Original source URL: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13851.htm NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN Is Cheney betting on Economic Collapse? By Mike Whitney 07/04/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Wouldn¹t you like to know where Dick Cheney puts his money? Then you¹d know whether his ³deficits don¹t matter² claim is just baloney or not. Well, as it turns out, Kiplinger Magazine ran an article based on Cheney¹s financial disclosure statement and, sure enough, found out that the VP is lying to the American people for the umpteenth time. Deficits do matter and Cheney has invested his money accordingly. The article is called ³Cheney¹s betting on bad news² and provides an account of where Cheney has socked away more than $25 million. While the figures may be estimates, the investments are not. According to Tom Blackburn of the Palm Beach Post, Cheney has invested heavily in ³a fund that specializes in short-term municipal bonds, a tax-exempt money market fund and an inflation protected securities fund. The first two hold up if interest rates rise with inflation. The third is protected against inflation.² Cheney has dumped another (estimated) $10 to $25 million in a European bond fund which tells us that he is counting on a steadily weakening dollar. So, while working class Americans are loosing ground to inflation and rising energy costs, Darth Cheney will be enhancing his wealth in ³Old Europe². As Blackburn sagely notes, ³Not all Œbad news¹ is bad for everybody.² This should put to rest once and for all the foolish notion that the ³Bush Economic Plan² is anything more than a scam aimed at looting the public till. The whole deal is intended to shift the nation's wealth from one class to another. It¹s also clear that Bush-Cheney couldn¹t have carried this off without the tacit approval of the thieves at the Federal Reserve who engineered the low-interest rate boondoggle to put the American people to sleep while they picked their pockets. Reasonable people can dispute that Bush is ³intentionally² skewering the dollar with his lavish tax cuts, but how does that explain Cheney¹s portfolio? It doesn¹t. And, one thing we can say with metaphysical certainty is that the miserly Cheney would never plunk his money into an investment that wasn¹t a sure thing. If Cheney is counting on the dollar tanking and interest rates going up, then, by Gawd, that¹s what¹ll happen. The Bush-Cheney team has racked up another $3 trillion in debt in just 6 years. The US national debt now stands at $8.4 trillion dollars while the trade deficit has ballooned to $800 billion nearly 7% of GDP. This is lunacy. No country, however powerful, can maintain these staggering numbers. The country is in hock up to its neck and has to borrow $2.5 billion per day just to stay above water. Presently, the Fed is expanding the money supply and buying back its own treasuries to hide the hemorrhaging from the public. Its utter madness. Last month the trade deficit climbed to $70 billion. More importantly, foreign central banks only purchased a meager $47 billion in treasuries to shore up our ravenous appetite for cheap junk from China. Do the math! They're not investing in America anymore. They are decreasing their stockpiles of dollars. We¹re sinking fast and Cheney and his pals are manning the lifeboats while the public is diverted with gay marriage amendments and ³American Celebrity². The American manufacturing sector has been hollowed out by cutthroat corporations who¹ve abandoned their country to make a fast-buck in China or Mexico. The $3 trillion housing (equity) bubble is quickly loosing air while the anemic dollar continues to sag. All the signs indicate that the economy is slowing at the same time that energy prices continue to rise. This is the onset of stagflation; the dreaded combo of a slowing economy and inflation. Did Americans really think they'd be spared the same type of economic colonization that has been applied throughout the developing world under the rubric of "neoliberalism"? Well, think again. The American economy is barrel-rolling towards earth and there are only enough parachutes for Cheney and the gang. The country has lost 3 million jobs from outsourcing since Bush took office; more than 200,000 of those are the high-paying, high-tech jobs that are the life's-blood of every economy. Consider this from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) June edition of Foreign Affairs, the Bible of globalists and plutocrats: ³Between 2000 and 2003 alone, foreign firms built 60,000 manufacturing plants in China. European chemical companies, Japanese carmakers, and US industrial conglomerates are all building factories in China to supply export markets around the world. Similarly, banks, insurance companies, professional-service firms, and IT companies are building R&D and service centers in India to support employees, customers, and production worldwide.² (³The Globally integrated Enterprise² Samuel Palmisano, Foreign Affairs page 130) ³60,000 manufacturing plants² in 3 years?!? ³Banks, insurance companies, professional-service firms, and IT companies²? No job is safe. American elites and corporate tycoons are loading the boats and heading for foreign shores. The only thing they¹re leaving behind is the insurmountable debt that will be shackled to our children into perpetuity and the carefully arranged levers of a modern police-surveillance state. Welcome to Bush¹s 21st Century gulag; third world luxury in a Guantanamo-type setting. Take another look at Cheney¹s investment strategy; it tells the whole ugly story. Interest rates are going up, the middle class is going down, and the poor dollar is headed for the dumpster. The country is not simply teetering on the brink of financial collapse; it is being thrust headfirst by the blackguards in office and their satrapies at Federal Reserve. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information ClearingHouse endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) -- -------------------------------------------------------- Escaping the Matrix website http://escapingthematrix.org/ cyberjournal website http://cyberjournal.org subscribe cyberjournal list mailto:•••@••.••• Posting archives http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/ Blogs: cyberjournal forum http://cyberjournal-rkm.blogspot.com/ Achieving real democracy http://harmonization.blogspot.com/ for readers of ETM http://matrixreaders.blogspot.com/ Community Empowerment http://empowermentinitiatives.blogspot.com/ Blogger made easy http://quaylargo.com/help/ezblogger.html
