Journeying across an ocean and sojourning in another country for a-few-weeks this Summer – afforded me yet another opportunity to look at The Land of My Birth — from the outside. And the invariable question directed towards me (US) tended to be: What are you Yanks doing? Which is meant to intimate our ballooning deficit; the fact that we print money out of thin air; that we don’t seem to have any economic engine (aside from our military) to pull ourselves out of the doldrums; and, that a U.S. monetary fuck-up could well fuck-up the world.
While Europe is suffering its own travails – with cumulative deficits in Greece, Italy and Portugal topping a whopping $10 trillion (and that might be an Aussie dollar projection) the Chinese are reportedly EVERYWHERE, and, have now taken a keen interest in purchasing Aussie dollars: what this might mean…and I have been intimating this possibility for-quite-some-time-now…is the replacement of the dollar by the yuan (and a potential Russian-backed yuan [as alluded to in ‘Too Big to Fail’]).
But getting back to the question asked of me — I could only proffer my hope of a flat tax and that we stop pissing-our-money-down-the-drain on costly foreign occupations.
Most importantly, however – was my feeling of renewed vitality inspired by the international (and finally American) debate begun about the August 2nd deadline looming for the American deficit.
I was bolstered by the knowledge that I had initially reported that the debt ceiling was “postponed” for 11 weeks during that wild-and-woolly-week when Obama shared his birth certificate (forged of course); Osama was allegedly “whacked”; and, there was weirdness afoot with the shuffling of our foreign military command with the CIA gig. But most self-affirming for me was that I arbitrarily picked the deadline of August 2nd as the date when I thought things would come- to-a-head! And if you don’t believe me – talk to Pierre, whom we entertained at dinner the very next weekend.
So I felt vital, again! And the more I read in my beloved Times (electronically, natch), and other pennings, the more I realize that a-number-of-people who get paid for their thoughts and their writings are tapping into The Doctor’s Inn – where one often hears particular thought formulations for the first time (because…because…because…because I get around, I guess).
And it will be easy to tell (by my regular readers) that I have post-dated this particular formulation because I am able to cite a British financial minister who described the Tea Party Republicans as right-wing nuts, literally holding the entire world financially hostage with their refusal to tax American royalty. (Elsewhere I have written that this is not the proper function of a ‘tea’ party: the proper function would be to boycott Saudi Tea.) I also have to mention John Boehner’s pathetically clichéd retort to Obama’s nation-wide address: how very, very tired this man has become trying to run interference for America’s oiligarchy.
So Keith Olberman, I just wanted you to know that I’m rejuvenated and ready to keep throwing that conservative tea into the Boston Harbor – whether Jesus likes-it-or-not.