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To: russwinter who wrote (22123)	11/20/2004 1:52:32 PM
From: rich evans	Respond to of 110194

Russ, How much, if any, of the dollars resulting from the current account deficit are held by multinatinal companies with Asia/Chinese operations/subsidiaries. Flextronics comes to mind, which does over 40% of their business geographically in their Chinese/Asia operations. They are basically an American company though incorporated in Singapore. They hold lots of their dollars as do many other companies overseas in their foreign subsidiaries. Are these dollars part of the billions counted as held by foreign entities? None of these large companies repatriate their money to US to avoid taxes. So billions of dollars are held in foreign bank accounts by these international companies. If these monies are all treated as part of the foreign balances then the problem is not as great as it seems.Much of the inventory used is purchased with these dollars even though transaction is all overseas. For example Flextronics major supplier is Tyco electronics in China and they deal with each other in dollars. Only the wages of the Chinese are actually converted from Dollars to Chinese currency and used to pay the labor. This complexity makes all this confusing to me. Rich

To: russwinter who wrote (22123)	11/21/2004 2:52:58 PM
From: glenn_a	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

Thanks for the Liu article on China vs. the US$ Russ. I certainly agree that US cultural and economic hegemony have been greatly assisted by the the US$-based global monetary regime. I also agree that the excessiveness of that rent, although not without its benefits, appears increasingly problematic for many competitor nations. There are many similarities to my mind between the U.S. position today, and the benefits Britain in particular derived from the "gold standard" (pegged to pre-WWI exchange rates) during the 1920's when her economy was no longer powerful enough to merit her privileged financial position. In the 1920's much as the value of the British pound was maintained through artificially low US interest rates, gold sterilization, and the consequent credit boom it spawned. So history repeats itself with an over-valued US$, sterilized US$ in foreign central banks, and easy monetary policy in China and Japan. I also agree with the Liu article in contrasting the labor value theory of a good or service with that of marginal utility. Really, to my mind this addresses the question of what portion of economic value should be returned to labor (in the form of wages), capital (in the form of profit or interest), government (in the form of taxes to pay for social benefits) or the consumer (in the form of lower prices). When a society perceives the allocation of economic value to be grossly unfair, the "offended" groups will seek to take action to remedy the situation. If the unfairness in the distribution of economic sacrifices and rewards is perceived to be great, and particularly when the system itself is under great duress, revolution or contractual repudiation is often the result. Are the economic elites and proletariat of other nations feeling such a gross misallocation of economic reward and sacrifice with regards to the U.S. and US$ financial hegemony? Yes, I think so. Personally, I expect a negotiated resolution of this situation, of which Greenspan foreshadowed this past Friday - i.e. moderately rising US interest rates for a period, a lower dollar on a secular basis particularly vis-a-vis Asia, a gradual move away from the US$ as the sole global reserve currency, and one hell of an ugly year in asset markets in 2005 as interest rates begin to normalize. What's your thoughts on 2005 Russ? Anyone else? Glenn

To: russwinter who wrote (22123)	11/21/2004 6:26:34 PM
From: baystock	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

