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Skousen: Sacrificing the Dollar to Save the Banks

World Affairs Brief, March 14, 2008. Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World.

Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief.

SACRIFICING THE DOLLAR TO SAVE THE BANKS

We hear a phrase all too often nowadays: “The dollar sank to a new record low this week.” Get used to it. It’s going to continue its steady decline as the Fed continues to bailout the major banks and financial institutions whose solvency depends on a package of paper assets that no longer has a verifiable value. As currency traders react to each new injection of liquidity and the lowering of US interest rates, the dollar keeps losing value. It lost 1% this past week compared to the Euro. It has gone down 6% in the past month, 17% in the last year, and a whopping 31% since late 2005. The debasement of our currency is even worse than that, however. The markets are comparing the dollar to the Euro, or the Yen, or the British Pound. Each of those currencies is also being debased, but not quite as much as the dollar. Real inflation of the money supply is higher than the percentage fall of the dollar since all comparative currencies are moving downward as well. This week we’ll talk about who are the winners and who will be the losers in this frantic game of maintaining US buying power.

Even the markets are having trouble figuring out what are the effects of this bailout fever. As the Baltimore Sun noted, “Wall Street’s euphoria over a $200 billion plan from the Federal Reserve [resulting in an unwise gain of 416 points] turned to caution yesterday, leading stocks to retreat a day after their biggest rally in more than five years. Volatile energy prices added to the market’s anxiety. Oil prices initially fell after the Energy Department said crude and gasoline supplies rose by unexpectedly large amounts last week, but then they returned on their record-setting streak to briefly surpass $110 a barrel.”

The primary reason why oil is rising despite increasing supply is that it has become a store of value for currency traders trying to hedge against a falling dollar–following the pattern of gold and silver. In other words, speculators are joining in with oil traders to find a place to park their excess dollars, causing the price to rise unrelated to actual supply and demand of the raw product.

Major financial institutions are collapsing even though only a few, like Countrywide, have reached the state of publicly admitting default. This week another huge insider-connected fund is going under. Carlyle Capital Corp. has not been able to reach an agreement with Deutsche Bank and J.P. Morgan Chase to refinance Carlyle’s highly leveraged debt of some $21B. Carlyle’s creditors have made margin calls against Carlyle’s highly leveraged positions and are now seizing Carlyle’s collateralized assets (subprime debt) for auction. The Carlyle Fund is owned by the powerful insider-connected Carlyle Group (that owns or controls many dark side mercenary operations on behalf of the US government). If even the insiders can’t save their own, you know it’s really bad. The Carlyle Group itself is somewhat immune from financial liability since it, like other major insiders, switched corporate registry offshore (Guernsey Islands, U.K.) And their stock trades in Amsterdam.

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4 Comments

  1. Dick Eastman

    Joel,

    We have corresponded in the past.

    I have been Baptized taking on the name of Jesus Christ and have received the Holy Ghost at the Yakima Stake, 4th Ward.

    I would like to ask you if you have thought of how the US can adopt a gold currency to work in tandem with fiat when gold is cornered — the US will have to borrow to get money to mint — and when creditors, who lent the money as fiat — are now going to receive repayment from debtors in gold currency (or with a penalty premium if they pay their debts in fiat.) WIll Gresham’s law apply? And does an absolutely better system (metallic money)not require some injustice somewhere when credit is monopolized and gold is more or less cornered and the society has no middle class savers, but only big debt in the middle?

    These questions notwithstanding, never doubt that we are on the same side.

    Dick Eastman
    Yakima, Washington
    (509) 965-4893

  2. The message of collapse of the economy of the empire of evil is what all informed people is longing for more than anything else.

    Only this news will recreate hope for survival of the planetary life.

  3. Those of us in the general population are to be brought under total domination by the Hidden Hand of Hierarchy, ruining the US Dollar has always been the plan and it proceeding at this time hand in hand with the Police State.

  4. regeya

    The countries who want the U.S. to collapse are also the greatest holders of treasurys, and by extension the greatest losers when this happens.

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