AGING DOLLAR VS.YOUNG AMERO

AGING DOLLAR VS.YOUNG AMERO
by The Mogambo Guru

If you are one of those people who bizarrely think that The Stupid Mogambo
(TSM) has enough smarts or education to have an opinion about anything, I
laugh at you in scorn, and I laugh at you again when you ask for my
Idiotic Mogambo Opinion (IMO) about the euro, now that you are getting
scared of the dollar, as you should be. Being kind and charitable, as in
"just before Christmas I'm as good as I can be", let me politely tell you,
for the record, "Don't Make Me Laugh, Jerkface! (DMMLJ)".

You may not know it, but this bizarre economic scheme of having one
monetary policy and multiple fiscal policies is as popular around the
Mogambo household as it is in Europe. The wife and kids have banded
together into the Mogambo Union (MU), and their official position is that,
since there are five of us, then all the money ought to be divided up
equally, and everybody get a fifth of the money. My wife is siding with
the kids in this idiocy because, I guess, she has formed some kind of
"bond" with them over the last 15 years or something. Or she's just being
hateful. Who knows? Who the hell cares?

But anyway, they are serious about this single monetary policy thing. And
if you can contain your laughter for another second, you will realize that
this is the exact same situation with the euro, and they are serious,
too.

The only difference, what I call the "Crucial Mogambo Difference (CMD)",
between the two systems is that in dealing with the Mogambo Union (MU), I
control rogue members by bursting into their rooms and screaming like a
banshee with a baseball bat, in order to knock some sense into their thick
heads (which, fortunately so far, always miraculously occurs about halfway
through my initial windup backswing), while in the European Union (EU),
they don't. A crucial difference to be sure - although the stupidity is
exactly the same.

Susan asks, "With the collapse of the dollar on the horizon and the
'Amero' lining up to take its place, how will this new currency affect our
gold and silver?"

For one thing, the Amero is supposedly a proposed new common currency for
(at least) Canada, the United States and Mexico that will replace our
individual moneys, including the dollar, and morph us all seamlessly into
one big, happy, multi-lingual, multi-cultural family with vast income and
wealth disparities, which is funny enough in itself that rational people
would even contemplate such preposterous stupidity.

But the economic mess that is engulfing us, precipitated by the dollar
getting destroyed by the actions and inactions of the Federal Reserve and
Congress for so many years, has to be resolved somehow! Why not the Amero?
And if not the Amero, my Darling Mogambo Cherub (DMC), then what?

And with a worthless dollar, soaring inflation and a grumpy electorate,
what better solution than to (like most other countries in history have
done in times of their own well-deserved economic crises caused exactly
like ours) expropriate the resources and assets of some other countries,
such as Canada and Mexico? Hahaha! America at its finest hour! We have
evolved to the point where we Americans can now, literally, conquer other
countries, and acquire their assets and resources to bail us out of the
economic mess we created (which is the impetus for all wars), all without
firing a shot! Or even threatening to! A miracle of modern politics and
corruption!

As to whether or not it is true, there surely are people who desperately
want it to be true because they are all lining themselves up to make a big
profit from it somehow.

And for how it affects gold, it will have, at worst, no effect, as that is
the beauty of gold; it is impervious to currencies and their depredations,
and its buying-power value over the last 4,000 years is almost a constant,
which is the whole point of how gold "preserves wealth"!

In the best-case scenario, gold (and silver, and all commodities) will
soar like they always have in the inevitable bust at the end of long
booms, which are always financed by the massively excessive creation of
money and credit, via the historically timeless and brainless expedient of
a fiat currency, a reckless banking system and a complicit,
intellectually-corrupt government.

And with the absolute, 100% certainty of a bust happening again, just like
it always has, without exception, in thousands of countries, to thousands
of currencies, for several thousand years, gold will rise triumphant, just
as gold has always risen triumphant! And that one fact, alone, explains
why I am always strongly suggesting, in a very loud and irritating voice,
for you to get silver and gold right (pause) freaking (pause) now, if not
sooner.

