I suspect that he's referring to the line about "abilities as an investigator". It comes across as a bit Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.

Now I have this wonderful image as you as Bogie in The Big Sleep throwing the line to Stewie as Nicholson in Chinatown.

Ah, nerd noir love!

CHENEY WANTS $100 A BARREL OIL

When we see a book like Paul Roberts’ The End of Oil being hyped by Lou Dobbs on
CNN, accompanied by a barrage of articles in the controlled corporate media on this
same line, we can see that an Anglo-American consensus in favor of $100 per barrel oil is
developing. The rationale is not hard to find, and has little to do with geological facts: the
US dollar is once again in terminal crisis, and oil at $100 per barrel would create a new
wave of artificial demand, making the dollar a little more attractive for oil producers and
others, and perhaps staving off for a few more years the end of its reserve currency and
posted price status. It is reported that the center of the agitation for $100 a barrel oil is,
not surprisingly, the Vice Presidential office of Dick Cheney, managed by the ruthless
neocon operative Lewis I. “Scooter” Libby.

As far as the substantive argument about oil reserves is concerned, it is clear that oil
should be used less and less as a fuel, and employed rather for petrochemicals. It is also
clear that the internal combustion engine is now a technology that is more than 100 years
old, and is due to be replaced. However, it is also clear that a growing world population
and, hopefully, increased levels of world economic development will require greater
energy sources. Every fixed array of human technology in world history has always
defined certain components of the biosphere as usable resources, with the inevitable
corollary that these resources would one day be exhausted. Under such conditions, the
great imperative of human evolution cannot be retrenchment and austerity, but rather
innovation, invention, discovery, and progress. If existing energy sources are insufficient,
then science will have to find new ones, without ideological preclusions. Solar energy
gathered outside the ionosphere in earth orbit might be one future solution. The one thing
we must not do is to leap from a rising oil price to coerced population reduction, since
that represents the core program of the Malthusian Anglo-American oligarchy, and has
been in place as a policy goal since Kissinger’s infamous NSSM 2002 and the Global
2000/Global Futures campaigns of the Muskie State Department under the disastrous
Carter administration.

The pervasive oil and raw material grabs of today’s world suggest nothing more than
world economic breakdown and imminent world war. In 1941, Japan’s main war aim was
to secure the oil of the Dutch East Indies. Hitler’s panzer divisions in Operation
Barbarossa were pointed towards Baku, which was Stalin’s oil aorta. Stalin’s own attack
plan aimed at Ploesti in Romania, Germany’s sole source of oil. Each of these plans sought to deny oil to an adversary and procure it for their authors as a means of winning a war. Much the same dynamic is afoot today, partially under the cover of “peak oil.”

US OLIGARCHICAL CONSENSUS FOR TERRORISM

During the 1990s, the US oligarchy came to a consensus regarding the need for synthetic
terrorism to preserve its system of rule under conditions of increasing economic and
financial breakdown. This consensus was elaborated through commissions associated
with names like Hart and Rudman, Gillmore, Rumsfeld, and the New York Council on
Foreign Relations. Terrorism, the oligarchy concluded, was needed to maintain the
cohesion of the hierarchical system, and the legitimacy of irrational domination. This was
in line with the Carl Schmitt “enemy image” thesis, as elaborated more recently by
Samuel Huntington. Terrorism was also needed as an instrument of maintaining Anglo-
American world domination, especially to wage oblique warfare to isolate, weaken, and
contain powers like Russia, China, Japan, and some others who were too strong to be
openly attacked on the Iraqi model. This type of terrorism was a continuation of the
NATO geopolitical terrorism, whose goal was to maintain the Yalta division of the world
against the self-asserting and self-liberating tendencies of countries like Germany, Italy,
and others. Terrorism would serve as well to prevent threatened defections from the
dollar zone, and shore up the battered greenback as the world’s residual reserve currency.

Terrorism would also help to consolidate US-UK control over oil, strategic metals, and
other critical raw materials, in part by weakening and destabilizing economic nationalist
or pro-development third world regimes.

9/11 must rather be viewed as a symptom of a perhaps insoluble crisis inside the US
political and economic system. Whether or not the crisis of the 1990s represents the first
phase of the terminal crisis of the United States as presently constituted remains to be
seen; by contrast, there can be little doubt that the post-1945 hegemony of the US dollar
as the world’s reserve currency is now ending, and that is more than enough to generate
the cataclysmic events observed.

