[OFB Cafe] lightening
Peter Hollings
PeterHollings at Comcast.net
Thu Aug 7 08:17:13 CDT 2008
Terence --
More on the economy. Long but good.
Peter
Source:
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/inflation-and-the-new-world-order-by-richard-c-cook/
Inflation and the New World Order by Richard C. Cook
<http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/inflation-and-the-new-world-order-by-richard-c-cook/>
Posted on August 3, 2008 by dandelionsalad
*Digg It
<http://digg.com/business_finance/Inflation_and_the_New_World_Order_by_Richard_C_Cook>*
by Richard C. Cook
featured writer
Dandelion Salad <http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/>
richardccook.com <http://www.richardccook.com/>
Aug. 3, 2008
DANBY, VERMONT, August 2, 2008. The sunlight on the lake sparkles at
dawn. As they have done for millions of years, the rounded tree-shrouded
shoulders of the Green Mountains loom above the still waters. A loon
calls from the next lake over. Who would guess that that not far from
such serenity the world's most powerful nation was teetering on the
brink of disaster? Though here in the bosom of nature one wonders why we
should be surprised. Nations and empires come and then they go.
*ARE THINGS REALLY THIS BAD?*
Just before we left Washington, D.C., the Bush administration announced
that it was expecting the largest federal budget deficit in history to
be racked up in fiscal year 2009 starting September 1---$490 billion
likely to be added to the national debt. This doesn't even count the
"supplemental appropriations" during the coming year which are the
preferred method for off-budget financing of the Iraq War.
Exiting the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area we passed the
gigantic rows of glass and steel office towers along the interstate
highway corridors. Further in the distance were rows of McMansions
thrown up in what once were corn fields. Built for an automobile
culture, the viability of both towers and houses has been stretched to
the limit by $4 a gallon gas.
We drive through rural Pennsylvania and southern New York state. Homes
and businesses look seedy, run down. What was once a vibrant and
prosperous small-town culture in this part of the country seems
exhausted. When we stop in Oneonta, New York, the prices at a local
restaurant are out-of-sight, and only the Walmart seems bustling.
We eat sandwiches at a Subway where at the table next to us a young man
with his elderly parents is holding a book on black magic. The headline
on a copy of the New York Post says, "N.Y. for Sale." The lead paragraph
reads: "Warning of a looming economic calamity, Gov. Paterson yesterday
called an emergency session of the state legislature---and raised the
specter that New York may have to sell off roads, bridges, and tunnels
to close a massive and still-growing budget deficit."
Are things really this bad? Our cottage on the lake has internet
service, and the next day I read the Washington Post's lead headline:
"U.S. Economy Grows at Solid Pace in 2nd Quarter." The Post, despite its
occasional liberal posturing on social issues, is the American Pravda,
the closest thing we have to an official newsletter of the establishment
elite.
But even the Post has to come clean a little, stating in its lead: "Much
of the improvement came from the one-time bump from economic stimulus
payments, raising prospects of weaker performance in months ahead."
Matters would have been worse, the Post notes, except that the weaker
U.S. dollar has caused a rise in exports and foreign tourism, though the
trade deficit remains horrendous, having hit $711.6 billion in 2007.
Of course the weakening dollar also makes it easier for foreigners to
buy American businesses at fire-sale prices. This happened with the
recent purchase of Anheuser-Busch by the Belgian company InBev, adding
to the $2 trillion spent by foreigners to acquire American companies
since 1978. (EconomyInCrisis.org)
*"SLOWDOWN" OR RECESSION?*
The Post's ambiguity over the condition of the economy reflects the
chasm between the official government gloss on events and the actual
daily experience of people who work for a living. According to the Bush
administration, we are in a "slowdown," not a recession. The GDP is
still growing, they say, though at less than two percent annually.
Of course much of this "growth" reflects paper financial transactions,
not the creation of wealth through production of new goods and services.
But if someone makes money and the government can tax it, it's part of
the GDP.
A better measure is the actual amount of money available to working men
and women for everyday expenditures. The Federal Reserve calls it M1,
cash-on-hand or money held in checking or NOW accounts. In fact, M1 has
not increased appreciably since late 2003, hovering at any given time
between $1.3 and $1.4 trillion.
This means that for the producing economy, we have been in a recession
now for almost four years, because the real value of M1 has eroded due
to inflation. And it's in the inflation statistics that the rift between
the party line and daily experience is most striking.
According to the government, inflation is relatively low and has been
for some time. The 2007 rate was calculated at about four percent, up
from two percent in 2004. Yet we all know that the actual cost-of-living
is skyrocketing. Gas costs twice as much as it did a year ago. The
increase in food prices has been devastating to the family budget. Even
with the bursting of the housing bubble, mortgages and rents are much
higher than a decade ago, and the costs of medical care and higher
education have continued to climb steadily. So what is going on?
It's been well-documented that the government's Consumer Price Index is
not a true measure of what it takes to sustain life. For one thing, the
methodology for measuring the CPI was changed in the 1990s to eliminate
certain major items, such as the cost of home ownership. Other items,
such as federal, state, and local taxes were never included. Finally,
some items such as computer equipment have declined in price. So even
though not everyone purchases such equipment in substantial amounts, the
CPI is thereby moderated.
Why is this done? According to commodities analyst Danny Bannister:
"Looking at it from the government point of view, there's a strong
political motivation to understate the CPI. By understating, it
keeps COLA adjustments down on entitlements, which are at this point
the largest part of the government's budget. And by understating
CPI, the government can minimize the inflationary impact on things
such as rents, which are indexed to CPI, or wages, pensions and a
whole list of ancillary costs to artificially keep inflation rates
down. Bottom-line: the published CPI understates the real inflation
rate." (Michael Hodges, "Grandfather Economic Report," July 2008)
In fact the Federal Reserve has gone to exhaustive lengths to avoid even
using the word "inflation," which in Fed-speak often refers to upward
pressure on wages and salaries rather than prices of products or
commodities. Wages and salaries have been stagnant, with purchasing
power steadily declining since the recession of 2000-2001. Instead, the
primary source of new money within the consumer economy has been derived
from capital gains due to the rise in housing prices that have now reversed.
