America youre finished, youre now engaged in 3 Fronts. Not 2 like Nazi Germany but 3!!!

[Militant Atheist]

The trap ISIS is very well prepared for IRAN....
Obviously your country will be next target for destruction if you are blinded.

Oh yeah?

 

[MastanKhan]

China definitely needs a decade or two to have substantial buildup. But the rate at which they are going is phenomenal.

About your last Paragraph, sir, don't be blinded by the retail sales. They were record high before 2008 as well. Buying on credit has spoiled many in the capitalist world. Savings is what makes an economy strong, not retail sales. It is just about time when another bubble will burst.

Hi.

@ that time a lot of auto financing was thru second mortgages---that is not the case now---. Same thing with credit cards---the usage is down---.

 

[MastanKhan]

A decisive defeat in an expeditionary war (e.g. in South China Sea) would mean the end of dollar hegemony. It would be the great depression, Japan after Plaza accord and 1997 Asian financial crisis all rolled into one. I would be very surprised if some states like Texas do not try to secede. There will be widespread armed rebellion against the federal government. Look at Bundy Ranch. Either Washington DC lets them go or another civil war will begin. The US army would either be an arbiter of political power like Thailand and Pakistan or else the US army would split just like the Western and Eastern Ukrainian army. A heavily armed civilian population means when the country blows there will be bloody rampages everywhere. If anybody is going to occupy America after generations of armed chaos, it would be Latin America.

Hi,

For the U S govt---there is no reason for confrontation if they don't need to. They will get the perforators of Bundy ranch some other way---it is just a matter of time & the govt has all of it---.

Why would there be rebellion---people have jobs---they have security---they get justice---they have food, water & gas.

The u s miliatary is fiercely loyal to the federation first of all---secondly---it is based farther away from hubs of population---there is no precedence of military interfering in the civilian affairs.

There is no ethnic split in the u s military---so there is no split in ranks.

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

It depends on when and who? US maybe the only country that has the means to do this to China. It would hurt many like a double edged sword. En...how long do you believe that US can hold this capability? A hundred more years, as Obama said at the West point?

Huh? Haven't you noticed the wars raging in the Middle East and the ethnic conflict that constantly sweeps Africa? The US doesn't have to do anything to disrupt the flow of commodities to China, that will happen by itself. In fact, it's the US interventionism that China always complains about that probably does the most to secure China's commodity flow.

 

[boomslang]

A decisive defeat in an expeditionary war (e.g. in South China Sea) would mean the end of dollar hegemony. It would be the great depression, Japan after Plaza accord and 1997 Asian financial crisis all rolled into one. I would be very surprised if some states like Texas do not try to secede. There will be widespread armed rebellion against the federal government. Look at Bundy Ranch. Either Washington DC lets them go or another civil war will begin. The US army would either be an arbiter of political power like Thailand and Pakistan or else the US army would split just like the Western and Eastern Ukrainian army. A heavily armed civilian population means when the country blows there will be bloody rampages everywhere. If anybody is going to occupy America after generations of armed chaos, it would be Latin America.

You don't know your @ss from your elbow when it comes to the U.S. 'Latin America' ? HAHAHAHAHAHA !!! You've been using your 'Buddha Palm' on yourself too much.

 

[KAL-EL]

You don't know your @ss from your elbow when it comes to the U.S. 'Latin America' ? HAHAHAHAHAHA !!! You've been using your 'Buddha Palm' on yourself too much.

This person has multiple id's

 

[l'ingénieur]

In Ukraine Russia will use this opportunity with high oil prices and your involvement in middle east to invade ukraine

Why do you want to invade Ukraine.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Huh? Haven't you noticed the wars raging in the Middle East and the ethnic conflict that constantly sweeps Africa? The US doesn't have to do anything to disrupt the flow of commodities to China, that will happen by itself. In fact, it's the US interventionism that China always complains about that probably does the most to secure China's commodity flow.

My friend, please check out my post in this thread below, to see how US interventionism has increased rather than decreased instability in the Middle East. So making our resource routes and sources more unreliable, more dangerous... and sending the prices of those resources skyrocketing.

Americas true goals in the Middle East = Chaos

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

My friend, please check out my post in this thread below, to see how US interventionism has increased rather than decreased instability in the Middle East. So making our resource routes and sources more unreliable, more dangerous... and sending the prices of those resources skyrocketing.

Americas true goals in the Middle East = Chaos

For Afghanistan, the objective was simple: revenge, and prevent another attack like September 11. So I won't claim that had anything to do with security commodities. As far as Iraq, on the contrary--this article is old (Iraq Oil Production Beating Iran Ends Saddam Legacy - Bloomberg but it should indicate that the American invasion helped the oil supply.

