Cheney betting against the dollar

by **jingofever** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 2:59 pm

<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney07052006.html">www.counterpunch.org/whit...52006.html</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Is Cheney Betting On Economic Collapse? By MIKE WHITNEY Wouldn't you like to know where Dick Cheney puts his money? Then you'd know whether his "deficits don't matter" claim is just baloney or not. Well, as it turns out, Kiplinger Magazine ran an article based on Cheney's financial disclosure statement and, sure enough, found out that the VP is lying to the American people for the umpteenth time. Deficits do matter and Cheney has invested his money accordingly. The article is called "Cheney's betting on bad news" and provides an account of where Cheney has socked away more than $25 million. While the figures may be estimates, the investments are not. According to Tom Blackburn of the Palm Beach Post, Cheney has invested heavily in "a fund that specializes in short-term municipal bonds, a tax-exempt money market fund and an inflation protected securities fund. The first two hold up if interest rates rise with inflation. The third is protected against inflation." Cheney has dumped another (estimated) $10 to $25 million in a European bond fund which tells us that he is counting on a steadily weakening dollar. So, while working class Americans are loosing ground to inflation and rising energy costs, Darth Cheney will be enhancing his wealth in "Old Europe". As Blackburn sagely notes, "Not all bad news' is bad for everybody." This should put to rest once and for all the foolish notion that the "Bush Economic Plan" is anything more than a scam aimed at looting the public till. The whole deal is intended to shift the nation's wealth from one class to another. It's also clear that Bush-Cheney couldn't have carried this off without the tacit approval of the thieves at the Federal Reserve who engineered the low-interest rate boondoggle to put the American people to sleep while they picked their pockets. Reasonable people can dispute that Bush is "intentionally" skewering the dollar with his lavish tax cuts, but how does that explain Cheney's portfolio? It doesn't. And, one thing we can say with metaphysical certainty is that the miserly Cheney would never plunk his money into an investment that wasn't a sure thing. If Cheney is counting on the dollar tanking and interest rates going up, then, by Gawd, that's what'll happen. The Bush-Cheney team has racked up another $3 trillion in debt in just 6 years. The US national debt now stands at $8.4 trillion dollars while the trade deficit has ballooned to $800 billion nearly 7% of GDP. This is lunacy. No country, however powerful, can maintain these staggering numbers. The country is in hock up to its neck and has to borrow $2.5 billion per day just to stay above water. Presently, the Fed is expanding the money supply and buying back its own treasuries to hide the hemorrhaging from the public. Its utter madness. Last month the trade deficit climbed to $70 billion. More importantly, foreign central banks only purchased a meager $47 billion in treasuries to shore up our ravenous appetite for cheap junk from China. Do the math! They're not investing in America anymore. They are decreasing their stockpiles of dollars. We're sinking fast and Cheney and his pals are manning the lifeboats while the public is diverted with gay marriage amendments and "American Celebrity". The American manufacturing sector has been hollowed out by cutthroat corporations who've abandoned their country to make a fast-buck in China or Mexico. The $3 trillion housing (equity) bubble is quickly loosing air while the anemic dollar continues to sag. All the signs indicate that the economy is slowing at the same time that energy prices continue to rise. This is the onset of stagflation; the dreaded combo of a slowing economy and inflation. Did Americans really think they'd be spared the same type of economic colonization that has been applied throughout the developing world under the rubric of "neoliberalism"? Well, think again. The American economy is barrel-rolling towards earth and there are only enough parachutes for Cheney and the gang. The country has lost 3 million jobs from outsourcing since Bush took office; more than 200,000 of those are the high-paying, high-tech jobs that are the life's-blood of every economy. Consider this from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) June edition of Foreign Affairs, the Bible of globalists and plutocrats: "Between 2000 and 2003 alone, foreign firms built 60,000manufacturing plants in China. European chemical companies, Japanese carmakers, and US industrial conglomerates are all building factories in China to supply export markets around the world. Similarly, banks, insurance companies, professional-service firms, and IT companies are building R&D and service centers in India to support employees, customers, and production worldwide." ("The Globally integrated Enterprise" Samuel Palmisano, Foreign Affairs page 130) "60,000 manufacturing plants" in 3 years?!? "Banks, insurance companies, professional-service firms, and IT companies"? No job is safe. American elites and corporate tycoons are loading the boats and heading for foreign shores. The only thing they're leaving behind is the insurmountable debt that will be shackled to our children into perpetuity and the carefully arranged levers of a modern police-surveillance state. Welcome to Bush's 21st Century gulag; third world luxury in a Guantanamo-type setting. Take another look at Cheney's investment strategy; it tells the whole ugly story. Interest rates are going up, the middle class is going down, and the poor dollar is headed for the dumpster. The country is not simply teetering on the brink of financial collapse; it is being thrust headfirst by the blackguards in office and their satrapies at Federal Reserve. Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com<hr></blockquote>

by **nopui** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 10:28 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>The $3 trillion housing (equity) bubble is quickly loosing air while the anemic dollar continues to sag.<hr></blockquote> While I agree with the premise of the article, I can't get past the idiocy of that sentence. Is the author writing for the general AOL public, who would accept that as correct, or what?