The fact that consumers are going broke is recognized in a back-handed
way by Fed officials such as Sandra Pianalto, president of the Federal
Reserve Bank of Cleveland and a voting member of the Federal Open Market
Committee. Pianalto said in a recent speech in Paris, "While sometimes
devastating, these global relative-price pressures are not the same
thing as inflation."
As writer Colin Barr explains in a recent article in Fortune, the Fed is
reluctant to identify "relative price pressures" as inflation because it
does not want to make the current recession worse by raising interest
rates. What is the Fed's rationale? "It's because," Barr writes, "the
Fed remains skeptical that high commodity prices will ripple through the
economy, leading to broad price hikes and big wage increases." (Fortune,
June 26, 2008)
Or, as Sandra Pianalto puts it, "As consumers spend more money for
higher-priced petroleum and agricultural goods, they eventually have
less money to spend on other goods and services. Other relative prices
must then fall."
In other words, "Fed to consumers: 'drop dead.'" If you can't afford gas
and food, stop buying other items, because while the income of whoever
is benefiting goes up, yours will not.
So what should you stop paying for? Maybe your mortgage payment, credit
card debt, or student loans? If you can't afford your real estate taxes,
shouldn't you sell your house---if you can find a buyer in a depressed
market? If you are elderly and have to choose between food and medicine,
maybe eat dog food?
Also quoted in Barr's Fortune article is WarrenBuffett, the billionaire
investor, who is at least honest about it. According to Barr, Buffet has
"fingered 'exploding' inflation...as the biggest risk to the economy. 'I
think inflation is really picking up,' Buffett said on CNBC. 'It's huge
right now, whether it's steel or oil...We see it everywhere.'"
*INFLATION AS CLASS WARFARE?*
Then what is the cause of the inflation? On this subject, commentators
are all over the map, often without citing any truly definitive data.
Neither the government nor politicians offer any help at all, even as
companies like Exxon-Mobil, BP, and Shell report quarter-after-quarter
of record profits. What have we heard from John McCain or Barack Obama,
for instance, on the subject? Answer: nothing.
So is it true, as Professor James Petras said in a recent article, that
the causes are not accidental, but are "products of public policies
which deeply affect markets, supply and demand, consumers, producers and
speculators"? According to Petras, these policies result in "declining
capitalist investment in the productive economy, the vast increase of
capital flowing in the paper economy, the huge increases in profits and
the grotesque salaries, bonuses and payoffs to senior executives,
totally unrelated to 'performance.'" (James Petras, "Inflation and the
Specter of World Inflation
<http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/inflation-and-the-specter-of-world-revolution-by-james-petras/>,"
Information Clearing House, July 20, 2008)
In this respect, inflation is a wealth-transfer mechanism that benefits
the already-rich. Petras continues:
"In other words, in the contemporary economy, inflation benefits the
wealthy because they pay their workers in deflated currency, while
they can take advantage of inflation to further jack up prices and
then income. [Thus] the upper classes have fortified their economic
positions to take account of inflation through their power over
prices, income and other compensations in a way that wage workers
and people on fixed income and other vulnerable sectors cannot.
Bankers protect their loans via adjustable interest rates. Monopoly
resource owners jack up prices to retain profits. Wholesalers mark
up prices to compensate for higher commodity prices. Large-scale
retailers squeeze final consumers -- the great majority at the
bottom of the production and distribution chain."
Doubtless there is an impact from all these factors, though no one knows
for sure how much. With regard to food prices, geopolitical factors
deserve particularly deep scrutiny. Petras writes:
"In Asia, particularly Pakistan, India, Indonesia, South Korea,
Philippines, Nepal, Mongolia, and China, hundreds of millions of
workers, peasants, artisans, and low-paid self employed workers, as
well as housewives and pensioners have engaged in sustained mass
protests as they experience a decline in the quality and quantity of
food purchases as prices skyrocket. In Africa, hunger stalks the
land and major food riots have occurred from Egypt through
Sub-Saharan Africa to South Africa. In the Caribbean, Central and
South America, food riots have led to the overthrow of regimes, mass
protests, road blockages from Argentina, Bolivia, through Colombia,
Venezuela and Haiti."
In Haiti, hungry people eat mud cakes laced with salt and a little
margarine. As reported by Rory Carroll of The Guardian UK:
"The global food and fuel crisis has hit Haiti harder than perhaps
any other country, pushing a population mired in extreme poverty
towards starvation and revolt. Hunger burns are called 'swallowing
Clorox,' a brand of bleach. The UN's Food and Agriculture
Organization predicts Haiti's food import bill will leap eighty
percent this year, the fastest in the world. Food riots toppled the
prime minister and left five dead in April. Emergency subsidies
curbed prices and bought calm, but the cash-strapped government is
gradually lifting them. Fresh unrest is expected."
According to relief workers in Haiti, mass starvation could begin in six
to twelve months. Meanwhile, in our own country, traders have been
making millions short-selling the declining U.S. stock market while some
hedge fund managers made over a billion dollars last year. Their
lobbyists have been battling in Congress to stop a move to raise the
relatively low rate of taxation on their capital gains to the level of
earned income. In other words, while ordinary people starve, Wall Street
is doing just fine.
The situation in many developing nations is desperate in part because
the International Monetary Fund, under the "Washington consensus,"
required them to give up their subsistence agriculture in favor of crops
raised for export by agribusiness, while the people who once supported
themselves on family farms have had to migrate to urban slums. The
Western corporate-owned press calls it "free market reforms."
The devastation wreaked upon the world has been eloquently described by
Dennis Brutus, a former South African activist, now Professor Emeritus
at the Department of African Studies, University of Pittsburgh. Brutus
writes:
"When I was serving a sentence on Robben Island during the struggle
to end apartheid in South Africa, I never suspected that the end of
white minority rule in my home country would be the beginning of yet
another struggle for justice - this time against the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund.
"As architects of the global economy, the World Bank and the IMF
have enormous power and shape the conditions of peoples' lives
around the world. That power has been used to create a global
economy friendly to the interests of the wealthy and multinational
corporations, but devastating to the lives of hundreds of millions
of impoverished people.
"I live now in the United States where people so far are relatively
unscathed by the reordering of the global economy for the benefit of
the very rich. I do not see the squatter settlements, the polluted
rivers, the street children, and the elderly beggars that are all
too visible in Africa, Asia, or Latin America. I am not saying, of
course, that the poor in the U.S. don't suffer from the ravages of
the extremist global economic system - they do. Even the U.S. middle
class is beginning to see their comfortable lives threatened by the
concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.
