Averting
World War III, Ending Dollar Hegemony And US Imperialism
By Rohini Hensman
17 November , 2007
Countercurrents.org
Introduction (1)
When
US President Bush declared in October 2007 that if Iran acquired the
knowledge to produce nuclear weapons, we would be plunged into World
War III, he was not joking or even exaggerating: he was making his intentions
clear. In the same month, Vice-President Dick Cheney repeated the threat
that the US would not ‘stand by’ as Iran allegedly pursued
a nuclear weapons programme. If the present war in Afghanistan, Iraq
and Palestine spreads to Iran, we will indeed have World War III. We
have long had circumstantial evidence that the Bush regime was building
up to an attack on Iran: the constant allegations (denied by Mohamed
El Baradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA])
that it was pursuing a nuclear weapons programme, charges (denied by
the Iraqi government) that it was sending arms and fighters into Iraq,
a US military build-up clearly directed against Iran, the designation
of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran as a terrorist organisation
and imposition of sweeping sanctions against Iran.(2) But it has now
been revealed by two former high-ranking policy experts from the US
National Security Council that war against Iran was planned all along,
and nothing that Iran offered to do — including giving up its
uranium enrichment programme — could have made a difference.(3)
If the Bush administration
has decided to attack Iran militarily, is there any power on earth that
can stop it if the people of the US are unable or unwilling to do so?
The argument below is that if the USA’s ability to undertake imperial
conquests depends on its obvious military supremacy, this in turn is
ultimately based on the use of the US dollar as the world’s reserve
currency. It is the dominance of the dollar that underpins US financial
dominance as a whole as well as the apparently limitless spending power
that allows it to keep hundreds of thousands of troops stationed all
over the world. Destroy US dollar hegemony, and the “Empire”
will collapse.
David Ludden’s article
‘America’s Invisible Empire’(4) sums up the problem
of the world’s most recent empire with remarkable clarity. Constituting
itself at a time when decolonisation was well under way and other empires
were disintegrating, US imperialism could never openly speak its name.
Initially, it disguised itself as the defender of democracy against
communism; when the Soviet Union ceased to exist, the pretext became
the “war against terror”. National security and national
interest were invoked as the rationale for global dominance.
Ludden’s description
evokes the image of US citizens (and a few others) living in a Truman
Show world, a bubble of illusion created by state deception and media
complicity that prevents them from being aware of the reality of empire,
although everyone outside can see it only too clearly. It sounds quite
credible that ‘the empire will not be undone until its reality
and costs become visible to Americans’ (p.4777). However, Ludden’s
claim that ‘US taxpayers and voters pay the entire cost of the
US empire’ (p.4776) is less credible. If that were true, many
more Americans would see their empire and oppose it; the Democrats would
have put up a principled opposition to the occupation of Iraq and threatened
war against Iran, and the overwhelming majority of the US electorate
would have supported them. But it is the rest of the world that has
been paying for the US empire: that is why it is almost invisible within
the US.
The history of dollar
hegemony
The core advantage of the US economy, the source of its financial dominance,
is the peculiar role of the US currency. It is because the dollar has
been for decades the world’s reserve currency that the US is able
to maintain its twin deficits (fiscal and trade) and depend on the world’s
generosity. It needs capital inflows of almost $4 billion from the rest
of the world every working day to keep up its level of spending.(5)
Its military superiority is one reason why it is unlikely ever to face
an embargo, but more importantly, it has been able to live beyond its
means because of US dollar hegemony.
The dollar mechanism has
been described extensively elsewhere,(6) this is merely a summary. The
strength of the US economy after World War II enabled the US dollar,
backed by gold, to become the world’s reserve currency. When the
US abandoned the gold standard in 1971, the dollar remained supreme,
and its position was further boosted in 1974 when the US came to an
agreement with Saudi Arabia that the oil trade would be denominated
in dollars.(7) Most countries in the world import oil, and it made sense
for them to accumulate dollars in order to guard against oil shocks.
