Rut roe
From the “This ain’t good” dept:
Top Chinese official signals move away from dollar</a>
Update (below): Gold spikes above $1,000 an ounce on fears of sinking US dollar
The Chinese are becoming increasingly wary of the growing supply of U.S. dollars, leading the head of the nation’s green energy initiatives to signal a move away from dollar reserves and toward, gold, euros and yen, according to a published report.
“We hope there will be a change in monetary policy as soon as they have positive growth again,” said Cheng Siwei, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee, according to The Telegraph.
He added: “If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies.”</em>
Over our recent vacation I picked up a few titles to read, one of which being The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, and it struck me that the fuel upon which America runs isn’t crude oil, it’s fantasy. And it sounds as if one of our primary supporters of this fantasy has begun to wake up from the dream of America as a superpower.
Our economy is in shambles, our income distribution is at depression levels, in large part because conservatives since Nixon have learned to game the system via massive influxes of cash so that they can amass vast wealth without producing anything. Our health care system is a travesty, the majority of the country wants a single-payer system that cuts out the greedhead insurance companies who kill people as a matter of policy daily. But since our government takes daily suppositories of cash from the AMA, big pharma and the insurance industry, the outcome of this entire health care debate will be a system that is even worse than what we have now, and it will also never again be discussed in our lifetimes.
Obama continues the illegal and optional wars of Bush, while bailing out everyone short of the corner lemonade stand with money we probably don’t even have the paper to print it on. And if this occurs, you might as well go make other plans for election days, because your vote ain’t gonna amount to the even minimal level of jack shit it currently holds.
But as Kunstler’s book shows, nobody is talking about the real issue facing us- that our way of life, the way of life of this planet, is built upon cheap oil, with nothing waiting in the wings to take its place when we pass the half way point of peak oil. Once it costs two barrels to get a single barrel out of the ground, people will stop pumping oil. We’re nearly at that point. That’s why we’re fighting in the Middle East, always has been. You want to support our troops? Send them to engineering school or make them learn chemistry and have them work up ways to get us out of this mess without losing too many fellow citizens. Because this planet has 6.5 billion people on it…and we can’t support half that without oil. Think about it.
But you won’t be able to think about it, because we have to spend some amount of time batting away the drool that cascades from the legions of the silly and stupid. Normally bright people, longing to return to the comfort and security that only enhanced rendition and massive tax cuts to the wealthy can provide, slap lose their minds ranting about the perils of socialism and how our president is some illegal alien Marxist, surrounded by comrades intent on killing grandma. To all of you Beckian patriots I have one question…where the fuck have you been for the last eight years? In fantasyland, apparently.
Well fellas, I’ve glimpsed the future…and it ain’t no fantasyland. Buy all the gold you can, and live off the grid.
