Super Imperialism

[FeedFool]

Thanks To MH.

Link Click here

 

 

 

 

Book??

 

http://www.michael-hudson.com

 

  "What the United States did not learn during the 1930s,

that is now in the process of learning, is that as borrower

instead of lender, in fact that a bankrupt on international

accounts, strongly industrial nation can exercise even greater

falls in the world of nations than a solvent creditor country

can exercise during its overwhelming creditor status."

 

 

    "Effectively speaking, the United States has compelled

the older nations of the West to pay for the overseas costs

of the US war in Asia. Whatever they may desire, the cen-

tral banks of Europe had no choice but to continue to

except the paper dollar equivalents annually created as the

domestic and overseas deficit of the United States increase .

Otherwise, the whole of shaky structure of the world monetary

system will collapse into rubble .America has succeeded in

forcing other nations to pay for its wars on a systematic basis,

something never before accomplished by any nation in history ."

 

    "Never before has a bankrupt nation dared insist that its

bankruptcy become the foundation of world economic

policy; that, because of its bankruptcy, all the nations

what their economies transferring its bankruptcy to

themselves, stultifying their industries, and paying tribute

to the beggar ."

[machinehead]

Michael Hudson starts his account with World War I, detailing how the US demanded payment from its allies (the UK and France being the largest two) on war loans, even as they were unable to collect on the harsh reparations imposed on Germany.

 

During the 1920s, the US steadily raised tariffs on imports, thus denying Europe the ability to earn dollars by exporting. Yet the US continued to demand payment in full, in dollars, from Europe.

 

The European allies defaulted in 1933. The US continued to carry the WW I obligations on its books as 'defaulted loans' as late as the 1970s, and presumably still does.

 

Hudson's point is that intergovernmental debt has grossly distorted exchange rates and trade. Unlike private direct investment, intergovernmental debt is often used to support consumption (including consumption of war materiel), which is not self-liquidating as it earns no return.

 

The law of compound interest assures that such debt gradually compounds to the point of being unpayable. Hudson originally made that observation in 1972. In the 32 years since then, the debt has further compounded by an order of magnitude.

 

We live in the midst of an all-pervasive economic illusion, in which most of the 'assets' on the books consist of debt that is subject to default when the weakest link in the circular payment chain fails.

 

Hudson expounds brilliantly on how this happened, largely under US direction. He says that no alternative monetary system to the debt-based dollar will develop, until an economic breakdown paves the way for it.

[FeedFool]

The book sold especially well in Washington. I was told that U.S. agencies were the

main customers, using it in effect as a training manual on how to turn the payments

deficit into an economically aggressive lever to exploit other countries via their central

banks. It was translated into Spanish, Russian and Japanese almost immediately, but I

was informed that U.S. diplomatic pressure on Japan led the publisher to withdraw the

book (after having already paid for the translation rights) so as not to offend American

sensibilities.

Herman Kahn was the meeting's other invited

speaker. When I had finished, he got up and said, "You've shown how the United States

has run rings around Britain and every other empire-building nation in history. We've

pulled off the greatest rip-off ever achieved."

 

A number of trends that were merely implicit in 1972 have since become explicit. First

has been the U.S. Treasury's ability to run up an international debt of over $600 billion,

using the balance-of-payments deficit to finance not only its widening trade deficit but its

federal budget deficit as well. To the extent that these Treasury IOUs are being built into

the world's monetary base they will not have to be repaid, but are to be rolled over

indefinitely. This feature is the essence of America's free financial ride, a tax imposed at

the entire globe's expense.

[machinehead]

"To the extent that these Treasury IOUs are being built into the world's monetary base they will not have to be repaid, but are to be rolled over indefinitely."

 

Exactly. When dollars were backed by gold or silver, you could exchange a paper dollar for a piece of metal. That's how the metallic standard kept inflation under control -- dollar holders could force the central bank to shrink its assets.

 

Today, the Federal Reserve (and foreign CBs too) have Treasurys on the asset side of the balance sheet, and currency as the liability.

 

But there's no way to redeem this currency. A paper dollar can only be exchanged for another paper dollar. You can't show up with 10,000 paper dollars, and demand that the Fed turn over a T-bill.

 

Currency, and the debt 'assets' that back it, are liabilities that are never intended to be repaid. They are just supposed to roll over and get bigger and bigger. That's why the system has an inflationary bias -- its liabilities can't be redeemed.

 

The defect is that if some glitch (a loss of confidence) interferes with the eternal rollover, the whole system blows up irrevocably. Absent emergency aid from another solar system, there's no source of capital on earth large enough to bail out the 'dollar loop' when sand in the gears makes it stumble.

[FeedFool]

Here something from the 70's

 

Link

 

Thanks to the $50 billion cumulative U.S. payments deficit between April 1968 and

March 1973, foreign central banks found themselves obliged to buy all of the $50 billion

increase in U.S. federal debt during this period. In effect, America was financing its

domestic budget deficit by running an international payments deficit. As the St. Louis

Federal Reserve Bank described the situation, foreign central banks were obliged ?to

acquire increasing amounts of dollars as they attempted to maintain relatively fixed parities

in exchange rates.?7 Failure to absorb these dollars would have led the dollar?s value to fall

vis-?-vis foreign currencies, as the supply of dollars greatly exceeded the demand. A

depreciating dollar would have provided U.S. exporters with a competitive devaluation,

and also would have reduced the domestic-currency value of foreign dollar holdings.