Complacent and superficial commentators like David Brooks have attempted to portray
the 1990s as a time of idyllic tranquility, when the polyanna US failed to pay attention to
the gathering storm of terrorism “out there.” In reality, the 1990s were a period of
aggravated financial and economic breakdown and of severe if masked tensions among
the US, China, the USSR, and other states. The United States devastated Iraq at the
beginning of the decade, destroying the civilian infrastructure with the cowardly and
duplicitous “bomb now, die later” policy. The US said at the time that coalition aircraft
had flown 120,000 sorties over Iraq. If each sortie had killed just one Iraqi, that would
already have been 120,000 dead; the reality was probably three or four times greater. The
unspeakable suffering in Iraq was made much worse by the US-backed and UN-enforced
economic sanctions of 1990-2003, which, in violation of all relevant international law,
banned the import of food and medicine completely until certain limited purchases were
allowed under the UN oil for food program in the later 1990s. The estimates of the
number of Iraqi victims of these murderous sanctions vary widely, but it seems likely that
the number of fatalities involved is between 500,000 and 1,000,000, with infants,
children, and elderly people – all non-combatants – accounting for the majority. Some
estimates take the death toll above 2 million Iraqis. When once asked about this policy,
Madeleine Albright replied that in her opinion it was “worth it” to contain Iraq. During
the 1990s, the present writer warned repeatedly that the economic sanctions were sowing
a harvest of hate among Iraqis with which the US would one day have to reckon. The
harvesting of that accumulated hate began in 2003, with a vengeance. All this was
compounded by the unilateral imposition by the US and UK of no-fly zones in northern
and southern Iraq, which involved the almost daily bombing of Iraqi targets during the
entire decade of the 1990s. The Gulf crisis of 1990-91 disrupted the regional economy
and led to the collapse of Somalia, where the lame duck Bush intervened just after
Thanksgiving 1992. This was billed as a humanitarian mission, but US political meddling
led to resistance by certain groups, and an orgy of gratuitous killing of black-skinned
Arabs resulted.

I know, I just like the image. This is more All the Presidents' Men, anyway. I'd be very happy to settle for being the Dude.

THE 1990s: DECADE OF US FINANCIAL CRISIS

During these years the US was lurching from one financial crisis to the next. For a full
account of this process, see my Surviving the Cataclysm (1999). The entire energy of the
system was expended on impossible efforts to shore up the speculative edifices of stocks,
bonds, and derivatives, which were always on the brink of panic collapse. The specter of
some bankruptcy or panic setting off a systemic crisis, the implosion of the entire world
dollar-based system, was a constant threat during the 1990s. US financial policy makers
have been caught for decades in an impossible predicament. If they lower interest rates to
keep the domestic system solvent, hot money will flee abroad, tending to collapse the
overvalued dollar. If they raise interest rates to make the dollar more attractive, domestic
bankruptcies begin to multiply. Fed governor Paul Volcker’s worst nightmare had been
an accelerating dollar collapse which could not be stopped. The stock market crash of
1987 was in reality sandwiched in between two dollar crises which had the potential of
sinking the battered and bloated greenback. That same stock market crash of 1987
brought on a collapse of the commercial real estate market in many cities, causing the
bankruptcy of real estate firms like Olympia and York in 1992. As the real estate market
collapsed, it undermined the main US money center banks. In 1990 the Bank of New
England went bankrupt. Just as bankrupt from a technical point of view, but too big to
fail because of the economic and political repercussions, were the twin giants of US
banking, Chase Manhattan and Citibank. In July 1990, bank analyst Dan Brumbaugh
stated on the ABC network program Nightline that not only Citicorp, but also Chase
Manhattan, Chemical Bank, Manufacturers Hanover and Bankers Trust were all already
insolvent. During September 1990, there was a near electronic panic run on Citibank,
while Chase Manhattan, and other New York money center banks were also under
increasing pressure. Around Thanksgiving 1990, Citibank was quietly seized by federal
regulators who then proceeded to run it for more than a year; the controlled media were
silent to prevent panic runs, although they did not wholly succeed. In August 1991, Rep.
John Dingell (D-Michigan) observed that Citibank was “technically insolvent” and
“struggling to survive.” Lloyd’s of London also defaulted around this time.

In the
background, Russia had lost two thirds of her productive activity as the result of IMF
shock therapy. By the middle of the decade, former Secretary of the Treasury Brady
reported that there was $1 trillion per day in currency speculation alone. Much of this was
related to a new, parasitical, and highly unstable form of financial vehicle – derivatives.

Felix Rohatyn of Lazard Freres admitted in the spring of 1994 that he was nervous about
the derivatives crisis “because the genie is out of the bottle and could touch off a financial
nuclear chain reaction, spreading around the world with the speed of light.” By the end of
the year Orange County, California had gone bankrupt because of derivatives dealings,
reporting a two-billion dollar loss. But that was peanuts. In January 1995 Mexico went
bankrupt, bringing the world banking and financial system to about 48 hours from a total
world-wide meltdown; at stake here was implicitly the huge mass of debt owed by the
developing countries, which had reached $1.6 trillion. The tequila crisis required a $50
billion bailout which was thrown together in extremis by the Clinton administration.

