“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”
Isaiah 55: 6-7
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Ready or Not, Big Brother is Coming
See “A US debt default is the wake-up call the world needs”.
Is a U.S. debt default “the wake-up call the world needs”?
I don’t think so, but it does point to a serious problem on the horizon that most Americans know little or nothing about.
The dollar has been the global reserve currency since the end of WWII. All oil transactions globally are in dollars. That means every nation on earth must stockpile dollars to engage in oil trade, and they are large transactions. That gives the U.S. tremendous advantages in the global economic system, and because money drives politics, it also gives the U.S. tremendous advantages in geopolitics.
Most countries are growing weary with the current global economic situation. For example, the current debt ceiling debate is being presented in the U.S. as a simple matter of paying people what we promised to pay them, but it’s a lot more involved than that. Once a debt ceiled deal is reached, and I have no doubt that one will be reached, spending in the U.S. will continue to grow until a new debt ceiling is reached.
In other words, as things stand now, there is no real restraint on U.S. spending. A debt ceiling deal is essentially meaningless. After a deal is reached, we will spend as though the amount we spend is irrelevant, and the connection between income and spending will be ignored completely. We will move toward the latest debt ceiling and expect more political shenanigans when it arrives. That’s how things have been in the U.S. since the 1980s.
U.S. fiscal restraint is a myth. Even so, every country in the world must purchase dollars and support U.S. spending. Even countries that hate us (Iran, for example), countries that are competitive with us globally (China, for example), and countries that we are attacking with economic sanctions (Russia, for example) must buy and hold dollars if they want to engage in oil trade. That gives the U.S. tremendous leverage over them, and there is very little they can do about it except to attack the underlying structure of the existing global economic system. In time, that’s something they will do. The debt ceiling crisis points in that direction.
I’ll give you an example to consider. The Arab Spring started in late-2010. It began in Tunisia as a direct result of rapidly increasing food prices.
Food price inflation did not appear out of nowhere. It followed a decision by the U.S. government in 2005 to require the use ethanol in gasoline. Corn was the commodity selected to provide the ethanol, and vast quantities of U.S. corn production was diverted from food to ethanol. Food price inflation took about 5 years to kick in, and when it did, every food product containing corn experienced rapid inflation. As is always the case, when food product prices started rising, producers of other products besides corn wanted their piece of the pie, too, so they raised their prices.
In the U.S., food price inflation didn’t amount to too much. American consumers barely noticed price increases in grocery stores, and they didn’t have any idea that every country in the world was being forced to support the U.S.’s ethanol decision by buying dollars. In the rest of the world, food prices skyrocketed. Suddenly food prices in many countries, Tunisia for example, were so high that people couldn’t afford to buy food. Many were on the verge of starvation. A food vendor in Tunisia set himself on fire in protest, and that ignited the Arab Spring.
The Arab Spring swiftly spread across North Africa and the Middle East. It lit the fuse that exploded as the Syrian Civil War in 2011, and it contributed greatly to the rapid rise to prominence of ISIS beginning in 2013. The political systems in Africa and the Middle East have been in turmoil since then. Russia and China have used the unrest to increase their influence in the region, and they have not let up. The Middle East is a powder keg today largely due to decisions made by George W. Bush to use ethanol in gasoline and to use corn to produce ethanol. Typical Americans are ignorant about all of this.
If there were serious restraints on U.S. spending, the ethanol decision in 2005 wouldn’t have been made. From an economic perspective, it was a no-brainer from the get-go. (See “Though Ethanol Might Appear ‘Cheaper’ Than Gasoline, Let’s Do The Math On Energy Content”.) From a geopolitical perspective, the use of ethanal in gasoline was a disaster. We made those decisions because we could and because we knew that no one could stop us.
The U.S. can’t be trusted to use the power we have been given in the best interest of any country except the U.S. Coming to that realization is the wake-up call the world needs. China, Russia, Iran, and other countries are beginning to make that point loudly and forcefully, and they are right.
The current debt ceiling debate in the U.S. may not be the last straw for countries like China, Russia, and Iran, but it focuses a spotlight on a problem that they know isn’t being addressed. There is no rational justification for the U.S. dollar being the global reserve currency. When that problem is addressed, Americans will begin to understand what kinds of problems our government has been imposing on other countries for almost 80 years.
Since mega change isn’t typically unidimensional, I’ll throw in something that I think will accompany the replacement of the dollar as the global reserve currency. There is no good rationale for country currencies in a global market. Currency price fluctuations add unnecessary risk and uncertainty. That uncertainty and risk can be eliminated by going to a global currency, possibly a global cryptocurrency that can be embedded easily under the skin. The control over the human population that cryptocurrencies will give governments will prove to be too much to resist. Big Brother really is right at the door, and he will break it down when he shows up.
I’m not saying that I like where we are heading. I’m just saying, “This is where we are heading.”
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“I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me — just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father — and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”
John 10: 14-18
