By Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The U.S. used to make things and export them. Some said that the U.S. fed the world from a mid-western 'bread-basket'. At the same time, the U.S. had a viable labor movement which seems to have simply withered away with the decline of American labor and productivity. After all, a nation cannot limp along on one leg. It was the Reagan regime which cut off the labor leg. Amputated, we have not gone far but backward, at best, in circles.

That the U.S. trails the world is proven by the CIA's own 'World Fact Book' which lists the U.S. on bottom with the World's Largest Negative Current Account Balance. Our benefactor/owner, China, is on top with the World's Largest Positive Current Account Balance. Simply that is because the China makes things and thus employs its population. China sells those things to us (the U.S.) but only because it props up the U.S. dollar in order to get it back via sales. It's a scheme that will eventually collapse.

The U.S., I seem to recall, once led the world in steel manufacturing, and, I believe automotive manufacturing as well. The US boasted a viable electronics industry but that is now found in Japan and elsewhere and throughout Asia. We lead in NONE of those areas today. China even sends IT pros to America where they took those jobs from Americans. The collapse of U.S. industry must be traced to Nixon's visit to China. I spoke with Bush Sr but could never pin the bastard down. I still want to know: what DEALS were cut and why?

The Chinese outsmarted both Bush and Nixon. The big factor is 'oil'. The U.S. used to produce it but reached a point at which 'secondary recovery' was no longer profitable. The vast oil fields of Texas are but a memory. The Chinese, by contrast, planned ahead.

The invasion of Iraq was never about Saddam's moribund or completely non-existent WMD program and less about fighting "International terrorism", a strawman! It was about gaining strategic control of Iraq's oil reserves for the purpose of propping up the dollar as the currency of choice in the critical international oil market.

If you doubt this, I suggest you consider the reasons Dick Cheney convened and conspired with his so-called 'Energy Task Force', a 'task force' which literally carved up the oil fields of Iraq between them. A war followed! A 'coincidence' if you are uniformed and/or naive, a 'conspiracy of rich men to procure their commodities' if you happen to be a realist and are likewise informed about the oil industry.

Why have U.S. officials allowed our nation to become a mere vassal state of China? I cannot think of an 'innocent' or productive reason Nixon by way of his surrogates (including Bush Sr) would want to 'export' our industries to China. Of the many FX of those deals was that the traditional 'Democratic' base --LABOR --was essentially put out of business, made irrelevant. I have called it GOP 'Scorched Earth' policy. Even I have trouble believing that EVEN Nixon/Bush/Reagan could be so evil.

Now --why does China own us? The trend began with overtures to China by Nixon, Bush. I spoke with both Bush Sr and Milton Friedman about this back in the late 70s. Neither man was coherent. The CIA'S World Fact Book confirms my fears though neither Bush nor Friedman wanted to talk about it. I was right. Friedman denied that the US was exporting jobs but the record proves that that is precisely the effect. In the meantime, China supports the dollar only because if it does so we? may buy the 'product' that they produce.

In the meantime, US productivity vis a vis the rest of the world has 'tanked' as evidenced by our prominent position on the very bottom of the CIA's World Fact Book. Last time I checked just one percent of the population owned more than some 90 percent of the rest of us combined. It is significant that as this result was coming about, US labor declined concurrently with US productivity. See the CIA'S World Fact Book which lists? the US having the world's largest NEGATIVE Current Acct Balance.

It should come as no surprise that American jobs are exported during GOP regimes. The official record proves that it has been going on for awhile now.

Job Growth Per Year Under Most Recent Presidents
Johnson   3.8%
Carter    3.1
Clinton   2.4
Kennedy   2.3
Nixon     2.3
Reagan    2.1
Bush      0.6
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey

I could forgive a lapse here and there, a random failure, an 'Act of God', bad luck or misfortune, perhaps, a witches curse in which only one party fucks up so consistently. But, alas, the more rational explanation is not to be found in our stars, witches brews, Tarot Cards or random incompetence. None of those are to be blamed. We screwed up.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Cassius, Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)

It is the fault of a system of our creation, in which the GOP, most prominently, has made a Faustian bargain with the war machine that has reduced the U.S. to the status of an impotent, bloated empire. We are, like Rome, whose currency was worthless and whose teeming masses could not find jobs but that of Legionaire. It was not glory but plunder that defined the fall of Rome. It is not glory but bankruptcy and vassal state status that defines the fall of the Great American Empire!

http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2010/09/why-china-owns-us.html