"The IMF and World Bank, with the 'structural adjustment programs'
(SAPs) they impose on indebted countries and their pro-corporate
development projects, are the leading edge of oppressive
globalization. The policies they have imposed in Africa, Latin
America, and Asia have condemned people to stagnation, poverty, and
death for twenty years, and those policies are now being adopted in
the countries of Europe and North America too." (Human Quest
May/June 2001).
IMF policies require governments to cut food price subsidies, restrict
credit to farmers, and divert prime farmland to non-food export crops
such as tobacco, coffee, and cotton in order to provide cheap bulk
commodities to Western consumers. The victimized nations must then
import wheat, rice, and other food products from outside. But prices for
these food staples depend on world markets which they cannot influence,
much less control.
Speaking of IMF's directors and economists, Brutus writes:
"Although some of them may have tricked themselves into believing
that the neo-liberal economic model they defend is immutable, like a
law of nature, most of them probably know that they are perpetrating
a fraud of global proportions. Michael Camdessus, who retired after
thirteen years as Managing Director of the IMF, told a group of U.S.
religious leaders that he was willing to 'sacrifice a generation' in
order to realize the so-called benefits of the macroeconomic model."
Camdessus, a Frenchman who headed the IMF for thirteen years, became a
legend for the harshness with which he attacked the developing world's
national economies. Obviously his willingness to "sacrifice a
generation" reflected the official program of the Western financial
oligarchy, but today their targets extend well beyond the hapless
victims of the Washington Consensus.
As Brutus indicates, the same policies are being applied to the
inhabitants of the once-prosperous nations of Europe and North America
as well. But doesn't it really point to a worldwide regression to a
neo-feudalist system where the rich will eventually lord it over a
vastly-reduced population of debt-serfs? Is this the essence of the "New
World Order" that the international elite have seemingly been planning
in earnest since the Club of Rome began talking about overpopulation in
the late 1960s?
At least the developing nations are now fighting back, with IMF lending
running at a fraction of what it once did and some nations such as
Venezuela dropping out altogether. Resistance is also being exhibited to
similar policies of the World Trade Organization which likewise seeks to
destroy tariffs and other trade barriers that developing countries might
wish to use to protect their farmers and workers.
Just last week the "Doha Round" of WTO trade talks collapsed at Geneva
when India and China led the way in refusing to alter their tariff and
subsidy policies. According to the Center for Economic and Policy
Research, the collapse was not surprising, "given the reluctance of
India and other developing nations to sacrifice food security measures
in the wake of the recent global spike in food prices."
According to Deborah James, Director of International Programs for the
Center for Economic and Policy Research, who had been observing the
talks in Geneva, "The tariff cuts demanded of developing countries would
have caused massive job loss, and countries would have lost the ability
to protect farmers from dumping, further impoverishing millions on the
verge of survival."
*NEW WORLD ORDER COUP D'ETÁT?*
In looking for the tracks of the New World Order, we should also
scrutinize the continuing assertion by the Western media that
supply-and-demand is the controlling factor.
For instance, while the price of petroleum has doubled in the past year,
there is no solid evidence that increased demand has caused this huge
jump nor has the U.S. dollar declined in value to that degree. Within
the U.S., gasoline utilization is stagnant. That of China has grown but
not enough to cause such an increase, while worldwide more biofuel is
coming on-line. And despite the "peak oil" scare, there are no obvious
shortages in what is in the pipeline and ready to be refined and
utilized today. This has led to surmisals that the price increases
reflect activity in the commodities futures markets.
Despite the uncertainty, the Washington Post commenced a major week-long
series on July 27 by declaring with absolute certainty that "cheap gas
is gone forever." So what does the Post know that we don't? In fact none
of the factors cited by the Post, including growth of the Chinese
economy, can account for the aforesaid doubling of crude oil prices
within a twelve-month window. By the Post's own figures, world petroleum
utilization has increased by only twenty-five percent in the last
fifteen years. (Washington Post, July 27, 2008)
Further, in spite of its certainty that it knew the causes of the
problem and that higher prices are here to stay, only two months
earlier, on May 27, the Post ran a lengthy article entitled,
"Skyrocketing Oil Prices Stump Experts." Toward the end came this
interesting statement: "'We see many of the essential ingredients for a
classic asset bubble,' said Edward Morse, chief energy economist at
Lehman Brothers. Morse estimated that $90 billion has flowed into the
biggest commodity indices in just more than two years, and more money
has flowed into other exchanges, pushing up prices."
So is oil is being used as a hedge by investors to protect their wealth
at a time of uncertainty? Are the richest of the rich competing with
each other to park their cash? It is known that among these investors
are the oil companies themselves. Also, it is known that such commodity
investments are often heavily leveraged by bank loans, often up to
ninety-seven percent of investors' capital. So the banks are in on it too.
But this type of trading seems to be more than just a hedge. Its content
is political. Ethically, it is deeply anti-human, even criminal, because
higher fuel prices make everything else cost more in a world where fuel
is needed for all that is produced or sold. In fact it seems more like
an assault by the rich on every living human being in the world, an
assault that governments, under the hypnotism of neo-liberal free market
fundamentalism á la Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, are unable or
unwilling to fight.
And who, other than the oil companies, are these big investors?
On June 19, 2008, David Bario of The American Law Daily reported on an
interview with Philip McBride Johnson, a former CFTC chairman under
President Reagan. Johnson now heads Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher &
Flom's exchange-traded derivatives practice. He is not exactly a
wild-eyed conspiracy theorist.
Regarding activity in the petroleum futures market, Johnson said:
"The CFTC's economists are saying that supply and demand seem to be
driving this. But we have clients in the business that have
experienced these markets for many, many years, and what I'm hearing
from them is that they don't see any change in the fundamentals of
supply and demand."
Bario asked, "Is it a matter of institutional investors seeking shelter
from the subprime crisis and the credit crunch?" Johnson replied:
"I don't know. But I do know that speculators as a class do not
agree on anything, and yet there is almost unanimity of opinion
these days --- and the money to make the opinions matter. The fact
that prices have been relentlessly trending up suggests a new type
of market participant [with] a mentality that is traditionally more
in line with investing in securities than trading in commodities. If
enough of these wealthy people, or funds, or other entities with a
lot of capital decide to flip out of securities for a little while
and go into commodities, and they're all looking for something that
is going up, and you get enough billions of dollars thinking that
way, then their wish comes true."
