MarkLimacher.com

So I read the following Chris Hedges piece from Truthdig the other day, and couldn’t help but grow concerned about my well being (yes- again). The jist of the article is about the meetings that took place earlier this week in Yekaterinberg, Russia by the BRIC & Shanghai Cooperation Organizationg, and the panic that should be starting to sink in about the future of the US dollar. A brief sample:

…It is the first formal step by our major trading partners to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If they succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value, the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket, interest rates will climb and jobs will hemorrhage at a rate that will make the last few months look like boom times. State and federal services will be reduced or shut down for lack of funds. The United States will begin to resemble the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe. Obama, endowed by many with the qualities of a savior, will suddenly look pitiful, inept and weak. And the rage that has kindled a handful of shootings and hate crimes in the past few weeks will engulf vast segments of a disenfranchised and bewildered working and middle class. The people of this class will demand vengeance, radical change, order and moral renewal, which an array of proto-fascists, from the Christian right to the goons who disseminate hate talk on Fox News, will assure the country they will impose.

Yet another take, Prairie2 put it rather bluntly, but effectively:

…The turmoil that this could produce has no large scale precedent. With almost no Americans having any sense of ownership in our society the reaction will be a feeling of hopelessness and an every man for himself mentality. The crazies on the right have been priming themselves for this sort of apocalyptic collapse for forty years and will have no doubt who is to blame. Those that don’t know who to blame will get a fair and balanced list on Fox News. Watch your back.

I’m reminded, rather insistently, by the post I made a few months ago in which I linked to the Robert Freeman piece regarding the US facing a possible Weimar moment. I know I do a great deal of yammering about fearing for my life/future, but I’m finding it much more difficult to ignore the sheer volume of evidence that’s beginning to mount regarding the speed with which the American empire is dissolving. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find much information about the results of said meeting, with a New York Times article indicating that the group “concluded with only a cautious statement suggesting a move away from the dollar’s role in global commerce and a call for greater representation of developing countries in global financial institutions.” I will admit that I find the general ‘non-statement’ quality of that reporting to send chills up my spine, but what else can I expect from the Times financial section. This seems likely to be a developing topic over the next several months, which is good only in that it gives me time to go and purchase some canned goods before the right-wing psychopaths band together in an omega-man-esque sort of glory.

As a kind of appertif, a sort of deliciousness in video form, I thought I’d post some of the perplexing sadness that is the David Letterman outrage.