by **anothershamus** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 11:57 pm

you notice that cheney has a bunker at his house, why be suprised at a money vault (a la scrooge mcduck) to secure his wealth (metaphoricly speaking). he is financially responsible to himself but not to the people who elected him.

by **Gouda** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 5:47 am

Whitney is not my favorite of the new army of anti-Bush Co. pundits. Occasionally reading his stuff over the last few years, I have to say he comes off like a broken record, one that was recorded especially for W's reign. There is rarely any historical precedent or depth imparted in his articles. About this one: I get the impression he is studying what the oligarchs are doing with their money so that he himself knows where best to invest. This article reads like a chastised financial advisor collecting leftover tips from the cold basement of a banking house. The mice and the janitors are feeding him gossip and other tidbits from upstairs, scraps on which he seems to be perversely dependent. Do I detect a tinge of envy? <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Wouldn't you like to know where Dick Cheney puts his money?<hr></blockquote> Up his ass. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Then you'd know whether his "deficits don't matter" claim is just baloney or not.<hr></blockquote> Nope, knew that long before. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>This should put to rest once and for all the foolish notion that the "Bush Economic Plan" is anything more than a scam aimed at looting the public till. The whole deal is intended to shift the nation's wealth from one class to another.<hr></blockquote> Again, there's that pesky notion that this is all something new, recently brought on by Bush/Cheney economic policy. The Whole Deal was always intended to steal, funnel and concentrate the wealth of the earth and its people. He makes a few token references to elites, the Fed, and Neoliberal policy, hinting that this is something greater than Bush/Cheney Inc., but then he relapses right back into his lopsided shtick: <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Welcome to Bush's 21st Century gulag; third world luxury in a Guantanamo-type setting.<hr></blockquote> thus cutting us off from a wider, deeper, more meaningful picture of The Situation. Edit # 2: The more I read that 3rd-world luxury sentence, the more it annoys me. Is he lamenting that Bush and Cheney are running off with his former life of Luxury? Damn, now we are being forced down to "3rd-world" standards. No luxury there. No luxury = prison. This kind of thinking is so loaded, elitist and skewed in itself, I do not know where to start. He is a prisoner of this thinking. Unless I am totally misunderstanding him. He seems to be either confused/brainwashed or he is subtly planting cues to confuse or brainwash us. His emphases seem to want us to connect to notions that a) this (once fine) economic system is being subverted, thus b) this system would not be so bad if c) Bush/Cheney Inc had not got a hold of it. My humble advice is to get YOUR money OUT of the system. For now, as pragmatically as possible for you and your family, I'd say get thee out of multinational banks (instead, find a community credit union) get out of all stock and bond markets, divest from the orwellian capitalist system and re-invest, to the extent that you can, in community initiatives and support your favorite writers, bloggers, journalists, activist/artist individuals and groups, activist funds, open-source and other projects, good indy candidates for office, and you add to the list... Oh yes, and disconnect from Verizon, Comcast, Mediacom, AT&T and other merging media conglomerates. Probably a good idea to secure a piece of property or land as well, and/or help someone you care about do that. Others may want to stay liquid and at the ready. To hell with gold, damn european bonds, screw the NYSE, Deutche Bourse, Euronext, NASDAQ. Your investments there will only continue the trend built into the system you do not like. edited for spelling Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=gouda@rigorousintuition>Gouda</A> at: 7/6/06 4:08 am

by **Gouda** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 6:21 am

Yet, with all I have said about the Whitney piece, it would be dishonest of me to say that I am not interested in where Cheney is putting his money. Of course we want to know that, but I think only as part of a forming a larger picture guided by intellectual curiosity and a perpspective for justice. A portrait of Cheney as poster child for a fascist capitalist system. Whitney just seems limited to a narrow pseudo-economic, quasi-political mudslinging, with some kind of financial steak shriveling on the grill. Me, not so much. I watch markets and trends (if only for educative purposes) as much as I try to untangle myself from them. To be in something but not of it, as much as possible. We also have to be careful that this may be partial disinformation. I would not use Whitney as the only source.

Cheney betting against the dollar

Cheney betting against the dollar

Re: Cheney betting against the dollar

Re: Cheney betting against the dollar

Re: Cheney betting against the dollar

Re: Cheney betting against the dollar

Who is online