Third World countries had even more reason to hoard dollars so as to
protect their fragile economies and currencies from sudden collapse.
With everyone clamouring for dollars, all the US had to do was print
fiat dollars and other countries would accept them in payment for their
exports. These dollars then flowed back into the US to be invested in
Treasury Bonds and similar instruments, offsetting the outflow. The
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, headquartered in Washington,
reinforced dollar hegemony.
As a reserve currency fulfills
world needs in addition to the functions of a domestic currency, the
favoured country can build up debt for a protracted period on a scale
that would wreck any other country’s currency. But this advantage
is a double-edged sword.(8) It allowed the US economy to decline unnoticed,
its fiscal and trade deficits to climb steeply: by 2006 the US trade
deficit had reached $763.6 billion, the current account deficit $850
billion, the gross national debt around $9 trillion. Globalization destroyed
the US as a manufacturing nation; the outsourcing of services means
that even this sector is gradually being shifted out of the US.8 Only
its pre-eminence in the global financial services industry remains intact.(9)
And this is underpinned by US dollar hegemony.
Dollar hegemony is what concealed
the costs of its empire, which were effectively being paid for by the
rest of the world, from US citizens. Other countries were compelled
to accept fiat dollars because they had no choice. It was the world’s
only reserve currency.
A “currency”
reason for the Iraq war
When the euro came into being, even then the choice was only a potential
one, as the euro initially lost value, making it unattractively risky
as a reserve currency. The first non-European countries that made a
move in its direction did so for political rather than economic reasons.
When Saddam Hussein switched to the euro in late 2000 and converted
Iraq’s $10 billion reserve fund at the UN to euro, some analysts
commented that this political gesture would have a heavy economic cost.(10)
But against all expectations, he actually made a profit when the euro
staged a recovery.(11) Iran is another country which in 2002 converted
more than half its foreign exchange reserves to euros.(12) Both Iraq
and Iran being oil-producing countries, the impact of their shifting
currency allegiances would be significant. By contrast, North Korea’s
official shift to the euro for trade in December 2002(13) was negligible
from the standpoint of the world economy, yet it signified a trend that
US imperialism had to stop at all costs. Suddenly George Bush’s
diatribe against the ‘Axis of Evil’, which seemed so arbitrary
and laughable at the time, doesn’t appear quite so funny. Add
to this picture the fact that Hugo Chavez — against whom the US
supported a coup in April 2002, and who continues to be under attack
by the Bush regime — has taken a large part of Venezuela’s
oil trade out of the orbit of the US dollar, and the economic compulsions
driving US foreign policy become clearer. Military might alone does
not seem to be a sufficient basis for sustaining an empire: economic
power is crucial. And for the declining US economy, US dollar supremacy
is essential for maintaining its economic clout.
