The United States Government and its presstitute media have wasted time and energy creating hysteria over a non-existent “debt ceiling crisis.” Continue reading
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Author Archives: Paul Craig Roberts
Economic Armageddon
Washington’s response to a failed economy: More war
As the second decade of the 21st century began, the US economy had not recovered from the Great Recession that began in December 2007. Continue reading
Disastrous outcomes from an orchestrated crisis
With the world concerned about US financial credibility and the poor outlook for the US economy, now is not the time for the Republicans to grandstand on the public debt. The debt ceiling needed to be quietly raised. Instead, the Republicans started a fire and then threw gasoline on it, creating an inferno that could burn up the US social safety net or the US Treasury’s credit rating and the US dollar’s role as reserve currency or what remains of the separation of powers. Continue reading
The enemy is Washington
An economy destroyed
Recently, the bond rating agencies that gave junk derivatives triple-A ratings threatened to downgrade US Treasury bonds if the White House and Congress did not reach a deficit reduction deal and debt ceiling increase. The downgrade threat is not credible, and neither is the default threat. Both are make-believe crises that are being hyped in order to force cutbacks in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Continue reading
Conspiracies
In a June column, I concluded that “conspiracy theory” is a term applied to any fact, analysis, or truth that is politically, ideologically, or emotionally unacceptable. This column is about how common real conspiracies are. Every happening cannot be explained by a conspiracy, but conspiracies are common everyday events. Therefore, it is paradoxical that “conspiracy theory” has become a synonym for “unbelievable.” Continue reading
Hail Caesar
Although the financial press speculates about a downgrade of the US government’s credit rating and default if political impasse prevents the debt ceiling from being raised in time, I doubt anyone really believes that the debt ceiling will not be raised. It is just all a part of the political theater of the next couple of months. Continue reading
A Nobel economist says globalism is costly for Americans
Offshoring has destroyed the economy
These are discouraging times, but once in a blue moon a bit of hope appears. I am pleased to report on the bit of hope delivered in March of 2011 by Michael Spence, a Nobel prize-winning economist, assisted by Sandile Hlatshwayo, a researcher at New York University. The two economists have taken a careful empirical look at jobs offshoring and concluded that it has ruined the income and employment prospects for most Americans. Continue reading
Conspiracy theory
While we were not watching, conspiracy theory has undergone Orwellian redefinition. Continue reading
Does Amerika have a culture?
The culture of the United States is said to be a youth culture, which is defined in terms of entertainment: sex, rock music or its current equivalent, violent video games, sports, and TV reality shows. This culture has transformed the country and appears on the verge of transforming the rest of the world. There are even indications that secularized Arab and Iranian youth can’t wait to be liberated and to partake of this culture of porn-rock. Continue reading
How many SEALs died?
In a sensational and explosive TV report, the Pakistani News Agency has provided a live interview with an eye witness to the US attack on the alleged compound of Osama bin Laden. The eye witness, Mohammad Bashir, describes the event as it unfolded. Of the three helicopters, “there was only one that landed the men and came back to pick them up, but as he [the helicopter] was picking them up, it blew away and caught fire.” The witness says that there were no survivors, just dead bodies and pieces of bodies everywhere. “We saw the helicopter burning, we saw the dead bodies, then everything was removed and now there is nothing.” Continue reading
The establishment eliminates a threat
The police and the prostitute media have made it impossible for Dominique Strauss-Kahn to get a fair trial. Continue reading
Will Washington foment war between China and India?
What is Washington’s solution for the rising power of China? Continue reading
The Amerikan police state strides forward
The International Monetary Fund’s director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested May 15 in New York City on the allegation of an immigrant hotel maid that he attempted to rape her in his hotel room. A New York judge has denied Strauss-Kahn bail on the grounds that he might flee to France. Continue reading
Can Americans be unplugged?