So again, who exactly are these "wealthy people, or funds, or other
entities" that may be manipulating the market of the world's most
important substance? Surely government regulators must know. Aren't they
able to trace market activity to the players involved?
The answer, Johnson said, is no, they can't:
"The situation now is that the CFTC is sitting there looking at one
screen, one piece of the picture, which is whatever is happening on
the exchanges. Meanwhile, an increasing volume in dollars is taking
place in the form of over-the-counter activity where no one can see
it... there is still a blind spot with respect to the true
over-the-counter activity that is going on, which represents
billions and billions of dollars."
This trading in what the industry calls "dark pools" amounts to a third
of all commodities activity, easily enough for the manipulators to
remain hidden. It takes place outside the regular commodities exchanges,
where trading activity is relatively transparent. And it applies not
only to trading in petroleum futures but also food crops and other vital
commodities.
And who is it that has allowed this secret trading to take place? Johnson:
"In 2000 Congress decided that there were certain kinds of high-end
investors that were big enough and smart enough that they shouldn't
be constrained to do all their business on the exchanges."
The United States Congress has constitutional responsibility to regulate
interstate commerce in order to secure "the general welfare." It is
Congress that has enabled the richest of the rich to work behind the
scenes in U.S. markets in exerting this stranglehold over whether much
of the world's population will live in relative prosperity or poverty,
or, in countries like Haiti, even live or die.
Are we seeing the totalitarian dictatorship of the world's financial
elite being rolled out, with petroleum and food prices the primary
weapon of a final coup d'etát against every national government on earth
and their citizens? And if we knew who these "high-end investors" were,
and who controlled them, wouldn't we then understand who is in charge of
the New World Order and for whom it really functions?
If we are wrong in deducing such a plot, there is an easy way for those
under suspicion to disprove it. Those who are "big enough and smart
enough" to be making so much money surely can live handsomely without
these additional profits. Let them come forth, identify themselves, and
donate their gains for worthwhile projects to benefit humanity.
Absent such a gesture, let them stand indicted.
*UNSETTLING TIMES*
Meanwhile, here in Vermont, home to a small but popular movement for the
state to secede from the U.S., the local news reflects the unsettling times.
The Rutland Herald reports that the Vermont Milk Company, founded in
2006 with the goal of paying local dairy farmers more for their milk
than would big out-of-state food corporations, is facing "huge
increases" in the costs of fuel and credit and is laying off employees.
The article notes that it takes the company 100 gallons of heating oil
to make a single batch of ice cream.
On the state level, the government in Montpelier must cut $32 million
from the fiscal year budget that began July 1. The Herald notes that,
"Public safety and preparedness agencies like the Vermont State Police,
Corrections, the National Guard, and Veterans Affairs will not be cut.
Neither will debt service, which the state must pay." Layoffs of state
employees in other program areas will be considered.
One relatively inexpensive activity that will continue will be the
Vermont "Wood Warms" program, "aimed at getting split cord wood into the
sheds of low- and moderate-income Vermonters." Jonathan Wood,
commissioner of the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation
is quoted as saying: "We used to be more reliant on our backyards and
forests for fuel. I think we have to head back there in the future.
We're kind of going forward into the past."
The classified section contains "Help Wanted" listings for a local
economy that is struggling but still has a few openings for nurses,
truck drivers, cooks, carpenters, and an occasional job as a teacher or
administrator. But there is only one listing for industrial work, placed
by a filament extrusion company.
But it's oil that rules the world. On the Herald's business page is an
Associated Press report that the "Exxon-Mobil Corp. reported second
quarter earnings of $11.68 billion Thursday, the biggest profit from
operations ever by any U.S, corporation."
Unfortunately, "the results were well short of Wall Street
expectations." Even with record profits the devils of the financial
world were not satisfied, as Exxon-Mobil's stock "slumped three percent."
Copyright 2008 by Richard C. Cook
Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose
career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food
and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S.
Treasury Department. His articles on economics, politics, and space
policy have appeared on numerous websites and in Eurasia Critic
magazine. His book on monetary reform, entitled We Hold These Truths:
The Hope of Monetary Reform, will be published soon by Tendril Press. He
is also the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider's Account of How
the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age,
called by one reviewer, "the most important spaceflight book of the last
twenty years." His website is at richardccook.com
<http://www.richardccook.com/>. Comments may be sent via email to
EconomicSanity at gmail.com <mailto:EconomicSanity at gmail.com>.
*see*
*World Prout Assembly: Monetary Policy with Richard C. Cook
<http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/world-prout-assembly-monetary-policy-with-richard-c-cook/>*
*Louis T. McFadden (1876-1936): An American Hero by Richard C. Cook
<http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/louis-t-mcfadden-1876-1936-an-american-hero-by-richard-c-cook/>*
*Richard C. Cook: On The Eve of WW3 (videos)
<http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/richard-c-cook-on-the-eve-of-ww3-videos/>*
*Status Report on the Collapse of the U.S. Economy by Richard C. Cook
<http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/status-report-on-the-collapse-of-the-us-economy-by-richard-c-cook/>*
*Engineered Collapse of the US Economy - Alex Jones interviews Richard C
Cook
<http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/engineered-collapse-of-the-us-economy-alex-jones-interviews-richard-c-cook/>*
*Federal Reserve
<http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/category/business/federal-reserve/>*
*Inflation and the Specter of World Revolution By James Petras
<http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/inflation-and-the-specter-of-world-revolution-by-james-petras/>*
*Deep in the capitalist doo-doo by William Bowles
<http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/19/deep-in-the-capitalist-doo-doo-by-william-bowles/>*
*Bill Moyers Journal: Mortgage Mess + Wall Street + Justice & the
American Dream
<http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/19/bill-moyers-journal-mortgage-mess-wall-street-justice-the-american-dream/>*
*Economic Collapse by Norman Livergood
<http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/economic-collapse-by-norman-livergood/>*
*The Economy Sucks and or Collapse
<http://wordpress.com/tag/the-economy-sucks-and-or-collapse/>*
*Cook-Richard C. <http://wordpress.com/tag/cook-richard-c/>*
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-------------- next part --------------
Terence --
More on the economy. Long but good.
