Como ficar multibilionario num unico dia; nao acredita?

Bem, não quero dizer que você, ou eu, possamos realizar essa proeza. Mas pode-se ter o gostinho de ver passar em suas mãos, num único dia, centenas de milhões de dólares, assim como quem não quer nada...
Basta trabalhar na "casa de ilusões" por excelência nos dias que correm: a Casa da Moeda americana, o Bureau of Engraving and Printing, encarregado de imprimir todo o dinheiro que um governo irresponsável produz para tentar enganar todos os cidadãos que ele está fazendo algo contra a crise, que ele mesmo provocou, aliás...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

The new alchemists: Blank paper to greenbacks

View Photo Gallery —  At the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, each weekday, around the clock, men and women walk into the rumbling belly of the C Street building to print what the rest of us are laboring for: greenbacks.

By Theresa Vargas 

The Washington Post, September 2, 2011

William Bolden makes more money in eight hours than Donald Trump.

Combined with Oprah Winfrey.

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Combined with Beyonce and Jay-Z.

William Bolden makes more than $25 million in an 8-hour shift. He's a securities pressman at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, DC. Bolden is one of three pressmen who meticulously produce twenty dollar bills, a sheet at a time.

Bolden, a soft-spoken man who grew up on a Virginia farm, does the math one recent afternoon. If 40,000 sheets of paper travel through the machine he mans each night at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and each one carries 32 $20 bills, that’s $25,600,000. All in a single shift.

In a year, that means more than $6.6 billion will pass before his eyes. Last year, Trump, Winfrey and the expecting couple earned, according to Forbes, a combined total of about $422 million.

At the bureau, each weekday, around the clock, men and women like Bolden swipe security badges and walk into the rumbling belly of the C Street building to print what the rest of us are laboring for: Greenbacks.

“I don’t think of it as money. Right now, it’s just paper,” says Bolden, 50, standing in front of a yellow, groaning machine that is spitting out stacks of crisp, untouched bills. His eyes scan for tiny details most people wouldn’t notice, such as whether every word on the seal is readable. “Here, we’re producing a commodity that the country needs and it has to be correct.”

Bolden, a Navy veteran who worked for 16 years in the CIA’s print shop before coming to the bureau, speaks of printing with reverence. There is a thrill in that moment of creation, he says, in starting with a blank sheet and ending up with something important. “I’m proud,” he says, “that I print something that is used around the world.”

Lydia Washington, a spokeswoman for the bureau, says there are 1,892 employees between the D.C. and Texas facilities who in a day might produce $974 million. “We set a global standard in currency production,” she says. “Our currency has never been recalled or devalued.” In other words, an old dollar is worth as much as a new dollar. The bills are also strong enough to withstand 4,000 double folds — forward and backward — before they tear.

Each bill, before it reaches the Federal Reserve and eventually the public, goes through four steps at the bureau. In a room thick with the smell of ink, blank sheets of paper with embedded watermarks wait to be born into currency. A banner on the wall reads: “THE COLOR of MONEY $TART$ HERE.” And nearby shelves are labeled with the hues that will go into the bills: “lavender,” “azure,” and “cherry,” among others.

Workers print the back of the bills first, followed by the front. They then send them to another area for inspection. Only the ones deemed to be without flaw will reach Bolden’s section.

There, the already-tight security throughout the building is even more restrictive. Employees work behind gates that stretch from the concrete floors to the ceiling, and signs tell of the two-man rule. No one is ever alone here.

This is the final stage of the bills’ gestation, where workers make sure that the seals are printed with just the right ink density, that the serial numbers follow a precise sequence and that each bill is cut to perfection so that when a person slips it into a vending machine it’s accepted. All of this Bolden does, zipping from one end of the machine to the other with the ease acquired over seven years of experience.

But ask Bolden about his job and he will likely keep it vague. He doesn’t like to talk about what he earns — a pressman in Bolden’s position, according it a chart on the bureau’s Web site, could take home anywhere from $45.20 to $46.30 an hour — or go into detail about what he actually does.

“If anyone asks, I say I work for the Treasury Department,” Bolden says. Otherwise, he says, when you tell people you have millions of dollars within your reach every day, it often leads to the same joke — one that Oprah and Trump have likely heard in some variation: “Can you bring me a stack?”