Foreign governments had little desire to place their own exporters at a competitive

disadvantage, so they kept on buying dollars to support the exchange rate ? and hence,

the export prices ? of dollar-area economies. ?The greatly increased demand for shortterm

U.S. Government securities by these foreign institutions resulted in lower market

yields on these securities relative to other marketable securities than had previously been

the case,? explained the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank. ?This development occurred in

spite of the large U.S. Government deficits that prevailed in the period.? Thanks to the

extraordinary demand by central banks for government dollar-debt instruments, yields on

U.S. Government bonds fell relative to those of corporate securities, which central banks

did not buy.

This inverted the classical balance-of-payments adjustment mechanism, which for

centuries had obliged nations to raise interest rates to attract foreign capital to finance

their deficits.

 

?foreign? capital, as foreign central banks recycled the dollar outflows ? that is, their own

dollar inflows ? into Treasury securities. U.S. interest rates fell precisely because of the

balance-of-payments deficit, not in spite of it. The larger the balance-of-payments deficit,

the more dollars foreign governments were obliged to invest in U.S. Treasury securities,

financing simultaneously the balance-of-payments deficit and the domestic federal budget

deficit.

The stock and bond markets boomed as American banks and other investors moved

out of government bonds into higher-yielding corporate bonds and mortgage loans, leaving

the lower-yielding Treasury bonds for foreign governments to buy. U.S. companies also

began to buy up lucrative foreign businesses. The dollars they spent were turned over to

foreign governments, which had little option but to reinvest them in U.S. Treasury

obligations at abnormally low interest rates. Foreign demand for these Treasury securities

drove up their price, reducing their yields accordingly. This held down U.S. interest rates,

spurring yet further capital outflows to Europe.

The U.S. Government had little motivation to stop this dollar-debt spiral. It

recognized that foreign central banks hardly could refuse to accept further dollars, lest the

world monetary system break down.

 

Not even Germany or the Allies had thought of

making this threat in the 1920s or after World War II, and they were not prepared to do it in

the 1960s and 1970s. It was generally felt that such a breakdown would hurt foreign

countries more than the United States, thanks to the larger role played by foreign trade in

their own economic life. U.S. strategists recognized this, and insisted that the U.S.

payments deficit was a foreign problem, not one for American citizens to worry about.

 

There u go

 

Same play all over again. 1966 - 1982

 

 

1966-1982 wave 2

 

wave 3 end Y2k

 

wave 4 ends 2016

 

wave 5 ends in 20???? with total collapse???????

[Hiding Bear]

Tanks much FeedFool and MH! Great find.

 

I've downloaded the book, for free, from the books page.

[FeedFool]

At first glance it looks like perpetual inflation. Two things can go wrong.

 

American consumers stop consuming or Inflation comes back which will slow dollar recycling.

 

If one looks at the charts look how commodities inflation was acting like a damper on Index soon as the commodities took a swan dive Joke went on an overdrive mission to the moon.

[FeedFool]

Saving, Inflation, Deflation click here

 

Despite a falling savings rate, however, the economy never has been flusher with savings and credit. The growth of savings, wealth and net worth is less and less the result of new direct investment in tangible capital formation, but  rather the product of rising asset prices for real estate, stocks and bonds. In balance-sheet terms, gross savings are soaring while net savings are zero or negative.

          This growth in net worth occurs despite the fact that most new saving is offset on the liabilities side of the balance sheet by growth in debt. The rise of net worth is the result of savings being lent to borrowers who bid up asset prices by using new loans and credit to buy property and securities, that is, wealth and financial claims on wealth.

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Today we can see that the problem with saving is not simply that it is ?non-spending.? A rising proportion of savings are lent out or invested in loans and securities, dividend-yielding stocks and rent-yielding properties, to become interest-bearing debts owed by the economy at large. These savings expand of their own accord as their interest receipts are recycled into new loans and other income-yielding assets, growing in an exponentially rising curve. This exponentially rising curve is that of compound interest

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Let us return for a moment to Richard Price?s example of a penny saved at the time of Jesus being worth a sphere of gold extending from the sun out to Jupiter. Few investors buy gold, as it does not yield an income. The largest investment ? and the most heavily debt-financed asset these days ? is land. More credit does not expand the volume of land, which is fixed, but it does raise its market price. A rising volume of savings is channeled to buy a fixed supply of land. The financial system thus creates capital gains as the finite volume of property and supply of buildings and financial securities expands more slowly than the potentially infinite volume of loanable funds.

 

            Keynes did not anticipate that savings would be channeled in a way that bid up asset prices for securities and property without funding tangible capital formation. In the 1930s net worth was built up mainly by saving, not by asset-price inflation such as is occurring today. In traditional Keynesian terms, revenue or credit spent on buying property in place represented hoarding, not investment.

 

            Homeowners and investors imagine themselves growing richer as prices rise for their assets. Their net worth rises without their having to save. However, this rise tends to require more income set aside to pay debt service on the loans taken out to buy their property. Credit lent out in this way does not increase consumption and direct investment. It creates debts whose carrying charges shrink markets. Savings and debts rise together, so that there is no increase in net saving.

 

            New saving does occur as financial institutions recycle the receipts of debt service into new loans, whose carrying charges absorb yet more future income. The result is that gross savings (and hence, indebtedness) rise relative to national income. Stated another way, saving for many homeowners takes the form of paying off their mortgages

 

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