The US now China's bitch

Subject: The US now China's bitch Mon Oct 13, 2008 7:23 pm

I promise, this will be my last financial meltdown, end-of-the-world entry until at least Thursday. I am sorry, but I am a hopeless crack whore for this story. I just can't get enough of it.

So, here's a deal, just let me write this one last blog and I promise to do nothing but dumbarse funny entries for the rest of the month.

You see, the thing is, I can't help but go back to that discussion we had a few weeks ago about the return of history. How spookily prescient did we all turn out to be? Because beyond the shock and awe of the stock market bloodbath and bank system supernova, history is already upon us.

I read two pieces yesterday that really slammed it home to me. Waleed Aly's beautifully written op-ed about the nature of 'the beast' lurking beneath or perhaps behind all of this turmoil. And John Garnaut's equally disturbing explanation of how America has connived at the destruction of its own world order in a such a fashion as to cede to China the power to shape our future history.

Shareware lite versions? Aly makes the simple but undeniable point of a true financial disaster that "in the long run it brings down ideas, recasts societies and redistributes power in a way that resonates far beyond its lifespan." He points, as many others have, to the effect of the Great Depression on the politics of Europe and the ensuing World War.

Garnaut just as chillingly explains how the world's greatest democracy pawned itself to the world's most powerful dictatorship. "For 60 years the US has shaped the global financial system and occasionally made threats to get what it wants. In August a new era began. Now China stands between the US and national bankruptcy." He goes on to explain that it is not in China's interest to see its investment tank, but does anyone seriously imagine that America is going to have the sort of strategic leverage it enjoyed over the last 50 years, through the next 50?

Beijing owns Washington now, and I can't help but wonder how the hell they're ever going to get themselves out of hock.

LNK

The US now China's bitch

The US now China's bitch

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