Nine Eleven did not change the world - Joseph Nye

OF MIGHT AND RIGHT

Ten Years after the Mouse Roared

Joseph S. Nye

Project Syndicate, 2011-09-01

CAMBRIDGE – Al Qaeda’s attack on the United States ten years ago was a profound shock to both American and international public opinion. What lessons can we learn a decade later?

Anyone who flies or tries to visit a Washington office building gets a reminder of how American security was changed by 9/11. But, while concern about terrorism is greater, and immigration restrictions are tighter, the hysteria of the early days after 9/11 has abated. New agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence, and an upgraded Counter Terrorism Center have not transformed American government, and, for most Americans, personal freedoms have been little affected. No more large-scale attacks have occurred inside the US, and everyday life has recovered well.

But this apparent return to normality should not mislead us about the longer-term importance of 9/11. As I argue in my book The Future of Power, one of the great power shifts of this global information age is the strengthening of non-state actors. Al Qaeda killed more Americans on 9/11 than the attack by the government of Japan did at Pearl Harbor in 1941. This might be called the “privatization of war.”

During the Cold War, the US had been even more vulnerable, in technological terms, to a nuclear attack from Russia, but “mutual assured destruction” prevented the worst by keeping vulnerability more or less symmetrical. Russia controlled great force, but it could not acquire power over the US from its arsenal.

Two asymmetries, however, favored Al Qaeda in September 2001. First, there was an asymmetry of information. The terrorists had good information about their targets, while the US before September 11 had poor information about the identity and location of terrorist networks. Some government reports had anticipated the extent to which non-state actors could hurt large states, but their conclusions were not incorporated into official plans.

Second, there was an asymmetry in attention. A larger actor’s many interests and objectives often dilute its attention to a smaller actor, which, by contrast, can focus its attention and will more easily. There was a good deal of information about Al Qaeda in the American intelligence system, but the US was unable to process coherently the information that its various agencies had gathered.

But asymmetries of information and attention do not confer a permanent advantage on the wielders of informal violence. To be sure, there is no such thing as perfect safety, and, historically, waves of terrorism have often taken a generation to recede. Even so, the elimination of top Al Qaeda leaders, the strengthening of American intelligence, tighter border controls, and greater cooperation between the FBI and the CIA have all clearly made the US (and its allies) safer.

But there are larger lessons that 9/11 teaches us about the role of narrative and soft power in an information age. Traditionally, analysts assumed that victory went to the side with the better army or the larger force; in an information age, the outcome is also influenced by who has the better story. Competing narratives matter, and terrorism is about narrative and political drama.

The smaller actor cannot compete with the larger in terms of military might, but it can use violence to set the world agenda and construct narratives that affect its targets’ soft power. Osama bin Laden was very adept at narrative. He was not able to do as much damage to the US as he hoped, but he managed to dominate the world agenda for a decade, and the ineptness of the initial American reaction meant that he could impose larger costs on the US than were necessary.

President George W. Bush made a tactical error in declaring a “global war on terrorism.” He would have done better to frame the response as a reply to Al Qaeda, which had declared war on the US. The global war on terror was misinterpreted to justify a wide variety of actions, including the misguided and expensive Iraq War, which damaged America’s image. Moreover, many Muslims misread the term as an attack on Islam, which was not America’s intent, but fit Bin Laden’s efforts to tarnish perceptions of the US in key Muslim countries.

To the extent that the trillion or more dollars of unfunded war costs contributed to the budget deficit that plagues the US today, Bin Laden was able to damage American hard power. And the real price of 9/11 may be the opportunity costs: for most of the first decade of this century, as the world economy gradually shifted its center of gravity toward Asia, the US was preoccupied with a mistaken war of choice in the Middle East.

A key lesson of 9/11 is that hard military power is essential in countering terrorism by the likes of Bin Laden, but that the soft power of ideas and legitimacy is essential for winning the hearts and minds of the mainstream Muslim populations from whom Al Qaeda would like to recruit. A “smart power” strategy does not ignore the tools of soft power.