Peter
Source:
[1]http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/inflation-and-the-ne
w-world-order-by-richard-c-cook/
[2]Inflation and the New World Order by Richard C. Cook
Posted on August 3, 2008 by dandelionsalad
[3]Digg It
by Richard C. Cook
featured writer
[4]Dandelion Salad
[5]richardccook.com
Aug. 3, 2008
DANBY, VERMONT, August 2, 2008. The sunlight on the lake sparkles at
dawn. As they have done for millions of years, the rounded
tree-shrouded shoulders of the Green Mountains loom above the still
waters. A loon calls from the next lake over. Who would guess that
that not far from such serenity the world's most powerful nation was
teetering on the brink of disaster? Though here in the bosom of nature
one wonders why we should be surprised. Nations and empires come and
then they go.
ARE THINGS REALLY THIS BAD?
Just before we left Washington, D.C., the Bush administration
announced that it was expecting the largest federal budget deficit in
history to be racked up in fiscal year 2009 starting September 1--$490
billion likely to be added to the national debt. This doesn't even
count the "supplemental appropriations" during the coming year which
are the preferred method for off-budget financing of the Iraq War.
Exiting the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area we passed the
gigantic rows of glass and steel office towers along the interstate
highway corridors. Further in the distance were rows of McMansions
thrown up in what once were corn fields. Built for an automobile
culture, the viability of both towers and houses has been stretched to
the limit by $4 a gallon gas.
We drive through rural Pennsylvania and southern New York state. Homes
and businesses look seedy, run down. What was once a vibrant and
prosperous small-town culture in this part of the country seems
exhausted. When we stop in Oneonta, New York, the prices at a local
restaurant are out-of-sight, and only the Walmart seems bustling.
We eat sandwiches at a Subway where at the table next to us a young
man with his elderly parents is holding a book on black magic. The
headline on a copy of the New York Post says, "N.Y. for Sale." The
lead paragraph reads: "Warning of a looming economic calamity, Gov.
Paterson yesterday called an emergency session of the state
legislature--and raised the specter that New York may have to sell off
roads, bridges, and tunnels to close a massive and still-growing
budget deficit."
Are things really this bad? Our cottage on the lake has internet
service, and the next day I read the Washington Post's lead headline:
"U.S. Economy Grows at Solid Pace in 2nd Quarter." The Post, despite
its occasional liberal posturing on social issues, is the American
Pravda, the closest thing we have to an official newsletter of the
establishment elite.
But even the Post has to come clean a little, stating in its lead:
"Much of the improvement came from the one-time bump from economic
stimulus payments, raising prospects of weaker performance in months
ahead." Matters would have been worse, the Post notes, except that the
weaker U.S. dollar has caused a rise in exports and foreign tourism,
though the trade deficit remains horrendous, having hit $711.6 billion
in 2007.
Of course the weakening dollar also makes it easier for foreigners to
buy American businesses at fire-sale prices. This happened with the
recent purchase of Anheuser-Busch by the Belgian company InBev, adding
to the $2 trillion spent by foreigners to acquire American companies
since 1978. (EconomyInCrisis.org)
"SLOWDOWN" OR RECESSION?
The Post's ambiguity over the condition of the economy reflects the
chasm between the official government gloss on events and the actual
daily experience of people who work for a living. According to the
Bush administration, we are in a "slowdown," not a recession. The GDP
is still growing, they say, though at less than two percent annually.
Of course much of this "growth" reflects paper financial transactions,
not the creation of wealth through production of new goods and
services. But if someone makes money and the government can tax it,
it's part of the GDP.
A better measure is the actual amount of money available to working
men and women for everyday expenditures. The Federal Reserve calls it
M1, cash-on-hand or money held in checking or NOW accounts. In fact,
M1 has not increased appreciably since late 2003, hovering at any
given time between $1.3 and $1.4 trillion.
This means that for the producing economy, we have been in a recession
now for almost four years, because the real value of M1 has eroded due
to inflation. And it's in the inflation statistics that the rift
between the party line and daily experience is most striking.
According to the government, inflation is relatively low and has been
for some time. The 2007 rate was calculated at about four percent, up
from two percent in 2004. Yet we all know that the actual
cost-of-living is skyrocketing. Gas costs twice as much as it did a
year ago. The increase in food prices has been devastating to the
family budget. Even with the bursting of the housing bubble, mortgages
and rents are much higher than a decade ago, and the costs of medical
care and higher education have continued to climb steadily. So what is
going on?
It's been well-documented that the government's Consumer Price Index
is not a true measure of what it takes to sustain life. For one thing,
the methodology for measuring the CPI was changed in the 1990s to
eliminate certain major items, such as the cost of home ownership.
Other items, such as federal, state, and local taxes were never
included. Finally, some items such as computer equipment have declined
in price. So even though not everyone purchases such equipment in
substantial amounts, the CPI is thereby moderated.
Why is this done? According to commodities analyst Danny Bannister:
"Looking at it from the government point of view, there's a strong
political motivation to understate the CPI. By understating, it
keeps COLA adjustments down on entitlements, which are at this
point the largest part of the government's budget. And by
understating CPI, the government can minimize the inflationary
impact on things such as rents, which are indexed to CPI, or wages,
pensions and a whole list of ancillary costs to artificially keep
inflation rates down. Bottom-line: the published CPI understates
the real inflation rate." (Michael Hodges, "Grandfather Economic
Report," July 2008)
In fact the Federal Reserve has gone to exhaustive lengths to avoid
even using the word "inflation," which in Fed-speak often refers to
upward pressure on wages and salaries rather than prices of products
or commodities. Wages and salaries have been stagnant, with purchasing
power steadily declining since the recession of 2000-2001. Instead,
the primary source of new money within the consumer economy has been
derived from capital gains due to the rise in housing prices that have
now reversed.
The fact that consumers are going broke is recognized in a back-handed
way by Fed officials such as Sandra Pianalto, president of the Federal
Reserve Bank of Cleveland and a voting member of the Federal Open
Market Committee. Pianalto said in a recent speech in Paris, "While
sometimes devastating, these global relative-price pressures are not
the same thing as inflation."
