The huge computer companies, like HP and Dell get copy-cat products made in China and sent from there around the world, for which the scrape a few percent for the right to use their logo.

The oil companies make sweetheart deals to siphon petroleum from around the world and deliver it to the rest of the world (except, typically, from where they drain it from), for which they scrap a huge percentage.

The banking cartels who siphon the american public's money so that they can play with it for a while and siphon off a huge percentage.

These provocations then require that the USians subsidize the enormous "need" for keeping a hegemony over their trading areas with a military that is larger than everyone else's combined, while selling more arms around the world than everyone else combined. (I wonder if that is a coincidence.)

All that to say, the imperial core gets money to perpetuate the game, and an  ever smaller percent of ruthless rich get a steady flow of profits, but there are few who get anything else but scrapes.

Oh. That's what 'core' means. Uhm, I guess I just made the point you made earlier and much more succinctly. Sorry. I can't give you back the minute you spent reading this.

Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.

Frank Delaney ~ Ireland