What is a Currency War? Who does it hurt? Is this still one more Wall Street trick to hurt working class America?
To be clear Currency wars have a way of devaluing the wealth that working people hold as part of class warfare, so that the rich for whom Wall Street advocates can get even richer, as we see from the 1880's picture below Wall Street has been using Currency Wars for a long time.
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NPR quote November 7, 2011:
Guy Raz talks to Zachary Goldfarb, reporter for the Washington Post, about the growth in Wall Street profits since the financial crisis. According to Goldfarb, Wall Street has made more money during the Obama administration's first term than in the entirety of the Bush administration. Goldfarb says these profits were the direct result of government policies — across two administrations — in response to the financial crisis.
NPR quote:
GOLDFARB:
...... the president has also refrained from taking some of the toughest actions that some economists and outside analysts would like him to have taken. For example, forcing banks or attempting to force banks to forgive the debts of homeowners, or partially forgive the debts of homeowners, or forcing banks to break up into pieces and end, definitively, the too-big-to-fail problem. So in a sense, Obama has tried to strike a middle ground, harnessing frustration, sharing in frustration of the public regarding the financial sector, but not taking the fundamental actions that would radically restructure the financial industry and perhaps cause there to be more fairness across the country....
http://www.npr.org/...
The Wall street looks at the Euro as a symbol of an Evil Socialist Empire. Which by its very success is going to force the deprogramming of the brainwashed right wing masses of the myth of American exceptionalism.
The wing nuts (both in and out of the closet) as a group has taken great pride in being exploited and brainwashed. As such they will on this diary and in every forum defend their right to be exploited with great pride by the Wall Street neo feudalist system in America. If you don't believe that just look at this photo!
Just because he with that steely eyed gaze says he doesn't blame Wall Street doesn't mean we can't. We aren't brainwashed he is!! In America though we are surrounded by economic intolerance yet we ourselves can be tolerant! We don't have to buy into brainwashed thinking telling us we are only good Americans if, we are economically exploited by Wall Street. Where in we are brought to the point of having to praise our very oppressors for overworking us (as if it were a badge of pride) without access to medical care. We also don't have to blindly support Wall Street's currency war against the Euro, just because Wall Street waves the flag for the brainwashed to follow.
If you know all that then you understand why Wall Street wants to start a currency war with the Euro. Because they don't want a European style social safety net in America which causes the rich to pay their fair share of taxes. (To pay for the social
safety net unlike in the U.S., in the E.U. the rich are forced to pay their fair share of taxes).
In America however Washington would rather pay to house 2.3 million people in jail (at an average cost of 33,000 dollars a year, (and that is to say nothing of supporting their families while they are in jail) than to pay for a E.U. style social safety net. Ask yourself why are they doing this? They are doing this in support of America's no benefits, low wage neo feudalist system. Because they want to draft Americans into jobs without benefits that don't pay a living wage. So now according to mainstream E.U. press it appears that Wall Street is starting a currency war! A currency war with your money. Guess what the plutocrat owned U.S. media is not reporting on it. But we are!
The real problem with Wall Street starting a currency war with the Euro is that the European Union actually has a bigger population than does America. It also has a larger economy and oh yes did I forget to mention that the European Union is the number one exporter in the world. Little wonder the Euro rivals the Dollar. But here now is the kicker, a currency war is kind of like a kitchen fire, it has a tendency to want to spread to the rest of the house. So it is with a currency war which can turn to dare I say tariffs, quotas, inflation, and sanctions.
On Tuesday, German commentators focused on the power of the rating agencies.
The conservative Die Welt writes:
"The reaction is completely predictable. Whenever American ratings agencies do their job and downgrade European countries ... the critics get all hot under the collar and threaten sanctions. That is the case now, once again."
http://www.spiegel.de/...
Here's one more factoid the E.U. did all of this while providing the highest standard of living in the world. Wherein everyone as right of residence receives cradle to grave medical access as a human right. Everyone (even low wage workers) get 4 weeks paid leave. They receive dental plans, paid sick leave and job protected paid maternity leave. In the Euro zone university education is almost free.
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Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?
