It’ll be a cold day in the treasury before they pay up

There was a classic Monty Python clip (The Money Programme) in which Eric Idle sang, “it is money that makes the world go around”. However if we are to believe many economic commentators it rather looks as if money might be about to cause the world to (at least figuratively) stop turning around.

With what is happening in Europe at the moment, and even more disturbingly, in the USA, it’s enough to make your head spin faster than a party hack.

I don’t claim to know much about money or economics as anyone who has seen my bank balance could readily deduce; however I have heard one or two things lately that put much of this stuff into some kind of context for me anyway.

Just recently a mate of mine put me on to a bloke whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, but the point was he had made a documentary about the Fed. For those not familiar with the term, this is the US Federal Reserve Bank, which in case you don’t know, is unlike any bank you have ever had a loan from.

The documentary was based around a book by G. Edward Griffin (don’t you just love the way the Americans put a first initial and use their second name – not?). The book is called The Creature From Jekyll Island and is about how the Fed was created. I have yet to read the book as it is not in any of the Tauranga libraries, however I have managed to see extracts from it and they make very disturbing reading.

For those who don’t know the history, the short version is this; the Fed was created by a group of private bankers with the backing of the US government. It determines US monetary policy and quite literally prints the money to fund it. This last bit is particularly important to understand, because what these guys are doing is magicking up money from nowhere for the US government to borrow and spend. Because this money has been invented rather than earned it actually has no true value (think Emperors and clothing). Thus the US has been funding a growing deficit with worthless bits of paper that purport to be of some value since the 1920s.

Now just to make things even more interesting the American Government is currently locked in a battle over spending cuts and deficit size. The Republicans want smaller government and for Obama to cut health care and social security. It’s a replay of our own (for all intents and purposes) two party system with Obama wanting to tax the higher earners instead. The main difference being that stakes are much higher than over here and the ripples from the bow-wave are much bigger. The lobbyists are also much bigger and richer and one such gentleman (if he is such) is a man called Grover Norquist who, according to The Washington Post, has successfully lobbied 41 senators and 236 representatives to sign a pledge opposing ANY tax increases.

This could all be very amusing were it not for the fact we're told that if the USA doesn’t get this sorted out by August 2, they will be in default over their borrowings. Further wailing and gnashing of teeth around the world is telling us that if the US economy falls over it will be a variation on that great Pat Metheny album As Falls Washington, So Falls The Rest Of The World (sorry about that Pat).

Currently the American national debt figure stands at US$14.3 trillion – that’s 14 followed by a comma and 3 followed by 11 zeroes! Old Backtrack wants to raise the debt ceiling (I would have thought it had already been blown to smithereens); and some of his supporters have proposed a scheme where it would be increased by a mere US$2.5 trillion in three instalments. Scary, huh?

But to return to my original point; what is all the bickering about? The money will come from the Fed and as we know that is illusory at best and possibly crooked at worst. And who says it will be the end of the world as we know it, (apart from Michael Stipe that is)? I realise that the Americans are not the only ones facing a so-called budget crisis; Ireland, Spain and Greece have all had their problems and Italy is the latest to begin wearing out the seat of its pants.

But there is another nation that has already hit that particular wall and they took the route few dare to travel. They said ‘up yours’ (or in their case “upp kveôja) and simply defaulted on their debt.  The Third World War did not erupt and this tiny nation is still supporting intelligent life, so maybe they are the only ones with a clear vision of what a crock most of this is. If you don’t buy into shit then perhaps you won’t find yourself up to your neck in the stuff.

That nation is Iceland. Go Íslendingar!

Bin there, dumped that

So Osama bin Hiding is dead.....but is he really? It’s quite amazing how convenient circumstances can be for world leaders at times.

Just as Obama, (is the next person of international interest going to be called Ollama, Okarma or Odrama?) is finding things tough in Congress and during the run-up to the next US presidential election; kaboom! up pops the bullet riddled corpse of Satan’s brother and there is dancing in the streets of Washington.

Obama sagely told the nation, “Justice has been done”.

Justice? Call me old-fashioned and I might even be a bit old, but I don’t think I’m so senile as to have missed the trial. I’ve been scratching my head all morning, but apart from a few dandruff flakes on my fingers I can’t for the life of me recall anything about an arrest, a reading of charges, a trial or a subsequent judicial sentence.

That might be justice Guantanamo Bay style, but it appears to fly in the face of the sort of justice the West is so proud to champion and even contrast favourably to that practiced by Al Qaeda.

I can’t help but be suspicious about how this operation has unfolded. It’s all too bloody convenient. The first thing that strikes me about the so-called raid is that it looks as though it was always a search and destroy raid with absolutely no intention of capturing bin Laden alive. The ‘body’ has also conveniently been dumped at sea with unseemly haste.

A picture has emerged that purports to be the body of Osama, but Reuters had a close look at it and declared it a fake Photoshop job.

So why would they want to take bin Laden out rather than in and why did they dispose of the ‘evidence’ so smartly?

You can only conclude they had stuff to hide. So what did bin Laden have on the Americans that they could not allow him to pass on to the rest of the world? He is known to have had close ties to the Bush family, so my guess is that at some point the administration has been compromised through some clandestine dealings it has had with him. Most likely there was some unholy alliance with the CIA and Al Qaeda somewhere along the line to gain some traction in one oil state or another.

So what happens now?

Well for one thing the propaganda war will hot up quite a bit. The Americans have already started with some stage-managed press releases. Some are actually quite funny, like the one that says Osama was hiding behind a woman and using her as a human shield when they burst in on him. The implication being that Osama (who wears a dress and ain’t no real man like the good ol’ boys that drink corn likker and believe in Je-sus!) was also a big sissy who cries and hides behind women’s skirts.

The level of this sort of crap is so ‘kindergarten’ that I found it astonishing that a newspaper such as The Washington Post would even run it without turning it into a cartoon.

Much has also been made of the luxury in which the Al Qaeda leader was said to be living. So? That distinguishes him from other ‘nice’ leaders in exactly what way? Do all those smiley inclusive baby kissers we call world leaders live in abject poverty, fund their own activities and give a shit about any of their constituency? (Cue Tui ad)

Nah Osama was probably a prick, which puts him in the same bag as most world leaders. He almost certainly encouraged many of his supporters to lay down their lives for his causes and to kill the unbelievers. (Still sounds like any one of a couple of dozen world leaders to me).

But there was one big difference between Osama and the others; his supporters will be seriously pissed off about what has allegedly happened and unlike their wimpier Western counterparts they are likely to take some pretty drastic actions to avenge what they see as an assassination. And from here, it certainly looks like an assassination.

But then I guess it was always going to be cheaper in monetary terms than the trial. America has a huge debt issue and times are tough!