But, at least for America, perhaps the most important lesson of 9/11 is that US foreign policy should follow the counsel of President Dwight Eisenhower a half-century ago: Do not get involved in land wars of occupation, and focus on maintaining the strength of the American economy.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr, a former US assistant secretary of defense, is a professor at Harvard and the author of The Future of Power.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.
www.project-syndicate.org

Ameaça fascista no Brasil - Reinaldo Azevedo

Na verdade, eu não distinguiria entre fascismo "de direita" e fascismo "de esquerda". No fundo qual é a diferença? 
NENHUMA. Ambos são fascistas, no sentido mais ordinário da palavra.
De fato, não existe qualquer diferença: ambos, digamos o fascismo histórico de Mussolini na Itália dos anos 1924-a 1943, e certos fascismos em construção na América Latina buscam fundamentalmente as mesmas coisas: controlar, pelas mãos sujas do Estado e do partido que o comanda, a vida de todos e de cada um dos cidadãos dessa nação infeliz.
O Brasil ainda não vive em fascismo, embora tenha conhecido uma versão light desse sistema durante a ditadura do Estado Novo (1937-1945), na era Vargas, que começa em 1930 e só vai terminar mesmo já na República de 1946, em 1954, com o suicídio do presidente eleito, vivendo em regime de funcionamento normal das instituições.
Durante a fase ditatorial, o fascismo no Brasil consistiu basicamente na censura total aos meios de comunicação, no fechamento do Congresso, na proibição de partidos políticos, nas diversas restrições ¡as liberdades, na repressão aos opositores do regime, e nas prisões arbitrárias e tortura de opositores mais ativos (como os comunistas).
O PT não pretende o mesmo sistema hoje em dia, e nem poderia, mas muitos dos seus militantes são perfeitos bolcheviques, que gostariam, sim, de uma "ditadura do partido", e só não fazem por que não podem. Se pudessem, fariam.
O espírito fascista, tanto dos mussolinianos, quanto dos petistas atuais, é o mesmo: impor a sua hegemonia, a sua verdade.
Para isso, eles usam da mentira, da fraude, dos roubos e de vários outros crimes para conseguir seus intentos.
Não estou dizendo que todos os petistas são assim, e alguns até são criaturas perfeitamente razoáveis, com as melhores intenções, mas todos eles são gramscianos, ou seja, possuem a semente da dominação totalitária, da completa dominação do partido sobre a sociedade, mesmo querendo fazer o bem.
Por isso não existe NENHUMA diferença entre fascismos de direita e de esquerda, inclusive porque não existe nenhuma diferença entre as políticas preconizadas.
Todas elas possuem os mesmos fundamentos e produzem os mesmos resultados, quer feitas em nome do proletariado, ou da burguesia, ou de qualquer outra categoria social.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Os fascistas saem da toca!

Reinaldo Azevedo, 

04/09/2011 09:33:08

É sob pressão que pessoas, partidos e até instituições revelam a sua real natureza. Os cemitérios tendem a ser iguais nas ditaduras e nas democracias. A grande diferença se dá mesmo no mundo dos vivos. O 4º Congresso do PT, que começou ontem e termina hoje, está prestando um grande serviço ao país e à política. Os petistas revelam que não aprenderam nada nem esqueceram nada depois de nove anos de poder. Continuam os autoritários de sempre, decididos a substituir a sociedade pelo partido, conforme seu projeto original. Quem presta um pouco de atenção à história das idéias não está surpreso.

O petismo é um descendente do bolchevismo no que concerne à organização da sociedade, entendendo que a nação deva ser conduzida por um ente que decide em lugar dos cidadãos, porém adaptado — e como! — aos tempos modernos.  Para o modelo, que ainda está em construção, pouco importa se os petistas estão ou não oficialmente no poder: eles sempre estarão por intermédio dos fundos de pensão, dos sindicatos, do aparelhamento das estatais. O petismo é um fascsmo de esquerda.

No que concerne à ordem econômica, tudo vai muito bem para os companheiros, até porque têm como seu principal aliado o capital financeiro, que não quer saber a cor dos gatos desde que eles cacem ratos. O curioso embate que se dáno Brasil é entre a esquerda financeira, financista e rentista, com a qual os petistas compuseram, e a direita assalariada, que trabalha. Chamo de “direita” aqui, para deixar claro, as pessoas que ainda se ocupam de alguns dos velhos (!) e bons fundamentos das sociedades liberais: liberdade individual, igualdade perante a lei, incentivo ao empreendedorismo, estado enxuto, tudo o que parece hoje fora de moda. Os petistas não querem mexer no “sistema”. Ao contrário: pretendem reforçá-lo por meio, por exemplo, de uma reforma política estúpida, que extrema todos os males do modelo vigente.