As writer Colin Barr explains in a recent article in Fortune, the Fed
is reluctant to identify "relative price pressures" as inflation
because it does not want to make the current recession worse by
raising interest rates. What is the Fed's rationale? "It's because,"
Barr writes, "the Fed remains skeptical that high commodity prices
will ripple through the economy, leading to broad price hikes and big
wage increases." (Fortune, June 26, 2008)
Or, as Sandra Pianalto puts it, "As consumers spend more money for
higher-priced petroleum and agricultural goods, they eventually have
less money to spend on other goods and services. Other relative prices
must then fall."
In other words, "Fed to consumers: `drop dead.'" If you can't afford
gas and food, stop buying other items, because while the income of
whoever is benefiting goes up, yours will not.
So what should you stop paying for? Maybe your mortgage payment,
credit card debt, or student loans? If you can't afford your real
estate taxes, shouldn't you sell your house--if you can find a buyer
in a depressed market? If you are elderly and have to choose between
food and medicine, maybe eat dog food?
Also quoted in Barr's Fortune article is WarrenBuffett, the
billionaire investor, who is at least honest about it. According to
Barr, Buffet has "fingered `exploding' inflation...as the biggest risk
to the economy. `I think inflation is really picking up,' Buffett said
on CNBC. `It's huge right now, whether it's steel or oil...We see it
everywhere.'"
INFLATION AS CLASS WARFARE?
Then what is the cause of the inflation? On this subject, commentators
are all over the map, often without citing any truly definitive data.
Neither the government nor politicians offer any help at all, even as
companies like Exxon-Mobil, BP, and Shell report quarter-after-quarter
of record profits. What have we heard from John McCain or Barack
Obama, for instance, on the subject? Answer: nothing.
So is it true, as Professor James Petras said in a recent article,
that the causes are not accidental, but are "products of public
policies which deeply affect markets, supply and demand, consumers,
producers and speculators"? According to Petras, these policies result
in "declining capitalist investment in the productive economy, the
vast increase of capital flowing in the paper economy, the huge
increases in profits and the grotesque salaries, bonuses and payoffs
to senior executives, totally unrelated to `performance.'" (James
Petras, "[6]Inflation and the Specter of World Inflation," Information
Clearing House, July 20, 2008)
In this respect, inflation is a wealth-transfer mechanism that
benefits the already-rich. Petras continues:
"In other words, in the contemporary economy, inflation benefits
the wealthy because they pay their workers in deflated currency,
while they can take advantage of inflation to further jack up
prices and then income. [Thus] the upper classes have fortified
their economic positions to take account of inflation through their
power over prices, income and other compensations in a way that
wage workers and people on fixed income and other vulnerable
sectors cannot. Bankers protect their loans via adjustable
interest rates. Monopoly resource owners jack up prices to retain
profits. Wholesalers mark up prices to compensate for higher
commodity prices. Large-scale retailers squeeze final consumers -
the great majority at the bottom of the production and distribution
chain."
Doubtless there is an impact from all these factors, though no one
knows for sure how much. With regard to food prices, geopolitical
factors deserve particularly deep scrutiny. Petras writes:
"In Asia, particularly Pakistan, India, Indonesia, South Korea,
Philippines, Nepal, Mongolia, and China, hundreds of millions of
workers, peasants, artisans, and low-paid self employed workers, as
well as housewives and pensioners have engaged in sustained mass
protests as they experience a decline in the quality and quantity
of food purchases as prices skyrocket. In Africa, hunger stalks the
land and major food riots have occurred from Egypt through
Sub-Saharan Africa to South Africa. In the Caribbean, Central and
South America, food riots have led to the overthrow of regimes,
mass protests, road blockages from Argentina, Bolivia, through
Colombia, Venezuela and Haiti."
In Haiti, hungry people eat mud cakes laced with salt and a little
margarine. As reported by Rory Carroll of The Guardian UK:
"The global food and fuel crisis has hit Haiti harder than perhaps
any other country, pushing a population mired in extreme poverty
towards starvation and revolt. Hunger burns are called `swallowing
Clorox,' a brand of bleach. The UN's Food and Agriculture
Organization predicts Haiti's food import bill will leap eighty
percent this year, the fastest in the world. Food riots toppled the
prime minister and left five dead in April. Emergency subsidies
curbed prices and bought calm, but the cash-strapped government is
gradually lifting them. Fresh unrest is expected."
According to relief workers in Haiti, mass starvation could begin in
six to twelve months. Meanwhile, in our own country, traders have been
making millions short-selling the declining U.S. stock market while
some hedge fund managers made over a billion dollars last year. Their
lobbyists have been battling in Congress to stop a move to raise the
relatively low rate of taxation on their capital gains to the level of
earned income. In other words, while ordinary people starve, Wall
Street is doing just fine.
The situation in many developing nations is desperate in part because
the International Monetary Fund, under the "Washington consensus,"
required them to give up their subsistence agriculture in favor of
crops raised for export by agribusiness, while the people who once
supported themselves on family farms have had to migrate to urban
slums. The Western corporate-owned press calls it "free market
reforms."
The devastation wreaked upon the world has been eloquently described
by Dennis Brutus, a former South African activist, now Professor
Emeritus at the Department of African Studies, University of
Pittsburgh. Brutus writes:
"When I was serving a sentence on Robben Island during the struggle
to end apartheid in South Africa, I never suspected that the end of
white minority rule in my home country would be the beginning of
yet another struggle for justice - this time against the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund.
"As architects of the global economy, the World Bank and the IMF
have enormous power and shape the conditions of peoples' lives
around the world. That power has been used to create a global
economy friendly to the interests of the wealthy and multinational
corporations, but devastating to the lives of hundreds of millions
of impoverished people.
"I live now in the United States where people so far are relatively
unscathed by the reordering of the global economy for the benefit
of the very rich. I do not see the squatter settlements, the
polluted rivers, the street children, and the elderly beggars that
are all too visible in Africa, Asia, or Latin America. I am not
saying, of course, that the poor in the U.S. don't suffer from the
ravages of the extremist global economic system - they do. Even the
U.S. middle class is beginning to see their comfortable lives
threatened by the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.
"The IMF and World Bank, with the `structural adjustment programs'
(SAPs) they impose on indebted countries and their pro-corporate
development projects, are the leading edge of oppressive
globalization. The policies they have imposed in Africa, Latin
America, and Asia have condemned people to stagnation, poverty, and
death for twenty years, and those policies are now being adopted in
the countries of Europe and North America too." (Human Quest
May/June 2001).