>>Thus dollar hegemony makes possible US finance hegemony, which makes possible US exceptionism and unilateralism. << I think the opponents to U.S. military hegemony understand very well that the achilles heel of U.S. superpower status is the dollar which provides the financial underpinning for all this. Just like Enron used its stock to so effectively back its masquerade as a corporate powerhouse, the U.S. is using its dollar to do the same to masquerade as a financial powerhouse. Make no mistake, the global enemies/rivals of the U.S. understand that the dollar is the soft underbelly of U.S. power. Osama Bin Laden forced the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan by bankrupting them and his plan has always been to repeat the same to the sole surviving superpower which was the U.S. While the U.S. prefers to view this War On Terror purely in conventional military terms since that is where their strenghts are, Al Qaeda understands very well that their only hope of success is to make this a financial war rather than a conventional military war. This is why their target was the World Trade Center in the financial capital of the U.S. This is why they are attempting to spread the U.S. too thin militarily by engaging them in a protracted guerilla warfare across the globe and thus bleed their treasury dry. And helping Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq is the muslim powerhouse of Iran with a population of over 70 and enormous energy reserves (the second largest reserves of natural gas in the world). Iran/Persia is an ancient and sophisticated civilization dating back to ancient Greek times and which by the way was never colonized by the Europeans. Iran is patiently and ruthlessly determined to break out of the box of isolation and containment that the U.S. has attempted to impose on it after the Shah was deposed in 1976 by moslem fundamentalists/facists. After the French Revolution the European monarchs tried to isolate France with its dangerous anti-royalty ideology in the same way, but Napoleon broke out of this box. Similarly the wily Iranians are attempting to do the same after first patiently lining up all their ducks in a row: 1)Build up a nuclear deterant to counter that of the U.S. and their proxy in the middle east which is Israel. 2)Forge solid alliances with other emerging global powers who are opposed to U.S. hegemony. Check it out for yourself but Iran already has powerful economic/military alliances in place right now with Russia, China and India. It is attempting to do the same with Europe which is divided between Britain on one hand which is a staunch American ally and France/Germany on the other hand which are opposed to American hegemony. I think it would be fair to say that from the Iranian perspective Europe is at least neutralized. As an example of the real-politics in play, I was quite surprised to read that the strategic alliance between Iran and India includes the possibility that Muslim Iran may allow non-muslim India to access Iranian military bases on the Iranian-Pakistan border in the event of a war between India and muslim Pakistan. Iran's number one enemy is the U.S. and India's is Musharraf's Pakistan which was recently declared to be a key strategic ally of the U.S. only second in importance to Nato. Shiite Iran and India are long time allies in Afghanistan pre-dating 9/11 against the fundamentalist Sunni Taliban who were/are nurtured and backed by Pakistan. Also India is helping to build a rail/port network in Iran that will help to create a Russian/CentralAsian/Iranian/Indian trade and energy transport corridor that will bypass the route thru Afghanistan and Pakistan that is preferred by the U.S. And if all this is not complicated enough, India along with muslim Turkey are allies of both the U.S. and Israel. Basically the pre-oil Great Game that was played in this part of the world between the Russian and British Empires (India being the crown jewel of the latter) has now morphed into one that is now about who controls the Mideast oil/gas energy supplies. 3)When the time is ripe and after the U.S. dollar has already started its free fall (which is getting close now) the Islamic Gold Dinar will be launched as a replacement for oil trade settlement which is now in dollars. 4)When the time is ripe which is probably after the dollar has collapsed and the U.S. is crippled financially and the pendulum swings back towards isolationism, Iran will seize control of the Mideast oil supplies with the tacit backing of Russia and China. 5)Many thanks to Jim Sinclair for providing the key pieces to this fascinating puzzle. One thing that really puzzled me was Bush's insistence that Iraq fits into to War on Terror. On the surface this didn't make sense. But Bush is not an idiot and is surrounded by very sharp people like Cheney and Rumsfeld. But if the War on Terror is understood to be a side effect of Al Quaeda's vision of the war as a financial war to bankrupt the U.S., then one can see how Iraq with the second largest reserves of oil would fit in. Iraq has tradionally been the buffer to block Iranian dominance of the various banana republic Arab oil states on the Persian Gulf which is why Bush Senior left Saddam still in charge after the first Gulf war. It looks like Bush junior was lured by Iran into removing Saddam for them. Obviously the Americans do not want to leave post-Sadam Iraq to the Iranians but they may have no choice. With such a long border between Iran and Iraq and 60% of Iraqis being Shiite who look to Iran as their spiritual mentor, Iraq may naturally fall into Iran's sphere of influence. Here is an article that makes the case that the Iraq war is about oil and currency dominance, rather than liberating Iraqis or WMD's: ratical.org >>Although completely unreported by the U.S. media and government, the answer to the Iraq enigma is simple yet shocking -- it is in large part an oil currency war. One of the core reasons for this upcoming war is this administration's goal of preventing further Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) momentum towards the euro as an oil transaction currency standard. However, in order to pre-empt OPEC, they need to gain geo-strategic control of Iraq along with its 2nd largest proven oil reserves. The second coalescing factor that is driving the Iraq war is the quiet acknowledgement by respected oil geologists and possibly this administration is the impending phenomenon known as Global "Peak Oil." This is projected to occur around 2010, with Iraq and Saudi Arabia being the final two nations to reach peak oil production. <<