Category Archives: Empire

China’s devastating earthquake gave the people of Sichuan an early taste of a world that is running out of fuel.

Thousands of families slept in their cars outside petrol stations because the province’s oil infrastructure had been disrupted and its remaining fuel supplies diverted to the rescue effort. Truck drivers loitered patiently for local officials to raise their diesel rations beyond a paltry 100 yuan ($14), while taxi drivers refused to take reporters from Mianyang city to the earthquake disaster zone because they could not get enough petrol for the ride.
Continue reading →

In his famous book, The Collapse of British Power (1972), Correlli Barnett reports that in the opening days of World War II Great Britain only had enough gold and foreign exchange to finance war expenditures for a few months. The British turned to the Americans to finance their ability to wage war. Barnett writes that this dependency signaled the end of British power.

From their inception, America’s 21st century wars against Afghanistan and Iraq have been red ink wars financed by foreigners, principally the Chinese and Japanese, who purchase the US Treasury bonds that the US government issues to finance its red ink budgets.

The Bush administration forecasts a $410 billion federal budget deficit for this year, an indication that, as the US saving rate is approximately zero, the US is not only dependent on foreigners to finance its wars but also dependent on foreigners to finance part of the US government’s domestic expenditures. Foreign borrowing is paying US government salaries–perhaps that of the President himself–or funding the expenditures of the various cabinet departments. Financially, the US is not an independent country. Continue reading →