Só uma coisa incomoda o PT: o regime de liberdades públicas que se respira no país. Isso eles não podem suportar. Então um partido ganha uma eleição — ou três… ou dez —, e ainda há gente na imprensa que se atreve a criticá-lo, que não concorda com sua ilegalidades, que resiste às suas tentações e práticas totalitárias, que não se submete a seus desejos e vontades? “Mas a gente não conquistou nas urnas o direito de fazer o que bem entende?”, eles se perguntam espantados. E a resposta, evidentemente, é “Não!” Eles conquistaram nas urnas A OBRIGAÇÃO de seguir as regras do estado de direito, de se submeter à lei, de nos servir por intermédio de um mandato, que pode ser revogado numa nova eleição ou mesmo num processo de impedimento.

Com a reportagem que revelou as lambanças de José Dirceu em Brasília, VEJA denunciou mais do que as lambanças do “consultor de empresas privadas” — poderoso chefão de um “governo paralelo” e  sua mímica asquerosa de chefe de máfia —; a revista denunciou um método. E os petistas estão infelizes. Em outros tempos, eles mandariam empastelar a publicação, fariam quebra-quebra, perseguiriam os profissionais, exigiriam a demissão desse ou daquele, lotariam os porões do regime com essa gente recalcitrante… Hoje eles se civilizaram; pretendem perseguir seus desafetos por meio de instrumentos legais.

O texto do PT que volta a pregar o controle da “mídia” expõe como nunca a natureza do jogo. Eles até se mostravam dispostos a condescender com a democracia desde que nós não fizéssemos uso efetivo dela. Era como se dissessem: “Nós garantimos a sua liberdade, mas a condição é que não nos incomodem”. Tanto é assim que, não faz tempo, a Executiva Nacional do partido aprovou um documento em que abandonava essa estupidez. Mudou radicalmente de idéia. VEJA decidiu demonstrar que liberdade de imprensa não é uma licença que se pede no cartório partidário, mas um direito garantido pela Constituição, uma fundamento das sociedades livres. Nos limites da lei, não pede licença nem pede desculpas.

Aí não dá! Figurões do partido como Gilberto Carvalho, secretário-geral da Presidência, e Ideli Salvatti, ministra das Relações Institucionais, defenderam ontem a “regulamentação da mídia”. Não custa notar que, durante a campanha — e mesmo depois de eleita —, Dilma Rousseff repudiou qualquer forma de controle. Ministros exercem cargos de confiança e falam pela presidente. Chegou a hora de enquadrá-los ou de confessar um estelionato.

Os fascistas de esquerda descobriram o gosto pelo capitalismo, mas não viram graça nenhuma na liberdade, que será sempre a liberdade de quem discorda de nós. Mas vão perder.

É crescente o número das pessoas que lhes dizem: “Não, vocês não podem. Não podem porque estamos aqui”.

III FoCO-RI: debate sobre governança economica

Realizou-se, na última sexta-feira 2 de setembro, uma sessão do Fórum Centro-Oeste de Relações Internacionais, no âmbito da qual fui convidado a participar de uma discussão sobre governança econômica internacional, juntamente com o Ministro Paulo Estivallet de Mesquita, diretor do Departamento Econômico do Itamaraty, e Sandra Polônio Rios, economista do Cindes-RJ, um think tank dedicado a temas de comércio, investimentos e relações econômicas internacionais e regionais. O coordenador dos debates foi o professor Carlos Pio, da cadeira de Economia Política Internacional do IRel-UnB.
Procurei fazer uma exposição abrangente, cobrindo o desenvolvimento histórico da governança econômica internacional, com ênfase nas organizações de Bretton Woods (FMI e Banco Mundial) e no GATT-OMC, sublinhando as dificuldades de coordenação econômica entre os países, o que aparece de fato como descoordenação, quase uma "guerra fria econômica".

Na fase de perguntas, não conseguimos, obviamente, cobrir todas elas, mas guardei aqui as perguntas, para tentar responder mais tarde.
Elas foram as seguintes:

Tive primeiramente os comentários iniciais do professor Carlo Pio:

Quais seriam os principais valores, ou principio, que orientariam os governos no âmbito da governança econômica internacional? Teríamos a possibilidade de um um novo Bretton Woods?

Depois recebi duas perguntas que me foram dirigidas diretamente: 

1) Quais as vantagens e desvantagens para o Brasil decorrentes da recente decisão de reduzir a taxa de juros?

Não respondi na hora, pois não se tratava de uma pergunta de governança econômica internacional, e sim de política econômica brasileira.