Camdessus of the IMF noted with much alarm on February 2, 1995 that “Mexico was in
imminent danger of having to resort to exchange controls. Had that happened, it would
have triggered a true world catastrophe.” A few weeks later Barings Bank of London, one
of the world’s oldest financial institutions, went belly up, and contrived to blame the
default on a rogue trader.

clocker bob wrote:You know, Stewie, the fact that you would even ask this question reflects poorly on your abilities as an investigator, which are critical to your credibility as a defender of the official story.

WTF.

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1998: RUSSIA AND LTCM TAKE WORLD TO BRINK

In 1997 the Asian contagion crisis began in earnest; it was in reality another crisis of the
world dollar-based system. This led on August 17, 1998 to the default and state
bankruptcy of Russia, with a series of banking panics wiping out the savings of the
middle class. Russian economic reform, better known as IMF shock therapy, had been the
great international financier project of the first half of the 1990s, and it ended in dust and
ashes. Anti-oligarchical Russian economist Tatyana Koryagina observed around this time
that “the world economy has reached the point where – if economic liberalism is a deadend
street, it has hit the concrete wall at the end of the street. This liberalism will explode
the entire economy and then there will be global chaos, which will be economic fascism.

A ‘New World Order’ is economic fascism, when a huge number of people are thrown
into desperate poverty, and only the speculators make any profit. We are on the verge of a
particular sort of anti-financier revolution – a revolution against financial speculators.”
(Tarpley 1999 chapter 1)

When Russian blew up, real panic spread around the world. The newspaper that
expresses the views of the Swiss financial community noted with consternation: “With
the ruble collapse and the de facto state bankruptcy of Russia, the crisis which has been
boiling for a year is now threatening to turn into a global GAU” – Größten aller Unfälle,
or worst possible catasrophe, wrote this paper. “Like dominoes, one currency after
another, one financial market after another, are falling all over the globe. The specter of a
worldwide recession is spreading.” (Neue Züricher Zeitung, August 29, 1998)

The Russian state bankruptcy in turn provoked the failure of Long Term Capital
Management (LTCM), a giant Connecticut hedge fund with close ties to the US Federal
Reserve. With LTCM, the world banking system was once more on the brink of systemic
meltdown. Only a crony capitalist bailout of LTCM’s creditors by Greenspan prevented
the immediate collapse of the US money center banks, the US securities markets, and the
reeling US dollar. LTCM had posed the immediate danger of a chain-reaction bankruptcy
of the entire world banking system, leading to financial and monetary chaos. The New
York Fed, in the person of its President William McDonough, – undertook an emergency
bailout as lender of last resort for the syndicate of big banks that were scrambling to save
themselves by taking over LTCM, which was bankrupt with a reported $1 trillion in
derivatives outstanding. Long Term Capital Management was leveraged at 500:1, but
what of that? J.P. Morgan was leveraged at over 600:1, with $6.2 trillion in derivatives as
against just $11 billion in equity capital. The story was broken by David Faber of CNBC
on the afternoon of Wednesday, September 23, 1998. Within a few days, Union Bank of
Switzerland announced a $685 million loss, and Dresdner Bank said it was $144 million
to the downside. LTCM’s total loss was about $4 billion. If the US banks had gone under,
the FDIC would have had to pay depositors, and the taxpayers would soon have had to
bail out the FDIC. Between August 29 and October 19, currency in circulation grew at an
annual rate of 16.4%, and the M3 money supply grew at 17% annually. Greenspan was
using system repurchase agreements, coupon passes, and open market operations to churn
out liquidity. The dollar softened and the gold price spiked upward: there were reports
that central banks were replenishing their gold stocks in the face of the hurricane.

Between late September and early October, the dollar managed to fall ¥ 10 (or, in forex
jargon, “ten big figures”) in just 10 days. In August and September 1998, the world
finance oligarchy had been forced to look into the glowing bowels of Hell. The halfmillion
bankers and fund managers who are the chief beneficiaries of the globaloney
system had felt the icy breath of panic on their necks. But their near-death experience had
not impelled them to consider any serious reforms.