And it is because of the disdain of the ridiculous dollar, which is
actually spreading, as we gather from an email from Christian S., who was
kind enough to send an English translation of a posting from
Argentinienaktuell.com, which is that, starting mid-2007, "Argentina and
Brazil do not plan to use the U.S. dollar" for commercial exchange between
themselves. They will use their own currencies, the Argentine peso and
Brazilian real, and the article hinted that abolishment of the dollar to
effect commercial exchanges between Argentina and Brazil could be next.

But, apparently, people are surprised that the debasement of the dollar
has impacted coins, in that the metal in our pennies and nickels is worth
more than the face value of the coins. So the government, instead of
"doing the right thing" to permanently eliminate inflation by stopping its
own cancerous growth and by preventing the Federal Reserve from constantly
creating more money and credit, has instead simply made it illegal to melt
or export quantities of coins!

It was from the New York Times that I got the news, in their article
"Rising Metal Prices Prompt Ban on Melting and Export of Coins", that "The
United States Mint, concerned that rising metal prices could lead to
widespread recycling of pennies and nickels, has banned melting or
exporting them. According to calculations by the Mint, the metal value of
pennies, which are made of copper-coated zinc, is now more than one cent.
The metal value of 5-cent coins, made from a copper-nickel blend, is up to
7 cents. Adding in the costs of manufacturing means the Mint now spends
1.73 cents for every penny and 8.74 cents for every nickel it makes."

Hahaha! The penalty? Up to a $10,000 fine, and imprisonment of up to five
years, or both!

Paul R. sardonically notes, "Notice that I am only allowed to carry $5
worth of coins out of the country, because they have real value. But I'm
allowed to take $10,000 of their worthless dollars with me, because they
have no real value." Hahaha! Exactly, Paul!

USAToday adds the news that the government has changed the composition of
coins lots of times ("The penny," they report, "which was pure copper when
it was introduced in 1793, was last changed in 1982") and always in
response, of course, to rising metal prices, which is more solid evidence
of inflation and, thus, more proof of complete government incompetence,
and if we had any brains at all we would rise up in vicious outrage and
descend upon Washington as an ugly, drunken, mindless mob, unleashing our
righteous vengeance on Congress (except Rep. Ron Paul) and the Federal
Reserve, and then maybe other central banks around the world would see the
carnage on TV and, glued in rapt fascination to the lurid screens, they
would say amongst themselves "Oh, my God! We had better stop doing that
same monetary crap right now! Hey! Is that a bag of flaming dog poop he's
throwing? Ewww!"

Well, to be honest, USAToday did not actually say that, but they might as
well have (and in my opinion should have). But they did say that copper
averaged about 75 cents a pound in 1982. And how is copper faring since
then? From ABCNews.go.com we learn "Copper prices are up more than 180
percent since mid-2003, selling for just more than $3 a pound." Almost
tripled in three years? And yet there is no inflation? Hahahaha! This is
insane!

Until next week,

The Mogambo Guru

North American Union: One Crisis Away

Pastor, a professor at American University, says that in such a case the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP – launched in 2005 by the heads of the three countries at a summit in Waco, Texas – could be developed into a continental union, complete with a new currency, the amero, that would replace the U.S. dollar just as the euro has replaced the national currencies of Europe.

In May 2005, Pastor was co-chairman the Council on Foreign Relations task force that produced a report entitled "Toward a North American Community," which he has claimed is the blueprint behind the SSP declared by President Bush, Mexico's then-President Vicente Fox, and Canada's then-Prime Minister Paul Martin.

At American University in Washington, D.C., Pastor directs the Center for North American Studies where he teaches a course entitled "North America: A Union, A Community, or Just Three Nations?" As WND previously has reported, Pastor is on the board of the North American Forum on Integration, the NAFI, a non-profit organization that annually holds a mock trilateral parliament for 100 selected students drawn from 10 universities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Pastor had published an interview in Spanish in the Oct. 24 issue of Poder y Negocios. He told the magazine crises can force decisions that otherwise would not be made.