IMF policies require governments to cut food price subsidies, restrict
credit to farmers, and divert prime farmland to non-food export crops
such as tobacco, coffee, and cotton in order to provide cheap bulk
commodities to Western consumers. The victimized nations must then
import wheat, rice, and other food products from outside. But prices
for these food staples depend on world markets which they cannot
influence, much less control.
Speaking of IMF's directors and economists, Brutus writes:
"Although some of them may have tricked themselves into believing
that the neo-liberal economic model they defend is immutable, like
a law of nature, most of them probably know that they are
perpetrating a fraud of global proportions. Michael Camdessus, who
retired after thirteen years as Managing Director of the IMF, told
a group of U.S. religious leaders that he was willing to `sacrifice
a generation' in order to realize the so-called benefits of the
macroeconomic model."
Camdessus, a Frenchman who headed the IMF for thirteen years, became a
legend for the harshness with which he attacked the developing world's
national economies. Obviously his willingness to "sacrifice a
generation" reflected the official program of the Western financial
oligarchy, but today their targets extend well beyond the hapless
victims of the Washington Consensus.
As Brutus indicates, the same policies are being applied to the
inhabitants of the once-prosperous nations of Europe and North America
as well. But doesn't it really point to a worldwide regression to a
neo-feudalist system where the rich will eventually lord it over a
vastly-reduced population of debt-serfs? Is this the essence of the
"New World Order" that the international elite have seemingly been
planning in earnest since the Club of Rome began talking about
overpopulation in the late 1960s?
At least the developing nations are now fighting back, with IMF
lending running at a fraction of what it once did and some nations
such as Venezuela dropping out altogether. Resistance is also being
exhibited to similar policies of the World Trade Organization which
likewise seeks to destroy tariffs and other trade barriers that
developing countries might wish to use to protect their farmers and
workers.
Just last week the "Doha Round" of WTO trade talks collapsed at Geneva
when India and China led the way in refusing to alter their tariff and
subsidy policies. According to the Center for Economic and Policy
Research, the collapse was not surprising, "given the reluctance of
India and other developing nations to sacrifice food security measures
in the wake of the recent global spike in food prices."
According to Deborah James, Director of International Programs for the
Center for Economic and Policy Research, who had been observing the
talks in Geneva, "The tariff cuts demanded of developing countries
would have caused massive job loss, and countries would have lost the
ability to protect farmers from dumping, further impoverishing
millions on the verge of survival."
NEW WORLD ORDER COUP D'ETÁT?
In looking for the tracks of the New World Order, we should also
scrutinize the continuing assertion by the Western media that
supply-and-demand is the controlling factor.
For instance, while the price of petroleum has doubled in the past
year, there is no solid evidence that increased demand has caused this
huge jump nor has the U.S. dollar declined in value to that degree.
Within the U.S., gasoline utilization is stagnant. That of China has
grown but not enough to cause such an increase, while worldwide more
biofuel is coming on-line. And despite the "peak oil" scare, there are
no obvious shortages in what is in the pipeline and ready to be
refined and utilized today. This has led to surmisals that the price
increases reflect activity in the commodities futures markets.
Despite the uncertainty, the Washington Post commenced a major
week-long series on July 27 by declaring with absolute certainty that
"cheap gas is gone forever." So what does the Post know that we don't?
In fact none of the factors cited by the Post, including growth of the
Chinese economy, can account for the aforesaid doubling of crude oil
prices within a twelve-month window. By the Post's own figures, world
petroleum utilization has increased by only twenty-five percent in the
last fifteen years. (Washington Post, July 27, 2008)
Further, in spite of its certainty that it knew the causes of the
problem and that higher prices are here to stay, only two months
earlier, on May 27, the Post ran a lengthy article entitled,
"Skyrocketing Oil Prices Stump Experts." Toward the end came this
interesting statement: "'We see many of the essential ingredients for
a classic asset bubble,' said Edward Morse, chief energy economist at
Lehman Brothers. Morse estimated that $90 billion has flowed into the
biggest commodity indices in just more than two years, and more money
has flowed into other exchanges, pushing up prices."
So is oil is being used as a hedge by investors to protect their
wealth at a time of uncertainty? Are the richest of the rich competing
with each other to park their cash? It is known that among these
investors are the oil companies themselves. Also, it is known that
such commodity investments are often heavily leveraged by bank loans,
often up to ninety-seven percent of investors' capital. So the banks
are in on it too.
But this type of trading seems to be more than just a hedge. Its
content is political. Ethically, it is deeply anti-human, even
criminal, because higher fuel prices make everything else cost more in
a world where fuel is needed for all that is produced or sold. In fact
it seems more like an assault by the rich on every living human being
in the world, an assault that governments, under the hypnotism of
neo-liberal free market fundamentalism á la Margaret Thatcher and
Ronald Reagan, are unable or unwilling to fight.
And who, other than the oil companies, are these big investors?
On June 19, 2008, David Bario of The American Law Daily reported on an
interview with Philip McBride Johnson, a former CFTC chairman under
President Reagan. Johnson now heads Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher &
Flom's exchange-traded derivatives practice. He is not exactly a
wild-eyed conspiracy theorist.
Regarding activity in the petroleum futures market, Johnson said:
"The CFTC's economists are saying that supply and demand seem to be
driving this. But we have clients in the business that have
experienced these markets for many, many years, and what I'm
hearing from them is that they don't see any change in the
fundamentals of supply and demand."
Bario asked, "Is it a matter of institutional investors seeking
shelter from the subprime crisis and the credit crunch?" Johnson
replied:
"I don't know. But I do know that speculators as a class do not
agree on anything, and yet there is almost unanimity of opinion
these days -- and the money to make the opinions matter. The fact
that prices have been relentlessly trending up suggests a new type
of market participant [with] a mentality that is traditionally more
in line with investing in securities than trading in commodities.
If enough of these wealthy people, or funds, or other entities with
a lot of capital decide to flip out of securities for a little
while and go into commodities, and they're all looking for
something that is going up, and you get enough billions of dollars
thinking that way, then their wish comes true."
So again, who exactly are these "wealthy people, or funds, or other
entities" that may be manipulating the market of the world's most
important substance? Surely government regulators must know. Aren't
they able to trace market activity to the players involved?