By the end of 1998, the debt superpower of Brazil was on the brink of default, once more
threatening to bring down the banks of Wall Street. George Soros demanded that the
banks be protected by a “wall of money,” and Greenspan complied. Using the pretext of
providing liquidity to cushion the shocks of the transition from 1999 to 2000, when
multiple computer breakdowns were feared, Greenspan began to print fresh US dollars at
an unprecedented rate. Much of this new cash rushed into the NASDAQ stock market,
where it stoked the merging dot com bubble. But by the early months of 2000, it was
clear that the dot com companies still had no profits, and their high burn rate of cash on
hand spelled the end of the bubble. In a spectacular decline that did not stabilize until the
middle of 2002, the NASDAQ lost a breathtaking 75% of its value. Many hedge funds,
banks, and insurance companies were on the verge of imploding, but Greenspan kept
pumping new dollars to stave off chain reaction bankruptcies. Interest rates reached new
historical lows, and oil producers began to consider dumping the dollar in favor of the
more stable euro, which was now available as an alternative. A housing bubble and a
bond market bubble now emerged in the US. Greenspan’s response was to tout the
“wealth effect,” meaning that the housing bubble was raising the fictitious value of
private homes, allowing home owners to take out second mortgages and use the cash to
speculate in the stock market. The bond bubble began to falter in the spring of 2004. In
the meantime the entire system had been back to the brink in late 2001 and early 2002
with the declaration of a formal debt moratorium – a payment halt – by Argentina.

Derivative financial instruments were always close to detonating a systemic crisis; there
is some evidence that a derivatives disaster of the first magnitude had overtaken Citibank
around the middle of 2001, but was papered over by Federal Reserve loans under the
cover of 9/11. Citibank was forced to sell Travelers Insurance for $4 billion, apparently to
raise cash to plug a considerable hole.

Towards the end of the decade, Eisuke Sakakibara of the Japanese Finance Ministry a
well-known official who had earned the nickname of “Mr. Yen” in the world press, had
summed up the problems of the US-UK system as follows: “… I think the financial
system we have today is inherently unstable. We need to set up a new system to stabilize
financial markets. Otherwise, the repetition of crisis after crisis . . . is going to result in a
major meltdown of the world financial system.” – (Japanese Finance Ministry, January
22, 1999)

clocker bob wrote:NOVA is old news, and so are 9/11 threads on this forum.

Agreed.


Done here.

END OF DOLLAR HEGEMONY?

Perhaps most serious for the Anglo-American system of world domination was the
impact of these events on the fate of the US dollar. By virtue of the Bretton Woods
agreement of 1944, the dollar had replaced the British pound as the world’s reserve
currency. The Bretton Woods system disintegrated in 1971-73, and we are now living
among its rubble, but the primacy of the dollar has remained unchallenged. This means
that most world trade was and still is conducted in dollars, including Eurodollars based in
London. The prices for the main raw materials, and especially oil, are quoted in US
dollars. If Europe wants Russian or Saudi oil, it must pay in dollars, thus creating demand
for a currency which otherwise might find few buyers, since the US produces so little to
sell. This allows the US-UK banking community to skim 5-10% off all world trade by
providing import-export financing; this used to be called invisible earnings. More
important still, if the dollar is the only way you can buy oil, then whoever controls the
dollars – meaning the US – will in effect control the oil, no matter whether it is
nationalized or not, no matter who formally owns it. The role of the dollar in the posted
priced for Gulf crude is thus the central symbol of the world dominance of the dollar. And the dollar
is the nerve and fist of US world domination.

As an anonymous expert quoted by William Clark correctly pointed out in early 2003:

“The Federal Reserve’s greatest nightmare is that OPEC will switch its international
transactions from a dollar standard to a euro standard. Iraq actually made this switch in
November 2000 (when the euro was worth around 80 cents), and has actually made off
like a bandit considering the dollar’s steady depreciation against the euro.
(http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CLA302A.html) The dollar declined 17% against the
euro in 2002.

IRAQ

For Iraq, the decision to quit the dollar for the euro was an explicitly political one. Iraqi
Finance Minister Hekmat Ibrahim al-Azzawi announced the move by saying: “The dollar
is the currency of an enemy state, and must be abandoned for other currencies, including
the euro,” Azzawi said. The Iraqi central bank announced in October 2000 that it had
begun to buy European currencies. (AFP via energy24.com, October 12, 2000) Saddam
Hussein stopped accepting dollars for oil in November 2000, and at the same time shifted
ten billion dollars on deposit in the UN oil for food fund into the euro. Sure enough, the
2003 US occupation regime put Iraqi oil exports back on a dollar, rather than a euro,
standard. The US invasion also helped to intimidate any nation which might have been
considering switching to the euro. Since late 2001, the dollar was steadily declining and
the euro was steadily gaining, with periodic plateaus, so those who chose the euro were
rewarded to the tune of 20% or more. Bush’s second axis of evil country, North Korea,
switched to the euro on December 2, 2002. Here the economic impact was limited, but
the political symbolism was still quite strong.