Thus, there seems to be good
reason to believe that the main purpose of the invasion of Iraq was
to change the denomination of its oil sales back to dollars,(14) especially
given that one of the first actions of the US occupying forces was to
do precisely that. But the action backfired badly. Anti-war protesters
immediately began campaigns to boycott the dollar,(15) and the campaign
spread, with the call being taken up by the Boycott Bush campaign after
the 2004 World Social Forum.(16) Former Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir
Mohamed took up the call in 2004 and again in 2006, arguing that Israel
would not be able to oppress the Palestinians and Lebanese without the
financial and military support of the US, which would be put under pressure
by a dollar boycott.(17) In December 2006, Iran announced it was going
to shift the rest of its foreign exchange reserves from dollars to euro,
using the euro for most of its oil deals, and in July 2007 asked the
Japanese to pay for their oil in yen.(18)
Habit and inertia might have
prevailed against these political initiatives to undermine the dollar
as the world’s reserve currency, if continuing US belligerence
and mismanagement of its economy had not helped to push the value of
the dollar lower. As the dollar steadily lost value due to the massive
US debt, George Soros pulled his money out of dollar assets, and other
US investors followed suit.(19) An article in China Daily on 28 September
2004 by Jiang Ruiping, the director of International Economics at the
China Foreign Affairs University, pointed out that China was already
losing due to the dollar slide and would lose even more if it crashed;
he recommended moving out of dollars into euros and possibly also yen,
as well as using its dollar reserves to stock up on oil.(20) In fact,
only about 15 per cent of China’s additional foreign exchange
reserves acquired in the first three quarters of 2004 were in US Treasury
holdings, and OPEC countries reduced the dollar assets in their reserves
from 75 to 60 per cent.(21) In July 2005, the fixed exchange rate of
the yuan to the dollar was abandoned, followed closely by the Malaysian
ringgit, with both currencies being allowed to float in a tight band
against a basket of foreign currencies.(22) The Japanese government
indicated it might diversify its reserves portfolio, and the Reserve
Bank of India started buying euro-denominated securities.(23) In March
2005, the Bank for International Settlements in Basle announced that
Asian central and commercial banks held only 67 per cent of their deposits
in dollars in September 2004, compared with 81 per cent three years
earlier; Indian banks were down from 68 to 43 per cent, while Chinese
dollar holdings were down from 83 to 68 per cent, with the euro and
yen being the most popular alternatives.(24) Holdings in more exotic
currencies also grew rapidly, albeit from much lower levels: Chinese
renminbi (yuan) by 530 per cent, Indonesian rupaiah by 283 per cent,
Taiwanese dollars, Korean won and Indian rupees by 129,117 and 114 per
cent respectively, presumably on the expectation that they would grow
in importance.(25)
By the end of 2005, euro-denominated
securities had overtaken dollar-denominated ones as a medium for international
investors.(26) In 2006, the Swedish central bank cut its dollar holdings
from 37 per cent to 20 percent, the Russian central bank from around
two-thirds to 40 per cent, while Italy switched a quarter of its foreign
currency reserves from dollars to sterling; Russian President Vladimir
Putin also called for a ruble-denominated oil and natural gas exchange
in Russia.(27) The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), planning to launch
a common currency in 2010, was thrown off-course when Kuwait abandoned
the dollar peg in May 2007 in order not to continue importing inflation
via a devaluing dollar; later, as the subprime mortgage crisis struck
in the US, and the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 0.5 per cent,
Oman, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain did not cut their rates in unison, amidst
reports that there was an ongoing debate on a more flexible alternative
to the dollar peg in all six GCC countries.(28) Data released by the
US Federal Reserve showed that between late July and early September
2007, foreign central banks reduced their holdings of US Treasury Bonds
by $48 billion.(29) Meanwhile, plans to establish the Banco del Sur
by seven Latin American countries (with others likely to join), in order
to provide an alternative to US-dominated funds like the IMF, World
Bank and Inter-American Development Bank,(30) would be an even greater
threat to the dollar if they included the use of a regional currency.