The answer, Johnson said, is no, they can't:
"The situation now is that the CFTC is sitting there looking at one
screen, one piece of the picture, which is whatever is happening on
the exchanges. Meanwhile, an increasing volume in dollars is taking
place in the form of over-the-counter activity where no one can see
it... there is still a blind spot with respect to the true
over-the-counter activity that is going on, which represents
billions and billions of dollars."
This trading in what the industry calls "dark pools" amounts to a
third of all commodities activity, easily enough for the manipulators
to remain hidden. It takes place outside the regular commodities
exchanges, where trading activity is relatively transparent. And it
applies not only to trading in petroleum futures but also food crops
and other vital commodities.
And who is it that has allowed this secret trading to take place?
Johnson:
"In 2000 Congress decided that there were certain kinds of high-end
investors that were big enough and smart enough that they shouldn't
be constrained to do all their business on the exchanges."
The United States Congress has constitutional responsibility to
regulate interstate commerce in order to secure "the general welfare."
It is Congress that has enabled the richest of the rich to work behind
the scenes in U.S. markets in exerting this stranglehold over whether
much of the world's population will live in relative prosperity or
poverty, or, in countries like Haiti, even live or die.
Are we seeing the totalitarian dictatorship of the world's financial
elite being rolled out, with petroleum and food prices the primary
weapon of a final coup d'etát against every national government on
earth and their citizens? And if we knew who these "high-end
investors" were, and who controlled them, wouldn't we then understand
who is in charge of the New World Order and for whom it really
functions?
If we are wrong in deducing such a plot, there is an easy way for
those under suspicion to disprove it. Those who are "big enough and
smart enough" to be making so much money surely can live handsomely
without these additional profits. Let them come forth, identify
themselves, and donate their gains for worthwhile projects to benefit
humanity.
Absent such a gesture, let them stand indicted.
UNSETTLING TIMES
Meanwhile, here in Vermont, home to a small but popular movement for
the state to secede from the U.S., the local news reflects the
unsettling times.
The Rutland Herald reports that the Vermont Milk Company, founded in
2006 with the goal of paying local dairy farmers more for their milk
than would big out-of-state food corporations, is facing "huge
increases" in the costs of fuel and credit and is laying off
employees. The article notes that it takes the company 100 gallons of
heating oil to make a single batch of ice cream.
On the state level, the government in Montpelier must cut $32 million
from the fiscal year budget that began July 1. The Herald notes that,
"Public safety and preparedness agencies like the Vermont State
Police, Corrections, the National Guard, and Veterans Affairs will not
be cut. Neither will debt service, which the state must pay." Layoffs
of state employees in other program areas will be considered.
One relatively inexpensive activity that will continue will be the
Vermont "Wood Warms" program, "aimed at getting split cord wood into
the sheds of low- and moderate-income Vermonters." Jonathan Wood,
commissioner of the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks, and
Recreation is quoted as saying: "We used to be more reliant on our
backyards and forests for fuel. I think we have to head back there in
the future. We're kind of going forward into the past."
The classified section contains "Help Wanted" listings for a local
economy that is struggling but still has a few openings for nurses,
truck drivers, cooks, carpenters, and an occasional job as a teacher
or administrator. But there is only one listing for industrial work,
placed by a filament extrusion company.
But it's oil that rules the world. On the Herald's business page is an
Associated Press report that the "Exxon-Mobil Corp. reported second
quarter earnings of $11.68 billion Thursday, the biggest profit from
operations ever by any U.S, corporation."
Unfortunately, "the results were well short of Wall Street
expectations." Even with record profits the devils of the financial
world were not satisfied, as Exxon-Mobil's stock "slumped three
percent."
Copyright 2008 by Richard C. Cook
Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose
career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the
Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the
U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on economics, politics, and
space policy have appeared on numerous websites and in Eurasia Critic
magazine. His book on monetary reform, entitled We Hold These Truths:
The Hope of Monetary Reform, will be published soon by Tendril Press.
He is also the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider's Account of
How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space
Age, called by one reviewer, "the most important spaceflight book of
the last twenty years." His website is at [7]richardccook.com.
Comments may be sent via email to [8]EconomicSanity at gmail.com.
see
[9]World Prout Assembly: Monetary Policy with Richard C. Cook
[10]Louis T. McFadden (1876-1936): An American Hero by Richard C. Cook
[11]Richard C. Cook: On The Eve of WW3 (videos)
[12]Status Report on the Collapse of the U.S. Economy by Richard
C. Cook
[13]Engineered Collapse of the US Economy - Alex Jones interviews
Richard C Cook
[14]Federal Reserve
[15]Inflation and the Specter of World Revolution By James Petras
[16]Deep in the capitalist doo-doo by William Bowles
[17]Bill Moyers Journal: Mortgage Mess + Wall Street + Justice & the
American Dream
[18]Economic Collapse by Norman Livergood
[19]The Economy Sucks and or Collapse
[20]Cook-Richard C.
_______________________________________________
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References
1. http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/inflation-and-the-new-world-order-by-richard-c-cook/
2. http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/inflation-and-the-new-world-order-by-richard-c-cook/
3. http://digg.com/business_finance/Inflation_and_the_New_World_Order_by_Richard_C_Cook
4. http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/
5. http://www.richardccook.com/
6. http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/inflation-and-the-specter-of-world-revolution-by-james-petras/
7. http://www.richardccook.com/
8. mailto:EconomicSanity at gmail.com
9. http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/world-prout-assembly-monetary-policy-with-richard-c-cook/
10. http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/louis-t-mcfadden-1876-1936-an-american-hero-by-richard-c-cook/
11. http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/richard-c-cook-on-the-eve-of-ww3-videos/
12. http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/status-report-on-the-collapse-of-the-us-economy-by-richard-c-cook/
13. http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/engineered-collapse-of-the-us-economy-alex-jones-interviews-richard-c-cook/
14. http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/category/business/federal-reserve/
15. http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/inflation-and-the-specter-of-world-revolution-by-james-petras/
16. http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/19/deep-in-the-capitalist-doo-doo-by-william-bowles/
17. http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/19/bill-moyers-journal-mortgage-mess-wall-street-justice-the-american-dream/
18. http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/economic-collapse-by-norman-livergood/
19. http://wordpress.com/tag/the-economy-sucks-and-or-collapse/
20. http://wordpress.com/tag/cook-richard-c/
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