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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Roman Berry
Published Letters: 198 Editor's Choice: 10
Mr. Leonard, one quick thing before I forget...
Sir, I wanted to thank you publicly for your courteous and thoughtful reply to the email I sent out to you in the early afternoon (CST) of Thursday, March 26th. It was such a relief to find that you, unlike so many in the media, are so kind as to acknowledge such correspondence and reply to it in a serious way.
Oh...wait. That's right. No reply. No acknowledgment of any kind. Not even an automated bot. Ya know, technology is my thing. I could help you set up that reply bot. Easy.
Andrew Leonard responded to your email promptly. That is as it should be. That has nothing at all to do with me.
Which is not to say that it shouldn't lose that status. The great advantage of having your own currency be the world's reserve currency is that when you run up debts with the rest of the world, you can just print more dollars to pay 'em off. This enables the United States to carry its immense budget and trade deficits. Convenient, but hardly prudent in the long term, no?
Yes, hardly prudent. But if Bretton-Woods should be abandoned and the USD lose its status as the world's reserve currency, the US of A is then in the deepest pile of feces in the monetary history of man.
We in the US enjoy great, nigh on incalculable advantages through the status of the dollar as the agreed upon reserve currency for the world. The mass of the world's transactions for everything from the price of oil to loads of food are carried out in dollars. Other currencies are valued against the dollar. At the moment the USD loses its status as the reserve currency, it must actually begin to pay for its current account deficits via something other than the printing press.
The short version is this: The dollar, with all of our budget deficits and trade imbalances, only has value because other nations agree that it has value. Take that away and you get to experience what it must have been like to have piles of confederate money at the end of the civil war.
Click on my signature if you'd like to get a much better explanation (in the form of a short video and/or accompanying text) from someone who knows this subject much better than do I.
Ms. Bachmann, I am sure, means well. (Doesn't most everyone?) That said, the status of the USD as the world's agreed upon reserve currency has absolutely no bearing on the status of the dollar (and other denominations of US currency) as the legal tender used for exchange and banking inside of the United States of America. The reserve status is simply irrelevant as a legal issue to that state of affairs. Where the reserve status counts is in international trade and the financing of our deficits.
I just think she is either seriously ill-informed, or is perhaps playing to a crowd that she knows is seriously ill-informed and therefore vulnerable to such...hoo-ha...as Ms. Bachmann is pushing here.
On another front, I truly wish that posters like "RockyBalboa" would follow the link in my signature.
There is nothing that hurts us so much as what we know that isn't so.* Mr. Balboa may be suffering from the malady of knowing some things that are are not so.
*Pogo, I think.
You wrote:
China is controlled by a fascist government with global ambitions. . . . We need to crush the evil bastards who run China. We cannot let China become the dominant world power, because their ideal government is Orwell's nightmare of a booted foot eternally smashing in someone's face.To put it bluntly, China is the Evil Empire, for real...
Now I know you mean all of that (plus the rest that was omitted here) sincerely, but let me ask you something...
If fascism is this...
“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.” - FDR
...then what is the United States of the 21st century if not fascist?
You want to see boots smashing in faces? Take a look at the 2003 invasion and occupation of a foreign nation (think "Iraq") which presented no threat what so ever to the security of the United States. Try looking at the tactics that are now part and parcel of our para-military police force and the "war" on (some) drugs. Take a look at a nation (and that would be the United States) which engages in acts of torture and refuses to hold its "leaders" accountable under the law.
You want to see Empire? Look around you. Empire, and I say fascist Empire at that, is us.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