An interesting result of the dollar’s declining value is that
while the rich turn to euro, the less wealthy, from Russia to the Maldives
and Mexico to Vietnam, prefer their local currency to the dollar.(31)
It is easy to agree with
Xu Jian, a vice-director of China’s Central Bank, that the dollar
is ‘losing its status as the world currency,’(32) especially
when the same sentiment is expressed by American analysts.(33) What
this means is that the US dollar is no longer the sole world currency;
this position is now shared with other currencies. But it is still dominant,
for a number of reasons. So long as the oil sales of most countries
continue to be denominated in dollars, the US dollar will still be in
demand; this could change, of course, if Russia were to launch its ruble-denominated
oil and gas exchange. And countries like China and Japan, which between
them hold trillions of dollars, would be unwilling to dump them because
that would hit the value of their own reserves. Moreover, like other
countries that rely heavily on the US market, they would prefer to keep
their currencies low against the dollar, even though by November 2007
the yuan had appreciated by 11.6 per cent against the dollar since the
peg was dropped, and the yen by 7.7 per cent since the beginning of
the year.(34) On the other hand, building up dollar reserves would simply
increase their losses as it declined. Other countries with smaller dollar
reserves would also face the same dilemma.(35)
The gradual decline in the
value of the dollar that is occurring would have been the best option,
if not for the urgency of the situation facing us. Millions have died
in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of the US-led occupations, and the
carnage continues; meanwhile, the apartheid state of Israel, fully supported
by the US, has occupied the whole of historical Palestine, herding the
original inhabitants into ghettoes in the West Bank and one big ghetto
in Gaza, and subjecting them to ethnic cleansing and daily killings.(36)
If Iran is attacked, the conflict would become a nuclear war, at least
in the sense that it would involve bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities;
but it might also involve nuclear weapons. Apparently ‘The only
thing standing in the way of a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear
facilities is foot-dragging by the US military,’ but there is
frightening evidence of attempts by the government to get around this
resistance from the US military.(37) Several cruise missiles armed with
nuclear warheads were secretly flown across the US in violation of all
standard procedures on 29/30 August 2007, and several military personnel
who might have known about the incident or been involved in it died
under mysterious circumstances shortly before or after it, leading to
speculation that the missing nukes incident was connected to US war
plans against Iran.(38) It hardly needs to be pointed out that such
a war, in which Russia and China might get involved, would be catastrophic,
mainly for Iran and West Asia, but also for the rest of the world.
Among the side effects of
US military aggression is the expansion of fundamentalist forces; the
Taliban has not only made a come-back in Afghanistan, but is now spreading
in Pakistan, while Al Qaeda, which had no presence in Iraq under Saddam
Hussein’s rule, is now well entrenched there. Democracy in Iran
has yet to recover fully from the US-inspired regime change in 1953,
and it is likely that a US military attack will set it back by another
half-century. But can such an attack be prevented?
What to do: non-violent economic
non-cooperation
This brings us back to the dilemma posed by David Ludden. The costs
of empire will become apparent to the US public only when they have
to pay those costs, and this will happen only when (a) other nations
stop colluding in its imperial adventures, and (b) the dollar loses
its role as the world’s reserve currency.
For citizens of the world
who are opposed to US imperialism, that suggests several possible courses
of action. The ‘world’s second super-power’, world
public opinion, made a hugely impressive showing prior to the invasion
of Iraq, yet it failed to stop the invasion itself; stronger action
is required. But the armed struggle taking place in Iraq is killing
and maiming hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans,
most of them from poor families; surely this is not desirable. The alternative
proposed here is non-violent non-cooperation with the imperial monster.
For example:
1) We should put pressure
on all other governments not to participate in the occupation of Iraq
and Afghanistan, or any attack on Iran or sanctions against it, and/or
vote out candidates who are colluding in this aggression and vote in
alternatives. This will leave the burden of running their empire fairly
and squarely on the shoulders of the US administration.
2) We should refuse to use
the US dollar except within the US itself. Given the current weakness
of the dollar, this could undermine its reserve currency role even if
it is done on an individual basis. For example, large numbers of people
from developing countries cross international borders every day, for
work, business, tourism, pilgrimages or to visit relations; since their
own currencies are not accepted internationally, they have to buy ‘hard’
currencies, and if they were to refuse to use the US dollar in this
capacity, it would certainly make an impact. Economic actors like the
fair trade movement should also shift to other currencies for their
international trade. Both academics and activists should stop using
dollar equivalents to measure incomes and GDP; for the moment, the euro
can be used as a standard. Mass action of this sort played a major role
in ending British rule in India and thus the British empire; employed
on a much wider scale, it can help to end the US empire.
