NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/6319

Text File | 1992-09-07 | 5.3 KB | 112 lines

Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!rich
From: [e-mail] (Hank Roth)
Subject: plots
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Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 03:33:33 GMT
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COUPS, COUNTER-COUPS, AND THE CIA
       by *Hank Roth

It seems too convenient that the system of USSR bureaucratic
Communism joined the world market just at a time, when the U.S.
was (is) in the throes of its own disasterous economic crisis.

Our national debt tripled during the years under Reagan and
Bush, from over 900 billion to more than 2 1/2 trillion. The
prosperity of the 80s, that bred a generation of Yuppies, was
based on borrowing from our future, which is now. How do we pay
that debt?

Our investment in the infrastructure of this country has fallen
drastically. Drive through downtown of any large city today and
see the deterioration. Social services have been practically
eliminated. There is massive crime. Bankruptcies have hit an all
time high; in the last year, almost a million personal and close
to 80,000 businesses have filed and many just closed their doors
and abandoned those businesses without filing so they are not
apart of those statistics.  Unemployment benefits have run out
and the chronic unemployed are still unemployed. Many others are
working at temporary jobs and jobs without benefits. There is no
security in the job market. Middle age workers have been released
from jobs without pensions and few prospects for their future.
Confidence is waning. In "Day of Reckoning," ("88") the author,
Benjamin M. Friedman wrote, "We are living well by running up our
debt and selling off our assets."

We have essentually two out of control government debts, the
money borrowed to pay or finance our budget deficit, and the debt
for the money obtained abroad to finance our trade deficit. And
we have personal debt, not least of which is credit card debt.
Like the government, we have been borrowing against our future,
which increasingly looks very bleak.

Reagan claimed we would grow out of this abyss of high deficits.
It hasn't happened. His program of cutting taxes to the rich
(Kemp-Roth legislation) didn't stimulate more capital
investments and it didn't "trickle down." The poor got poorer,
the rich got richer and the middle class is disappearing.  Even
his VP, Bush called it "voodoo economics." His own budget
director, David Stockman, discredited "supply-side" economics in
his book.

The need to service our huge foreign debt caused by an
accumulating trade deficit, means to us a reduction in our own
rate of consumption, and consequently lowering of our standard of
living. Eventually we will run out of foreign lendors. We won't
be able to sell off our assets, nor should we. The dollar will
eventually fall and no amount of manipulation will stabilize it.

Countries are out-competing us with their exploited cheap labor.
Products are cheaper when obtained from abroad. Our own
industries have been moving to Third World countries to take
advantage of this cheap labor, forcing up unemployment here. We
now obtain cameras, TVs, most of our computers, air conditioners,
autos, all kinds of electronics, toys, cloths, etc. from abroad.
Our manufacturing base, which made this country strong is
disappearing.

We now have a policy of so-called "Free Trade" that encourages
trade with countries where labor costs are way below ours, so
our own products cannot compete and our workers lose their jobs
or are foced to work for less than liveable wages. Businesses
can't compete either and are forced out of business. Capitalism
becomes manic-depressive. The mania of good years becomes the
depression of bad years. In psychiatric terms, it is sick.

A world wide contraction will also reduce our standard of living
even more and if we continue to mortgage the future, a few bad
calculations could conceivably turn into a pair of recessions, as
we did in 80 and again in 81-82. A world-wide depression is a
possibility.

To save our standard of living requires foreign markets for
American goods----such as the USSR and Eastern Europe. And it
appears that we may have a respite from our crisis with these
new markets opening up vis-a-vis their new shift in economics.
(In time, however they will also become competitors--as did
Japan and West Germany)

Due to the absolute economic need for new markets for our products,
we surely have had forces at work destabilizing countries under
communism. We did these things when I worked for the government
and I have no reason to believe we're not still doing it.

There are a lot of dynamics at work here, not least of
all our own clandestine influence in Soviet, East European and
Third World political developments. The world is changing rapidly.
There is a constant state of flux and I believe these are extremely
critical times.

*Formerly employed as an army voice security cryptologist at the
 White House and in the War Room at the Pentagon prior to and during
 the initial stages of the Vietnam War.