Fiscal Responsibility? Yeah, right...

Another salvation may be the economy. It's going to go very bad, folks. You know, if you have not sold your stocks and bought property in Italy, you better do it quick. And the third thing is Europe -- Europe is not going to tolerate us much longer. The rage there is enormous. I'm talking about our old-fashioned allies. We could see something there, collective action against us. Certainly, nobody -- it's going to be an awful lot of dancing on our graves as the dollar goes bad and everybody stops buying our bonds, our credit -- our -- we're spending $2 billion a day to float the debt, and one of these days, the Japanese and the Russians, everybody is going to start buying oil in Euros instead of dollars. We're going to see enormous panic here. But he could get through that. That will be another year, and the damage he's going to do between then and now is enormous. We're going to have some very bad months ahead.

Colin Powell gave a glimpse of U.S. intentions when he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Feb. 6 that success in the Iraq war ''could fundamentally reshape that region in a powerful, positive way that will enhance U.S. interests.''

The same report stated, ''The Federal Reserve's greatest nightmare is that OPEC will switch its international transactions from a dollar standard to a euro standard.

Iraq actually made this switch in November 2000 (when the euro was worth around 82 cents), and has actually made off like a bandit considering the dollar's steady depreciation against the euro. (Note: the dollar declined 17 percent against the euro in 2002.)

Well, consider this: America imported about 290 million barrels of crude oil from Iraq in 2001

Mostly it was accomplished through third-parties who bought Iraqi oil and then re-sold it to American companies.

There's a long history of American companies doing business with our enemies; Haliburton does quite a bit of business with Iran right now as we speak, and that's labelled as an 'axis of evil!'

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Mostly it was accomplished through third-parties who bought Iraqi oil and then re-sold it to American companies.

There's a long history of American companies doing business with our enemies; Haliburton does quite a bit of business with Iran right now as we speak, and that's labelled as an 'axis of evil!'

Cycloptichorn

Do you have a link for that? I couldn't find one.

Capital Flight Accelerates and Moves East

Global multinational corporations, led by U.S. based multinationals, stepped up the export of capital in the first half of 2004. For U.S. based multinationals, as investment has shifted, so have jobs. As domestic employment by U.S. multinationals has declined, foreign employment has increased. And where, as recently as the late 1990s, the United States and Europe were the largest recipient of foreign direct investment, China and India are now the leading recipients.

Americans are not profitting. Dubaians (Dubainauts? Dubai's?) are. As are the people working for that company. That how subsidaries work.

That being said, I am not happy about it.