3) People in Third World
countries should put pressure on their governments to shift foreign
currency assets out of dollars, and to create regional currencies to
strengthen regional commercial and economic ties. This would not only
be a gesture of solidarity to the beleaguered peoples of Afghanistan,
Iraq, Palestine, Iran and others oppressed or threatened by the US empire,
but would also make good economic sense. The dollar is sliding, and
developing countries which hold all or most of their foreign exchange
reserves in dollars are losing money as it loses value. If it crashes,
their reserves could be wiped out.
4) We should appeal to governments
in oil-producing countries not to denominate their oil trade in US dollars.
This does not necessarily involve a wholesale shift to the euro. Venezuela
has concluded several barter deals with other Latin American countries
including Cuba, giving them oil in exchange for goods and services,(39)
and this is a pattern other oil-producing countries could consider;
if a regional currency is established by the Banco del Sur, that too
could be used for oil sales. Russia could denominate its oil sales in
rubles, and the GCC countries in their new currency, which would enable
the remittances of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers from South
and Southeast Asia in Gulf countries to be used directly for oil imports.
Barter deals which do not involve oil could also be concluded between
developing countries.
5) World trading patterns
would also need to change. If the dollar sinks drastically with world
trade unchanged, many countries which now rely on exports to the US
will be affected adversely by its inability to import their goods with
a weakened dollar. A reorientation of trade away from the US would therefore
be necessary. For example, plans to constitute the South Asia Free Trade
Area as a regional bloc free of tariff and immigration barriers should
be pursued at greater speed, and trade with other countries promoted
at the same time. MERCOSUR in Latin America has the potential to develop
into an institution similar to the European Union. China and Japan,
the biggest creditors of the US, suffer most from the decline of the
dollar, and would have to work out alternative trade patterns to safeguard
their economies.
6) For many Third World countries,
including India and China, expanding domestic mass markets would be
an important component of any strategy. This would involve campaigning
nationally and internationally for policies of employment creation,
protection of workers’ rights, shorter working hours, and enforced
payment of minimum wages that are adequate to support a decent standard
of living. Such a redistribution of resources from militarism and wasteful
consumption of the rich and powerful to productive consumption of working
people would play a positive economic role, not only in Third World
countries but also in Europe and North America.
7) In addition to these economic
measures, ending US imperialism would require pressing for the development
and implementation of international humanitarian law, international
law and multilateral treaties (such as the Geneva Conventions, Rome
Treaty of the International Criminal Court, Chemical Weapons Convention,
Biological Weapons Convention, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Land Mine
Treaty, ILO Core Conventions, CEDAW and the Kyoto Protocol), and the
strengthening and democratization of multilateral institutions (like
the UN, ILO and WTO).
8) It must be emphasized
that none of these actions are aimed at ordinary US citizens, a large
and growing number of whom are opposed to US imperialism, and all of
whom are affected adversely by it, whether they realize it or not. On
the contrary, it is an open secret that the US Treasury and Federal
Reserve are encouraging the decline of the dollar because it is seen
as the best cure for the ailing US economy, since it slashes the foreign
debt and makes American products more competitive.40 A cheaper dollar
would expand employment and increase the bargaining power of workers,
enabling them to fight against the current policies of tax cuts for
the rich, wage and welfare cuts for workers and the poor. Taxpayers
would also regain power as their contributions to government spending
increased in importance; the war could continue indefinitely so long
as foreigners fund it, but once tax-payers are funding it, a tax strike
could bring the troops home.
Even if all possible adjustments
are made, there is no doubt that the decline and fall of the dollar
as the sole world currency will cause pain, both within and outside
the US. But the alternative is incomparably worse. The world order cannot
much longer survive having a heavily armed rogue state on the rampage
in violation of all international law and multilateral treaties. The
world economy cannot afford to depend on the currency of a bankrupt
nation with a colossal military budget. And the earth itself is put
at risk by a country which devours massive quantities of fossil fuels
and spews out greenhouse gases at a catastrophic rate.