Production has revived since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 ended more than two decades of stagnation caused by wars, sanctions and underinvestment. Since Hussein’s ouster, the government has awarded 15 oil and gas licenses to foreign companies, and 47 potential bidders have signed up for its next auction of exploration rights scheduled for May 30.

Iraq ‘Upswing’
“Iraq is on the upswing,” Harry Tchilinguirian, head of commodity-markets strategy at BNP Paribas SA in London, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “With all the investment coming in, with people developing new areas or trying to expand output at existing fields, it was a foregone conclusion that production would rise. There was a question mark over stability and security, but that’s been mostly OK.”

Nigeria is wracked by violence, and it has nothing to do with the US. I don't want to get into a defense of the Iraq War, because I don't defend it. But Iraq under Saddam Hussein was not as stable as it appeared, and with his ruthless suppression of Kurds and Shiites, it was ripe for conflict. Meanwhile, the US continues to battle piracy, and so does China. Using one's military to suppress violent actors doesn't necessarily mean it spawns more violent actors, it just means that the violent actors who already exist are given an opportunity to exploit.

Most of the increase in oil prices is due to a massive increase in demand, not by a decrease in supply.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

For Afghanistan, the objective was simple: revenge, and prevent another attack like September 11. So I won't claim that had anything to do with security commodities. As far as Iraq, on the contrary--this article is old (Iraq Oil Production Beating Iran Ends Saddam Legacy - Bloomberg but it should indicate that the American invasion helped the oil supply.



Nigeria is wracked by violence, and it has nothing to do with the US. I don't want to get into a defense of the Iraq War, because I don't defend it. But Iraq under Saddam Hussein was not as stable as it appeared, and with his ruthless suppression of Kurds and Shiites, it was ripe for conflict. Meanwhile, the US continues to battle piracy, and so does China. Using one's military to suppress violent actors doesn't necessarily mean it spawns more violent actors, it just means that the violent actors who already exist are given an opportunity to exploit.

Most of the increase in oil prices is due to a massive increase in demand, not by a decrease in supply.

As America during the Reagan Administration said: "Saddam may be a bastard, but he is our bastard".

And I don't think anyone here will claim that Saddam was worse than Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Saddam would at least sell oil. What about ISIS and Al-Qaeda?

Objectively, the Middle East has deteriorated since the American intervention(s). Terrorist groups which used to be small cliques, have turned into transnational giants, with seemingly ENDLESS amounts of soldiers and civilians willing to blow themselves up for them.

Terrorism across the globe has spiked exponentially. Resource instability and prices across the globe have spiked exponentially, which has damaged our economic development.

As I said in the other thread, it may or may not have been intentional (personally I do not think it was intentional), but the results are clear. Things are worse off, the only ones who seem to have massively benefited are the terrorist groups themselves.

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

As America during the Reagan Administration said: "Saddam may be a bastard, but he is our bastard".

And I don't think anyone here will claim that Saddam was worse than Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Saddam would at least sell oil. What about ISIS and Al-Qaeda?

Objectively, the Middle East has deteriorated since the American intervention(s). Terrorist groups which used to be small cliques, have turned into transnational giants, with seemingly ENDLESS amounts of soldiers and civilians willing to blow themselves up for them.

Terrorism across the globe has spiked exponentially. Resource instability and prices across the globe have spiked exponentially, which has damaged our economic development.

As I said in the other thread, it may or may not have been intentional (personally I do not think it was intentional), but the results are clear. Things are worse off, the only ones who seem to have massively benefited are the terrorist groups themselves.

I won't argue whether Saddam or ISIS was better, but the point I'm trying to make is that the instability in the Middle East that resulted from the Iraq War had virtually no impact on commodity prices compared to the impact growing demand did. This is just for oil, and a few years old, but it should illustrate the point:

Oil production kept increasing steadily, with the Iraq invasion only creating a small dip in Middle Eastern production and virtually no impact overall. The real driver of price has been the incredible increase in demand from the Asia-Pacific region, not volatility in supply.

In short, one either has access to oil, or one doesn't. Securing land and sea trade routes, as the US does, allows most of the world to have access to oil. Once the oil is accessible, the supply and demand dynamic will drive the price, but in oil's case, it's been the demand side that's dominated, not the supply side. The increase of violence in the Middle East is lamentable, but not responsible for China's increased energy costs.

As far as the terrorist groups, I hope we can all work together to suppress that problem.