How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life
Geoghegan focuses much of the book on Germany, a country that explodes the myth that European socialism invariably leads to anemic economies and persistently high unemployment. Using Germany as a model, he argues the middle class is the real beneficiary of European social democracy—its members reap free education, free child care, free nursing home care, guaranteed vacation time, and generous unemployment payments—while their white-collar American counterparts struggle to pay for the same. What drives our economy in the U.S. and inflates our GDP actually makes our lives less comfortable.
Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? helps us understand why the European model, contrary to popular neoliberal wisdom, may thrive well into the twenty-first century without compromising its citizens’ ease of living—and may just be the best example for the United States to follow.
High-wage Germany, which offers the most bottom-up worker control of any European country, nearly ties with China as the leading exporter in the world, well ahead of the United States. But in China and America we work until we drop while in Germany, they take six weeks off a year (with a shocking number of four-day weekends along the way). It’s not just that the Germans can out compete us, but they seem to be doing it with one hand tied behind their backs.
http://tomgeoghegan.com/...
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Rank country Exports Date of Information
1 European Union $ 1,952,000,000,000 2007
2 China $ 1,581,000,000,000 2010 est.
3 Germany $ 1,303,000,000,000 2010 est.
4 United States $ 1,289,000,000,000 2010 est.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2078rank.html
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The simple fact is this, the neo feudalist system in America is running up against problems from the European Union, which are causing them a lot of trouble and costing them a lot of money. That causes the American plutocracy to behave differently. For example the EU won't import lots of products such as makeup, that has been tested on animals. Lots of genetically modified food also can't be imported into the EU. This goes to the safety of a whole range of products. Then of course there is this pesky problem of American companies who have offices and operations in the EU, who suddenly have to play by the European Union rule book in providing medical care for all employees even low wage workers, which of course is positively unAmerican, as well as providing things that support real family values like paid maternity leave, paid sick leave, 4 weeks paid vacation, medical, dental, full prescription plan and employee contracts that provide job security where you can't just fire people on a whim. Even with all that American companies all across the EU still manage to turn a handsome profit. Of course if they provide these things to American workers back home they claim they'll go bankrupt, go figure! So they've got to do something to bring the European Union in line with the way Wall Street wants to run the world. So they have started what European politicians and mainstream media outlets in Europe are calling a currency war.
Center-left daily deutsche Zeitung writes:
"'Do what we say, you have no choice.' That is the clear message from Standard & Poor's. In delivering it, the rating agency hasn't even shied away from placing euro-zone member countries on a level with developing countries......... That is absurd. That is a joke..."
"But the S&P downgrade is particularly dangerous for another reason. The agency hasn't just expressed its opinion as to where investors should invest their billions at what risk. Rather, they have launched an attempt to directly intervene and influence European politics. That is not the job of a rating agency. The Americans have become increasingly open in their attempts to push the Continental Europeans to adopt the Anglo-Saxon economic and financial model. That means printing money whenever necessary in order to bailout the banks or to finance economic stimulus packages. Those who don't play along get bad ratings."
Michael Fuchs said that the ratings agencies use different criteria in Europe than they do in the US and Britain. Elmar Brok, a leading CDU politician in European Parliament, said the downgrades "are almost the equivalent of a CURRENCY WAR."
In America whenever it suits them they raise the debt ceiling and start up the money printing presses to keep America solvent. This is really problematic if the Euro zone doesn't do the same thing. So European politicians and press outlets believe that the S and P downgrade was motivated in order to punish the Euro zone for not signing onto the American plan, which is to keep printing money forever.
Now if you can imagine with Wall Street keeps pushing the government to start up the printing presses to print money long term, but the Euro zone doesn't start up the presses as well to print money. What will happen is that will be the end of Wall Street's influence, at least on the scale it exists today, because the Euro zone is behaving economically more responsible and over time investors will be sure to reward that behavior, while concurrently punishing the irresponsible behavior, wherein Wall Street pushes to have the debt ceiling raised perennially and to perennially keep printing money. All of this is to say nothing of the fact that, the US government pays for most of its running expenses with debt. If the EU doesn't do the same thing soon, then it is game over for Wall Street. So it is to reiterate that European politicians and media outlets are saying that the S and P downgrade was a sanction imposed because the Euro zone would not start up the printing presses.
To win in America all we have to do is to care about each other & stick together!
If we are looking for change we must look to the Occupy movement to provide that peaceful nonviolent approach to change in helping to elect better progressive politicians to public office. The Occupy movement and the American unions are the last great hope of the American working class dream!!
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