Monday, June 02, 2003

A Threadbare Emperor Tours the World
'It begins with the dollar, which has plummeted some 30 percent against the Euro since Bush launched his imperial agenda after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. While the decline might aid U.S. exporters, normally cautious analysts are becoming increasingly agitated over whether foreign investors who kept the dollar up and the Treasury solvent during the 1990s are now moving their money elsewhere. ''A big foreign withdrawal ... could even trigger a panic,'' warned Newsweek's Robert Samuelson last week, a panic now made more likely as a result of the 330-billion-dollar tax cut Bush just bullied through Congress.'

'According to the 'Financial Times', Bush's fiscal policy shows that ''the lunatics are now in charge of the asylum'', while 'New York Times' columnist and Harvard economics professor Paul Krugman this week asserted that Washington's fiscal health is now dependent on ''investors remain(ing) in denial, unable to believe that the world's only superpower is turning into a banana republic''. His conclusion, similar to the FT's: ''The people now running America ... (are) radicals who want to do away with the social and economic system we have, and the fiscal crisis they are concocting may give them the excuse they need.'''

No comments: