The sky is falling, but this current downturn isn't it. It's just another turn in the business cycle. Since the world has gone off the gold standard, there are no physical restrictions on what countries can do to correct financial imbalances. The only limit is the willingness of others to accept their money or credit.

The sky is commencing its fall IMHO but the problem does not lie in the US exchange rate. I agree with you that creditor nations share an unholy mutual interest in not seeing the dollar go entirely down the toilet.

That is not the problem.

The problem in the US is that the deficit-based monetary system is entirely - and probably permanently - fucked.

ie a pending shortage of money.

IMHO the only policies capable of avoiding the pending Depression are fiscal: a Green New Deal, for choice.

Unfortunately not one of the existing Presidential candidates shows any signs of applying any policies other than conventional monetary insanity.

Give it a few months, and lots of red lights will be showing....

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

yes it has, it was the sixties, and they've slept through the alarm.

oh yeah and jailed a quarter of the young black population, meanwhile, with imported crack and zero tolerance, guns as easy to score as a gram of mindfuck-rock.

they just built a tougher pressure cooker.

psst, that steam escaping from under the thingy in the lid, that's obama.

if it weren't for that...well, let's say it feels good to have the atlantic there.

it's kinda hilarious that the only tactic powerful enough to chill large crowds of unemployed, 'bitter' people, gathering for great sports events etc, might be to legalise puff.

less controversial than spraying them with 'anomie-gas' from helicopters or knocking them over with water cannon!

that's the last card they'll have to pull out of their ermine sleeves, lol.

go back home and, like good children, listen to your ipods, chill and dream up a better world, while we finish properly raping this one.

shurrup and watch the telly, basically...oh wait...

backs would really have to be up against the wall to make that happen, the pope would have to make it the eucharist in italy!

gonna fill those churches again though! what about it benedict?

do the math, you think waxen saints are going to pull them in for ever? why should the devil get all the best drugs?

grillo for pontiff!

"It's very hard to see what is kept invisible" Roseanne Barr