US imperialism would not
be able to pursue its destructive policies without the unlimited supply
of blank cheques extended to it by the rest of the world, so it is the
responsibility of the rest of the world to withdraw that source of funding.
The beast has to be killed by attacking it at the point where it is
most vulnerable. Meanwhile, if enough people in the US work to ensure
that the next elections install a president and representatives who
undertake to abandon the pursuit of Empire and instead seek to reintegrate
the US into the international community as a law-abiding, fiscally-responsible,
non-polluting member, the result will be a far safer and more stable
global order, world economy and environment.
1 In this article I have
incorporated sentences and paragraphs from the article I wrote with
Marinella Correggia after the 2004 World Social Forum in Bombay, entitled
‘US
Dollar Hegemony: the Soft Underbelly of Empire (and What Can Be Done
to Use It!). #
2 See Peter Symonds, ‘Stepped
Up US Preparations for War Against Iran,’ 2 February
2007 and Abbas Edalat and Mehrnaz Shahabi, ‘Turning
Truth on its Head,’ 29 October 2007. #
3 John H.Richardson, ‘The
Secret History of the Impending War With Iran that the White House Doesn’t
Want You to Know,’ Esquire, 18 October 2007. #
4 David Ludden, ‘America’s
Invisible Empire,’ Economic and Political Weekly Vol.XXXIX No.44,
Bombay, 30 October 2004, pp.4776-77. #
5 C.Fred Bergsten, ‘The
Current Account Deficit and the US Economy,’ Testimony
before the Budget Committee of the United States Senate February 1,
2007. #
6 See Henry C.K.Liu, ‘US
dollar hegemony has got to go,’ Asia Times, 11 April 2002 and
Rohini Hensman, ‘A Strategy to Stop the War, Economic and Political
Weekly, Vol.38 No.16, 19 April 2003, pp.1556-1561. #
7 David E.Spiro, The Hidden
Hand of American Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets,
Cornell University Press, 1999. #
8 Paul Craig Roberts, ‘The
coming currency shock,’ Counterpunch, 16 November
2004. # #
9 Lawrence G.Franko, ‘US
Competitiveness in the Global Financial Services Industry,’
October 2004. #
10 See for example Charles
Recknagel, ‘Iraq: Baghdad Moves to Euro,’ Radio Free Europe,
1 November 2000. #
11 Faisal Islam, ‘Iraq
nets handsome profit by dumping dollar for euro,’ The Observer,
16 February 2003. #
12 ‘Forex Fund Shifting
to Euro’, Iran Financial News, 25 August 2002. #
13 Caroline Gluck, ‘North
Korea embraces the euro,’ BBC News, 1 December 2002. #
14 William Clarke in particular
makes an impressive case, with a great deal of evidence, in his web-based
essay ‘Revisited:
The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War With Iraq: A Macroeconomic and
Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth’ (January
2004), which is a revised version, with addenda, of his original essay
of January 2003. Many of the references in this article are taken from
him. See also Gavin R.Putland,
‘The War to Save the US Dollar,’ 18 April 2003.
#
15 See Rohini Hensman, ‘Boycott
the Dollar to Stop the War!’ 27 March 2003, and Dave
Emory, ‘For
the Record #407’ 21 April 2004, quoting Robert Block,
‘Some Muslims Advocate Dumping the Dollar for the Euro,’
