More to Come…

by Jeff Thomas, International Man:

Years ago, when visiting the US, I’d often watch late night television. Just prior to each interval, in order to ensure that viewers would sit through the adverts, the show would run a panel that said, “More to Come.”

This, of course, was effective, as the viewer would be anticipating that the best part of the programme would come in a later segment. He would then be more likely to continue watching.

Today, we’re looking at the reverse of that situation. The programme we’re watching is The Decline and Fall of the American Empire and those who recognize the decline are viewing with ever-increasing trepidation the developments that are unfolding there. Even those of us who are not American and don’t live there are glued to our screens, as we’re aware that we’re viewing the early stages of a collapse that promises to be the greatest social, political, and economic event that we’re likely to see in our lifetimes.

Following World War Two, the US was in a boom beyond anything the world had ever seen. The Americans came to the war late, after having built up their manufacturing capacity for war dramatically, at the expense of the Allied powers in Europe. And they achieved this, essentially for free. It was paid for with the gold from the vaults of the European allies. After the war, Europe was trashed, and it would take decades for them to get on their feet again. Meanwhile, the US had been going flat-out in production, had first-rate modern factories, and, most importantly, held the majority of the world’s gold.

The 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement ensured that the US dollar would become the world’s default currency and would later become the petrodollar, ensuring American hegemony over much of the rest of the world.

There can be no doubt that, in the first decades after the war, the US had an amazing run and was, arguably, one of the best places to live in the world.

But, unfortunately, as so often happens, American political and industry leaders became full of themselves and couldn’t resist going out on a limb to gain even more for themselves. In so doing, they turned the US from the world’s foremost creditor nation into the world’s foremost debtor nation. Worse, when they reached this unprecedented point, they opted to just keep going.

Worse still, it would appear that today’s leaders are aware that the mother of all bubbles that they’ve created is going to pop sometime in the near future, as they’re preparing themselves for the mother of all pushbacks from the populace when the crashes come.

The FBI, CIA, NSA, and a host of other authorities have either been created or expanded, allowing the creation of the world’s foremost police state. And, beginning in 2001 with the Patriot Act, they have created a host of laws to assign authority to any of those bodies to exert ever-increasing control over the population. Capital controls, migration controls, higher taxes, confiscation of deposits in banks, and quite a bit more have been passed in legislation, including the ability to declare the US in its entirety to be a “battle zone,” through which habeas corpus and the court system can be suspended nationally.

Yipes. (Or blimey, depending on where you’re from.)

At this point, any American who’s paying attention could be forgiven if he’s genuinely frightened as to where his government is going with all this.

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