Image via WikipediaI Fixed The Budget, You Can TooThe Washington Post: The Politics And Economics Of A Falling Dollar: in 1944 when Britain’s John Maynard Keynes and the United States’s Harry Dexter White conjured up the financial architecture for the global economy that served the world rather well from the end of World War II through the early 1980s. Since then, its shortcomings have been revealed by a series of financial crises that have become more severe and more frequent, with the fixes for one planting the seeds for the next ..... a new and better architecture has proven elusive ..... The dollar is used worldwide as the agreed-upon unit of exchange by producers and traders to price oil, minerals and other commodities. Ditto illicit dealers in drugs, weapons and other contraband....... Because it is the currency most easily exchanged, the dollar is on one side or the other of 85 percent of the transactions on global currency exchanges. When Indians buy Chilean wine, the transaction is usually conducted by converting rupees into dollars and then dollars into pesos. ..... by making it so cheap and easy to borrow money, we have been enabled and encouraged to live beyond our means, taking on so much debt that the dollar’s role as reserve currency is now called into question ..... foreign officials have been looking to diversify their portfolio. Indeed, that was just what they were doing in 2007 and 2008, until the euro crisis raised doubts about the next-likely alternative. ..... In the optimistic scenario, a credible budget deal is reached in Washington, the Fed manages to sop up all the excess liquidity it has created, and the long-term slide in the dollar remains gradual enough for the world to muddle through until a new order and a new architecture can emerge. ....... the failure to adopt a budget deal triggers a U.S. credit crisis that spawns a dollar crisis, which sets off another global financial crisis — one that makes the last one look like child’s play. ..... the heart of most of the economic issues we’re dealing with, from budget battles to the euro crisis to the rising price of gasoline.America has to balance its budget, and the raging debate on the defunding or funding of Planned Parenthood is a loud act of denial. The Planned Parenthood's budget is peanuts. You could kick that organization out of existence and the US budget deficit will be as big as ever.
Some major cuts are needed. The number one item on the table has to be the size of the US military. It is too big. America can't afford it. I think the US military budget has to be brought down from the 600 billion it is today to a more manageable 100 billion. David Cameroon in Britain might have some tips to share.
Who takes care of the world then? What you do is you work towards rule of law also between nations. You build stronger international organizations. I can see need for future military action in the service of democracy like is going on in Libya. And I am all for it. But such exercises are best if they are UN sanctioned and many nations are involved.
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