"The 9/11 crisis made Canada and the United States redefine the protection of their borders," Pastor explained. "The debt crisis in Mexico forced the government to adapt a new economic model. The crises oblige the governments to make difficult decisions."

This was the first time WND had found a major intellectual leader behind the push to integrate North America suggesting that a crisis of 9-11 proportions might be just what was needed to advance the process toward establishing a North American Union and the amero. WND reached Pastor in his office at American University and conducted a telephone interview to make sure the Spanish publication accurately reflected his views.

He affirmed the Spanish interview represents his thinking.

"What I'm saying is that a crisis is an event which can force democratic governments to make difficult decisions like those that will be required to create a North American Community," he said. "It's not that I want another 9/11 crisis, but having a crisis would force decisions that otherwise might not get made."

Pastor noted, for example that "Europeans, facing the crisis of two World Wars, turned to the European Community as a means to prevent war and advance their economic interests."

"The United States turned to the Marshall Plan when faced with the crisis of Western Europe falling into the hands of communism," he said. "So, I'm not advocating, or encouraging, or wanting a crisis, I'm only saying that in order to take important initiatives, sometimes one manner in which this occurs is when there is a crisis to which leaders need to respond."

Pastor told WND he lamented that the leadership of the three North American countries is not positioned to make the type of tough decisions needed to advance a North American Community agenda.

In his interview with Poder y Negocios, he argued, "Canada has a minority government and Mexico will soon have a minority government that will be confronted with what amounts to an uprising that we hope will be peaceful. The United States has a lame duck president whose principle preoccupation is the war in Iraq and instability in the Middle East."

Pastor further told WND Mexico's Fox made a tactical mistake by laying out an overly ambitious agenda to integrate with the United States.

"President Bush then took on the issue of illegal immigration, and it proved to be much more difficult than anticipated," he said. In the absence of strong North American leadership, is a crisis the way greater North American integration can be expected to happen?

"There are alternatives to a crisis for getting a major decision adopted by the president and by the congress," Pastor responded. "But what I am saying is that we lack the kind of North American leadership we need. Our founding fathers created a system of governance that was not designed to be efficient but was designed to protect freedom. Therefore, you created checks and balances that did protect freedom but also made it difficult to move forward on important issues."

Pastor was asked what North American leaders would need to do to move toward integration.

"We need to form a customs union to move North American integration to a new level," Pastor argued. "A customs union would eliminate rules of origin on the border and agree to a common external tariff. This would not be easy but not as difficult as NAFTA was, and it would lead to efficiencies in our economies and in the end contribute to a better standard of living for all parties."

Pastor also called for a North American Investment Fund to invest in Mexico's infrastructure.

"If we had a North American Investment Fund," Pastor explained, "over the long term, you would narrow the income gap between Mexico and the U.S."

WND previously reported Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, dropped his support for legislation (S. 3622) he introduced in the 109th Congress to create a North American Investment Fund after WND pointed out the proposed law would advance an important part of Pastor's agenda to create a North American Community.

Pastor was careful to distinguish that his proposals were designed to create a North American Community and that he never has proposed to create a North American Union as an EU-style regional government.

"What I am recommending is a series of functional steps that are more than incremental," Pastor admitted. "Each of the proposals I have laid out represent more than just small steps. But it doesn't represent a leap toward a North American Union, or even to some confederation of any kind. I don't think either is plausible, necessary, or even helpful to contemplate at this stage."

The idea seems to be to put new structures in place that change the look of the landscape. WND pointed out to Pastor that this step-by-step approach is the same approach taken to create the European Union. The memoirs of Jean Monnet, regarded as the architect of European unity, finally disclosed he had used a strategy of deceit, knowing his plan to form a European Union would never succeed if it were openly disclosed.

Pastor was asked if he thought a North American Union was a bad idea.

"No," he replied. "I don't think a political union of North America is an inherently bad idea, nor do I think it is a good idea for North America right now. I teach a course at American University in which I look at the different options for political integration of North America, and I put the options before the students."