The ongoing bin Laden saga
The ever-changing, ever-growing bin Laden story becomes ever more preposterous. The cowardly bin Laden is now the vain bin Laden, the terror mastermind who has nothing to do but to sit and watch videos of himself. Continue reading
Creating the bin Laden reality
I have heard one dozen times today (May 13) from media that the US killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. I heard it three times from National Public Radio, twice from the BBC, and from every TV and radio station I encountered, even those stations that play the rock and roll music of the 1950s and 1960s. The killing of bin Laden has now entered the legends of our time and, no doubt, the history books. Continue reading
The West is trapped in its own propaganda
One of the wishes that readers often express to me came true today (May 11). I was on the mainstream media. It was a program with a worldwide reach—the BBC World Service.[Listen here.] There were others on the program as well, and the topic was Hillary Clinton’s remarks (May 10) about the lack of democracy and human rights in China. Continue reading
Orwell wrote the script
China: The new Bin Laden
George Orwell, the pen name by which Eric Blair is known, had the gift of prophecy, or else blind luck. In 1949 in his novel, 1984, he described the Amerika of today and, I fear, also his native Great Britain, which is no longer great and follows Washington, licking the jackboot and submitting to Washington’s hegemony over England and Europe and exhausting itself financially and morally in order to support Amerikan hegemony over the rest of the world. Continue reading
Osama bin Laden’s second death
If today were April 1 and not May 2, we could dismiss as an April Fool’s joke Monday morning’s headline that Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight in Pakistan and quickly buried at sea. As it is, we must take it as more evidence that the US government has unlimited belief in the gullibility of Americans. Continue reading
The new colonialism goes both ways
What we are observing in Libya is the rebirth of colonialism. Only this time it is not individual European governments competing for empires and resources. The new colonialism operates under the cover of “the world community,” which means NATO and those countries that cooperate with it. Continue reading
Obama raises American hypocrisy to a higher level
What does the world think? Obama has been using air strikes and drones against civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and probably Somalia. In his March 28 speech, Obama justified his air strikes against Libya on the grounds that the embattled ruler, Gadhafi, was using air strikes to put down a rebellion. Continue reading
Our time of universal deceit needs an Orwell
If we were to be blessed with a 21st century George Orwell, he would coin a new “speak” to apply to “support the troops.” Would he call this “Deceptive Speak”? Or would he be more clever? Continue reading
Stealing from Social Security to pay for wars and bailouts
The American Empire is failing. A number of its puppet rulers are being overthrown by popular protests, and the almighty dollar will not even buy one Swiss franc, one Canadian dollar, or one Australian dollar. Despite the sovereign debt problem that threatens EU members Greece, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal, it requires $1.38 dollars to buy one euro, a new currency that was issued at parity with the US dollar. Continue reading
The February jobs mirage: BLS continues to overestimate job growth
The announcement on March 4 that 192,000 new jobs were created in February was greeted with a sigh of relief. But the number is just more smoke and mirrors, as I will show shortly. First, let’s pretend the jobs are real. What areas of the economy produced the jobs? Continue reading
The perfidy of government: Evidence v. denial
This essay is about three recent books that explain how we lost our economy, the Constitution and our civil liberties, and how peace lost out to war. Continue reading
Impeach Obama? A government shutdown imperils the power of Congress
Congress should think twice before forcing a government shutdown as the consequences could be the loss of the power of Congress to control spending through authorization and appropriation bills. Continue reading
War uber alles
The United States government cannot get enough of war. With Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s regime falling to a rebelling population, CNN reports that a Pentagon spokesman said that the U.S. is looking at all options from the military side. Continue reading
Obama’s FY 2012 budget is a tool of class war
Obama’s new budget is a continuation of Wall Street’s class war against the poor and middle class. Wall Street wasn’t through with us when the banksters sold their fraudulent derivatives into our pension funds, wrecked Americans’ job prospects and retirement plans, secured a $700 billion bailout at taxpayers’ expense while foreclosing on the homes of millions of Americans, and loaded up the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet with several trillion dollars of junk financial paper in exchange for newly created money to shore up the banks’ balance sheets. Continue reading
The shame of being an American
The United States government has overestimated the amount of shame that it and American citizens can live down. Continue reading
Has there been an Egyptian revolution?
I popped the champagne cork to celebrate the Egyptian people’s success in driving out of office the American puppet, Mubarak. However, as I wrote on February 1, Mubarak’s departure doesn’t guarantee that his successor will not find himself wearing the same American harness. As Gerald Celente puts it, “Meet the new boss, same as old boss.” Continue reading
A world overwhelmed by Western hypocrisy
Posted on July 19, 2011 by Paul Craig Roberts
Western institutions have become caricatures of hypocrisy. Continue reading →