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August
25
2023

Realistically, How Strong Is America?
Paul Craig Roberts

America’s weakness is overlooked by investment analysts. Having offshored manufacturing, the US is import-dependent, and having weaponized the dollar Washington is causing foreign central banks to stop holding dollars as reserves.  The consequence is that the US has a rising issuance of debt to finance trade and budget deficits, but a declining supply of customers for that debt.  Either the Federal Reserve has to monetize the debt or interest rates will rise.

Note also that it appears there will be in about 4 months a large expansion of BRICS. Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have been invited to join.  I assume the Russians have the diplomatic sense not to invite someone unless they know they will accept. Otherwise, Russia will have set herself up for the Western media headline, “Country X refuses Russia’s invitation.”

In a slap down of Washington signifying the termination of the petrodollar, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said, “the special, strategic relations with the BRICS nations promotes common principles, most importantly the firm belief in the principle of respect for sovereignty, independence and non-interference in internal affairs.”

BRICS expansion will make the two largest South American countries members, and with the Saudis, Iranians, and UAE almost the entirety of Middle East oil goes into the Russian organization, which with Russia’s oil is essentially the world’s oil supply, and Egypt sits on the Suez Canal. China and India, the largest part of Asia, are already members. This suggests to me that the US dollar is headed for trouble and will need interest rate support.  If the dollar loses exchange value, the cost of imports will drive US inflation considerably higher. The worst inflations are always caused by currency decline. Gold investments make a lot of sense for Americans assuming that the criminals in Washington who are ruling us don’t confiscate them.

Keep in mind also that the indictments of Trump are completely phony.  If  white-hating black Democrat prosecutors and white-hating black Democrat juries convict Trump of these phony charges, political upheaval could result.  If the Americans simply accept the false conviction of an American president, they will fall into tyranny and no asset will be safe.  

The real American situation could be very different from what Wall Street thinks. Dollar problems could make the US an unsafe investment climate, and if we take account of the extreme efforts of the Biden regime, American universities, public school boards, and Woke media and corporations, such as Disney, BlackRock, Starbucks, and Budweiser, to demonize white Americans and infuse white American children with racial guilt, the United States might be the least safe place on earth for white people, even less safe than South Africa and Zimbabwe. Indeed, it seems some American cities already are.

It is not only that white confidence and white lives are at risk.  So are Americans’ civil liberty.  American law schools are in the hands of Woke ideologues who want “to reclaim America from constitutionalism.” Law schools such as Harvard and Yale teach that the US Constitution is undemocratic and racist and should  be abandoned.  Under the Woke regime the law schools and New York Times intend to impose, only the Woke and “official victims” would have rights.  https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/in-depth-law-schools-promote-idea-that-us-constitution-should-be-scrapped-5430884 

None of this reality is part of Wall Street’s world or stock and bond market valuations.

Hon. Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles and a columnist for Investor's Business Daily. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists.

He was Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy.

In 1987 the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor.

Dr. Roberts' latest books are The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with IPE Fellow Lawrence Stratton, and published by Prima Publishing in May 2000, and Chile: Two Visions - The Allende-Pinochet Era, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen Araujo, and published in Spanish by Universidad Nacional Andres Bello in Santiago, Chile, in November 2000. The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen LaFollette Araujo, was published by Oxford University Press in 1997. A Spanish language edition was published by Oxford in 1999. The New Colorline: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, was published by Regnery in 1995. A paperback edition was published in 1997. Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, co-authored with Karen LaFollette, was published by the Cato Institute in 1990. Harvard University Press published his book, The Supply-Side Revolution, in 1984. Widely reviewed and favorably received, the book was praised by Forbes as "a timely masterpiece that will have real impact on economic thinking in the years ahead." Dr. Roberts is the author of Alienation and the Soviet Economy, published in 1971 and republished in 1990. He is the author of Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation and Crisis, published in 1973 and republished in 1983. A Spanish language edition was published in 1974.

Dr. Roberts has held numerous academic appointments. He has contributed chapters to numerous books and has published many articles in journals of scholarship, including the Journal of Political Economy, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Law and Economics, Studies in Banking and Finance, Journal of Monetary Economics, Public Finance Quarterly, Public Choice, Classica et Mediaevalia, Ethics, Slavic Review, Soviet Studies, Rivista de Political Economica, and Zeitschrift fur Wirtschafspolitik. He has entries in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Economics and the New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance. He has contributed to Commentary, The Public Interest, The National Interest, Harper's, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Fortune, London Times, The Financial Times, TLS, The Spectator, Il Sole 24 Ore, Le Figaro, Liberation, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.

Dr. Roberts was educated at the Georgia Institute of Technology (B.S.), the University of Virginia (Ph.D.), the University of California at Berkeley and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College.

He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World, The Dictionary of International Biography, Outstanding People of the Twentieth Century, and 1000 Leaders of World Influence. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: [email protected]

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