Then why is a North American Union a bad idea right now?

"The reason the political integration is not a good idea at this stage now, perhaps never, is because of people like yourself who immediately begin to fear that their sense of America could disappear," Pastor responded. "Somehow, if you're fearful that America's sovereignty will disappear, you won't even take small steps forward. You just get mired in the status quo. The problem is that the world is moving very rapidly, and you can't stay competitive if you don't move."

Pastor did not reject the idea that a North American Union could form, but only after further continental economic integration and the development of a North American Community in which people are able to think as citizens of North America.

Is China the winner in the NAFTA super-corridors being planned for North America?

"If you define trade in zero-sum terms, China may be the winner in the transportation corridors," Pastor conceded. "But even in zero-sum terms, consumers benefit from the increasing imports that give them more choice and give them more quality. In the final analysis, we are all consumers."

Pastor affirmed he favors globalism.

"I believe," he explained to WND, "that globalization is a net plus for the world economy, for the middle class, and for all people."

You are Being Deceived About Fluoride: The Hidden Agenda

Dr. Stanley Monteith goes over the history of fluoride, its use, its dangers and its promotion over time. Why something that is rejected by so many nations is promoted here in the USA. Learn about the Hidden Agenda behind the use of Fluoride, who's behind it and the real purpose behind its use in this excellent video (1 hour, 8 minutes).

About 11 minutes into the video you will learn that 7000 employees in the EPA have petitioned the EPA through their union to stop water fluoridation because it isn’t safe. You would think it would be discussed widely on the news, but it wasn’t.

The controlled American media

Only five megacorporatins that control 95% of the media in America. These dominant media determine what most Americans see here and read. Fortunately new media outlets like this site and others allow the average consumer access to the type of truth presented in this video...

The Hidden Agenda - - How You Are Being Deceived About Fluoride

A South American Union

South American leaders called for greater continential unity as they opened a two-day summit in Bolivia that drew the region's new wave of leftist leaders.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, host of the Community of South American Nations summit, invited his fellow heads of state to join him in writing a new story for South America.

"We are truly in an age of making history," Morales said during Friday's ceremony in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba. "We must make history _ a history that will leave behind a black history of subjugation and injustice."

The fiery leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said South America should come together as one. "Only united can we be free, and only free can we fly," he told reporters upon arrival.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva agreed that the time had come for integration and suggested that one day South America, or even all of Latin America, might form a parliament based in Cochabamba.

"South America is one of the last regions on earth to express itself politically toward the goal of integration," Silva said.

Also attending the summit were socialist Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and Ecuador's leftist President-elect Rafael Correa.

Nicaragua's President-elect Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista party also arrived Friday as a guest from Central America, sporting a black leather jacket similar to those favored by Morales.

As the leaders gathered, Bolivia faced storms both political and literal.

Demonstrators for and against Morales fired shots Friday at several buildings in the eastern lowland city of Santa Cruz, Bolivia's wealthiest and a center of opposition to Morales.

Meanwhile, Indian women in traditional velvet skirts and white straw hats scraped mud from streets in the summit's host city, Cochabamba, as they dug out from a deadly hailstorm blamed for killing a family of three whose car fell into a flooded canal and a fourth person who was electrocuted by a fallen power cable.

The summit is aimed at trade and energy issues, as well as weaving closer economic ties between South American nations split between the Mercosur and Andean trade pacts. Leaders have said they hope eventually for continentwide community similar to the European Union _ or China, as Peruvian President Alan Garcia suggested Friday.

"We in South America produce more than China, we export more than China," Garcia said. "But we don't have a common currency like China's, which makes the dollar back down and dominates the other currencies of the world."

Also likely to be discussed during the summit are ambitious proposals for giant infrastructure projects tying the continent together.

Correa on Friday proposed a land-and-river trade route linking Brazil's Amazon rain forest to Ecuador's Pacific coast, saying it could be an alternative to the Panama Canal.

