to north Korea in controlling the press. But the neo-stalinist president of Turkmenistan has no problem getting his filthy face minted on a coin while male on male sexual activity is punished by 5 years in prison (and presumably raped for 5 years as well). I guess that is better than Saudi Arabia where you'll get beheaded.
PS: It's okay if you "really don't like gay people", 'cause the GLBT community doesn't really like ignorant bigots!
Posted by: sin | September 27, 2007 at 07:57 AM
I too was shocked by this unusual attack on Iran by a nation that quietly approves of murdering gays and beating the shit out of them whenever the opportunity arises.
Was this attack the result of the fact that we cannot fault them for anything else other than for acting like ourselves?
I thought I had seen the low point in American diplomacy with the speedboat ride/bribe of Putin, but apparently there is no low point for us -- only infinity.
Posted by: DeVaul | September 27, 2007 at 08:45 AM
Saudi oil production is in decline, down 1.7% over the past two years. It looks like Ghawar has passed peak. There is a growing concensus among peak oil experts that we passed world peak oil production in '05 or '06.
This is really bad news, and our government is not only fiddling while the country is burning, they're out pouring gasoline on the fire.
Posted by: shargash | September 27, 2007 at 09:49 AM
Sin,
I'm not a US citizen. I live in Europe. I only read in US Gov/MSM some worries about Iraninan gay comunity. It's ilogical because US Gov/MSM don't care about it in US. For me, this is the definitive sign that something is going on.
Eleine, reade this:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?
context=viewArticle&code=
MAD20070927&articleId=6909
What will happen 1st ? War with Iran or a US military coup d'etat ?
Posted by: PJSV | September 27, 2007 at 12:10 PM
My dearest friends in high school, about 2/3rds of them figured out, painfully, trust me, it was painful for them, that they were gay. Since I loved them from the first day I met them, I loved those they love.
I also had fun fighting off people attacking them. Most of my gay friends were very peaceful, nay, shy! So I would stand up for them. I have nothing but affection for the gay community and have desired full civil rights including marriage, for all of them. After all, marriage is all about making a family and my lesbian girl friends have babies and my gay male friends are very anxious to be part of a loving family and make excellent family members!
I have trusted my children to my gay friends and never, ever had this trust broken. On the other hand, one of my dad's collegues at work who lived across the street from us raped me when I was a child and he certainly was NOT gay at all.
I feel great sorrow at the sufferings of gay people in many lands. I support their struggles for recognition and respect. I am stupified that Iran is being singled out for this considering how we abuse gays here still. The arrest of the Republican in the restroom was 'gay baiting' and totally obnoxious. How dare they.
For my readers who are uncomfortable around gay males, please reconsider this emotion. It is cultural, not natural. In ancient times, gays were often elevated into high status was priests, etc. Note that most of the priests within the Catholic Church are gay!
Jesus was probably gay and most certainly, his followers.
The gay contribution to arts, humanism, science and religion are probably more than their numbers in the population. Their contribution to civilization is huge.
I used to tell people, 'Want to see property values shoot up? Make your community gay-friendly!'
When I moved to New Jersey, I lured over gay friends and they began to see opportunity in places like South Orange which had white flight. In Park Slope, they made the place safe for others and they worked hard on beautification committees, for example.
They saved the beautiful architecture of San Francisco. They are a big element in the Victorian Revival which I am part of. I can't praise this community enough.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | September 27, 2007 at 01:25 PM
About the pain: back in 1964-1970, if any teenagers went to their parents and said, 'I think I am gay'...they had a good chance of being:
1. Kicked out of the house.
2. Disowned.
3. Taken to the insane asylum and locked up.
4. Murdered.
These things happened to many gay teens I knew when I was a teenager. When I got my own house at only 17 years of age (long story), I took in lots of gay teens kicked out of the house. And protecting them from enraged parents was very dangerous.
In later years, more and more parents have come to accept their children's sexual orientation, things have definitely improved here in the US. Many of my adult gay friends get along with at least one parent. Usually, the mother.
I went to too many funerals due to the bad things that happen to gays because of discrimination. AIDS, for example, was ignored due to prejudice.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | September 27, 2007 at 01:30 PM
Elaine, none of my comments were directed towards you. I have nothing but respect for you and I have NEVER heard or read you utter a homophobic comment, ever. I know you are gay friendly and always have been and I thank you.
Posted by: sin | September 27, 2007 at 02:07 PM
I am an old-fashioned humanist. I want humans to be happy, prosperous and frankly, how we live our lives is all up to us. I hate controllers who impose rules.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | September 27, 2007 at 08:26 PM
Eleine, Sin,
1. During my professional life I meet few male gays. They are very professional, frontal, trustful and honest people. I would trust them.
2. Being gay is a health problem related with mother hormones during pregnancy, recent studies show.
3. I think being gay is anti-natural is something wrong in the human development. We should't fight it, we should accept, but, i think we should also consider it wrong as we do with a phisical disability.
PS: Because of 2, I think my daughter can have risks of being gay when she became teenager.
Posted by: PJSV | September 28, 2007 at 06:58 AM
PJSV:
Homosexuality is totally natural. In all populations, about 2-5% are possibly 'gay.' In primate communities as well as human, the gay males tend to be 'the good uncles'. They spend their energy supervising and watching over their sister's children. In exogamic matriarchal societies, they are the backbone of a smooth-functioning system.
Gay females tend to be close to their mothers and again, the patriarchal system tends to discourage gay ethos because it interferes with the transmission of poperty rights through the male lines.
But in reality, families with gay members have many wonderful benefits which have been forbidden by custom and law thanks to the need of enforcing a system where the males inherit land.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | September 28, 2007 at 11:51 AM
Elaine,
The hormonal theory of sexuality holds that, just as exposure to certain hormones plays a role in fetal sex differentiation, such exposure also influences the sexual orientation that emerges later in the adult. Fetal hormones may be seen as the primary determiner of adult sexual orientation, or a co-factor with genes and/or environmental and social conditions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_hormones_and_sexual_orientation
For now is just a theory. But, maybe in the future, we can prevent fetal hormone inbalance gays, if we want (i would want with my kids). In my famaly there are some factors that macth with this theory.
Posted by: PJSV | September 28, 2007 at 12:41 PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Prenatal_hormones_and_sexual_orientation
Posted by: PJSV | September 28, 2007 at 12:42 PM
Think about what you are saying, PJSV.
If exposure to certain hormones determines a fetal's sex, then why not experiment with those? We could have an all male society and thus plenty of soldiers for wars, or perhaps engineer things so that there are 10% women so that we can have enough natural births to keep the human species alive.
Why stop with homosexuals or the disabled?
Science knows no limits, and once we achieve the ability to determine a child's sex, arguments and rationales will be put forth to convince us that we should -- and we will.
Humans have shown over time that they will accept no limitations to using their newfound knowledge to change any and all things for, again, their own personal reasons.
Posted by: DeVaul | September 28, 2007 at 05:26 PM
DeVaul,
I'm talking about sexual orientation related with prenatal hormone inbalance. I'm talking about the possibility of the parents prevent a gay behaviour, if they want. I don't defend any kind of eugenics or state manipulation or antigay conduct. Gay should have freedom to be what they want to be. All the others too.
Posted by: PJSV | September 29, 2007 at 11:31 AM
Mother Nature, in her way, has set up systems that work by definition: survival of the fittest. Human societies with no gay males or gay females are weaker than ones with these parts.
This is true in mammals in general! Some mammalian populations take this to extremes like rats in southern Africa, for example. Then there are insects that utilize this concept very successfully. LIke bees or ants.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | September 29, 2007 at 11:43 AM