Wall Street Journal, 15 April 2003: In Nigeria, anti-war demonstrators
shouted “Euro yes! Dollar No!’ #
16 See www.boycottbush.org.
#
17
‘Dr M Tells World to Use Dollar Weapon to Pressure Washington,’
29 July 2006. #
18 ‘Dollar
dropped in Iran asset move,’ 18 December 2006, and
‘Iran
demands Japan’s oil payments in yen, not US dollars,’ 14
July 2007. #
19 Jennifer Hughes, ‘Dollar gets sinking feeling as investor confidence
fades,’ Business Standard, 24-25 May 2003; ‘US appetite
for foreign stock takes toll on $,’ Economic Times, 20 December
2004. #
20 Gary North, ‘Asian
doubts regarding the dollar’, 1 October 2004. #
21 A.V.Rajwade, ‘Asia’s
dollar dilemma,’ Business Standard, 20 December 2004. #
22 Peter S.Goodman, ‘China
ends fixed-rate currency,’ Washington Post, 22 July 2005; ‘Malaysia
too ends dollar peg,’ Dawn, 22 July 2005. #
23 ‘RBI may diversify
into Chinese yuan,’ Economic Times, 12 March 2005. #
24 Steve Johnson, ‘Asian
banks cut exposure to dollar,’ Economic Times, 11 March 2005.
#
25 Gayatri Nayak, ‘Dragon
raises its head in the forex market too,’ Economic Times, 28 March
2005. #
26 Francis Cripps, John Eatwell
and Alex Izurieta, ‘Financial Imbalances in the World Economy,’
Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.XL No.52, 24 December 2005, pp.5453-56.
#
27 Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, ‘Bank
of Italy slashes dollar holdings in favour of UK pound,’
3 August 2006; Julian D.W.Phillips, ‘Russian
Rouble to attack the $ - Exchange Controls in the US?’
16 May 2006. #
28 ‘Gulf could unite
to drop dollar peg,’ 31 October 2007. #
29 Ambrose Evans-Pritchard,
‘Is
China quietly dumping US Treasuries?’ 6 September
2007. #
30 Jeb Blount, ‘South
American Countries Agree to Found Banco Del Sur (Update6),’
8 October 2007. #
31 ‘Demising
US dollar gives way to euro cash in Russia,’ Pravda,
17 February 2005; William Pesek, ‘Dollar’s
Demise Can Be Seen Even in the Maldives,’ Bloomberg.com,
29 October, 2007. #
32 Agnes Lovasz and Stanley
White, ‘Dollar
Slumps to Record on China’s Plans to Diversify Reserves,’
Bloomberg.com, 7 November 2007. #
33 Paul Craig Roberts, ‘The
End Is Near! – Gisele Bundchen Dumps Dollar,’ Countercurrents.org,
8 November 2007; Mike Whitney, ‘Plummeting
Dollar, Credit Crunch…,’ Countercurrents.org,
15 September 2007. #
34 Belinda Cao,
‘Yuan Heads for Biggest Weekly Advance Since July 2005,’
Bloomberg.com, 12 November 2007; Stanley White and David
McIntire, ‘Yen
Rises to 1 ½ Year High Against Dollar on Risk Reduction,’
Bloomberg.com, 12 November 2007. #
35 See, for example, Mike
Dolan, ‘Dollar
fall will come at a price for all,’ 21 November 2004
and Ila Patnaik, ‘Day of the declining dollar – How should
India be responding to this trend?’ Indian Express, 18 December
2004. #
36 See Gideon Polya, ‘Two
Million Iraq Deaths, Eight Million Bush Asian Holocaust Deaths and Media
Holocaust Denial,’ Countercurrents.org, 7 October
2007. #
37 Ray McGovern, ‘Attacking
Iran for Israel?’ Consortiumnews.com, 1 November
2007. #
38 Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya,
‘Missing
Nukes: Treason of the Highest Order,’ Global Research,
29 October 2007. #
39 Hazel Henderson, ‘Beyond
Bush’s Unilateralism: Another Bi-polar World or a New Era of Win-Win?’
InterPress Service,June 2002. #
40
‘Dollars, Debt and the Trade Gap, Thoughts on the Dropping Dollar,’
Wall Street Journal Online, 19 December 2006. #
Rohini Hensman
is an an idependent scholar, writer and activist based in India and
Sri Lanka. Rohini can be reached at: [email protected]
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