Chavez, meanwhile, dreams of a pipeline able to deliver his country's natural gas the length of the continent.

Outside the fancy ballrooms hosting the summit, Morales also convened a "complementary" conference meant to give the continent's Indian groups, trade unions, landless peasants and local coca farmers a greater voice in South America's future.

Latin America Votes for Socialism

In the last decade Latin America has experiencded significant and hopefully irreversible changes in its political landscape, says Pastor Valle-Garay, senior scholar of York University in Canada.

Brutal dictatorships and violent military interventions often plotted in Washington, says the scholar, are definitely out, while people going to the polls in massive numbers and selecting their leaders through democratic processes are marking the trend.

While proven criminals like General Augusto Pinochet who threatens to cheat Chilean justice from sending him to prison, elsewhere Latin America nations demand that political ruffians Alberto Fujimori (Perú), Arnoldo Alemán (Nicaragua), Alfonso Portillo and Efraín Rivas Montt (Guatemala), Raúl Cubas (Paraguay) and Juan Bordaberry (Uruguay) be brought to trial on a myriad of charges which include assassinations, corruption, fraud, nepotism and money laundering.

Obviously a new era has dawned in the Hemisphere, says Valle-Garay. Cuba’s peaceful transfer of power, the re-election of presidents in Brazil and Venezuela, and the election of new governments in Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Nicaragua are evidence that times are changing.

Latin Americans are now consistently sending to the presidency a decidedly socialist slate, all this peacefully and matter-of-factly highlights the York University scholar.

The White House, however, has reacted in utter shock. As if losing the wars against Iraq and in Afghanistan were not sufficient catastrophic signs of a US President out of touch with reality, “losing” Latin America only confirmed that the mouse that roared could not handle the cat and the cheese at the same time.

Giving President Bush credit for even thinking about Latin America amounts to absolute nonsense, says the expert. "The US President has absolutely not a single original thought regarding Latin America, or the world or in the United States for that matter", affirms Valle-Garay.

The President and the pundits have again underestimated Latin America’s ability to set its own political course and to choose government leaders independently of Washington’s nefarious influence, much in the same fashion as they disastrously underestimated Iraq’s ability to defend itself against the US invasion.

The outcome of the recent vote in Latin America indicates that the current move towards unique, tropical variations of socialism is the inevitable result of political maturity.

The relatively new political and social approach entails a rather practical response to the profound social problems of a Hemisphere in dire need of comprehensive social reforms which must benefit nearly 70% of a population barely surviving below the poverty line, underlines Valle-Garay.

Practically every newly elected Latin American President has made firm commitments to combat poverty, illness, illiteracy and unemployment.

Without exceptions the new socialist governments have pledged support to the private sector, have encouraged local and foreign investors to participate in economic development, and expressed hope to maintain friendly relations with the United States as long as these relations as well as Free Trade are based on mutual respect.

While the scholar thinks it is too early to tell how the socialist trends will translate into concrete measures, Bolivia has already nationalized hydrocarbons and the land, engages in a massive literacy campaign and improves its health system with outstanding results already in a few months.

Venezuela has done that and much more under the Hugo Chavez administration, as it is bringing together a continent divided until now with cooperation projects already in operation like the groups Petrosur and Petrocaribe, selling cheap oil to destitute communities throughout Central and North America, including the United States.

According to the Canadian scholar, the newly-elected left seems to be heading in the right direction. That they do so while willing to risk criticism for its radical departures from the more traditional left-leaning political perspectives, is a tribute to their ability to challenge conventional structures.

They are willing even to risk a White House response like the brutal embargo and the criminal attacks unleashed by Washington against Cuba for half a century.

It will be a difficult course to navigate, warns Valle-Garay. The bottom line nevertheless is that the new governments really have no options. They must change the course and curse of past experiences, whether Washington or any other forces think differently.

The Latin American electorate expects results from its leaders and it has demonstrated that when corrupt leaders fail to deliver, the voter will democratically throw them out of power, send them before the courts and sentence them to long terms in prison.