Não creio que a pergunta possa ser respondida nesses termos, de vantagens ou desvantagens, pois tudo depende de que níveis se está falando, de juros em relação a certos níveis de inflação. Se o Brasil tem uma taxa de juros de 12%, como tem, mas a inflação se aproxima de 7%, como está, então a taxa real é de apenas 5%, ainda assim mais do que o dobro das taxas atuais no mundo, que aliás estão muito baixas, algumas até em níveis negativos.

2) Até que ponto a transição para um cenário mais multipolar a nível internacional afetaria a condução da política brasileira no campo econômico?

Fiz primeiro a distinção entre multilateralismo e e condução de política econômica, dizendo que uma coisa não tem nada a ver com a outra. Pode-se ter políticas econômicas de diferentes tipos em quaisquer cenários internacionais, mais concentrados ou mais desconcentrados, pois tudo depende, em última instância, das orientações domésticas. Por outro lado, as políticas nacionais podem, e são, influenciadas pelo ambiente internacional, mas isso não depende, tampouco, do cenário ser mais aberto ou fechado, depende basicamente dos tipos de acordos que um país subscreve no plano internacional. 

Tracei o cenário dos acordos mais "intrusivos", que limitam a soberania dos países, sendo o mais limitador de todos os acordos de integração, a que o Brasil se submeteu voluntariamente no Mercosul.

Respondi a mais duas perguntas dirigidas aos três palestrantes:

3) Gostaria que um de vocês falasse dos BRICS, em especial da relação Brasil-Índia.

Não fui muito condescendente com os BRICS, que encontro um grupo totalmente artificial. Em todo caso, já tenho alguns trabalhos sobre os países, que permito citar aqui: 

To Be or Not the Bric

O papel dos Brics na economia mundial

Brics Role in the Global Economy

O Bric e a substituição de hegemonias

4) No atual cenário internacional [o] que dificulta a implementação de processos de governança global no campo econômico (comércio, finanças, investimentos); cite exemplos para ilustrar.

 Pergunta complexa, que respondi rapidamente, mas repetindo um pouco o que tinha dito na palestra principal; ou seja, a guerra fria econômica, um trabalho que devo publicar proximamente.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

O Federal Reserve, como destruidor do dolar - Sean Hyman

O autor é o que se chama de "especulador virtual", ou seja, um currency trader, o homem que aposta o dinheiro dos outros, arrisca com algum conhecimento do mercado. Pena que, no plano internacional, todo esse ganho acaba sendo desvalorizado pela queda do dólar, já que as autoridades insistem em inundar o mercado de dólares.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

The Fed’s Most Dangerous “Currency Shock” Yet

Sean Hyman 

The Sovereign Investor, August 29, 2011

The Fed is nothing but a bad experiment gone horribly wrong.
This so-called “independent” entity is supposed to keep our currency stable, along with our banking system and the rest of economy.
That’s what many investors were expecting at this past weekend’s Jackson Hole meeting. Yet, they were disappointed. The Fed decided to hold off a little longer on QE.
But setting QE aside, the Fed has still repeatedly overstepped their bounds since its founding in 1913. In doing so, they have continually sacrificed your dollars’ value.
What cost $1 in 1913 – when the Fed was created – now costs $20. That’s a 95% devaluation of your money. And it’s only going to get worse.
Over the years, the Fed’s well-meaning actions have led to a series of quiet “currency shocks” that have rippled through our economy, starting all the way back in the 1920s. And the worst is coming next (more on that in a moment).
First let’s take a quick look at the Fed’s impressively bad track record of “keeping our currency stable” over the last century.

Currency Shock #1: The Fed’s Stunt Back in the 1920s

Back in the 1920s, the British pound was king. The pound was the world’s reserve currency similar to how the dollar is today, only you could redeem pounds for gold.
That’s why French authorities were making trouble for the Brits back in the ‘20s. At the time, the French threatened to redeem their “credits” (a.k.a. pounds) with the Bank of England and seriously deplete England’s gold stock.
Of course, this was giving the British pound fits and forcing it to fall. Again, this was all happening on the other side of the world.
But the Fed still got involved.
What did the Fed do? They sacrificed our dollar to prop up the pound. The Fed quickly slashed our interest rates and agreed to make U.S. gold available to the French.
Well, you can imagine how the dollar tanked as the Fed cut rates and gave away our gold reserves at the same time. (Keep in mind, back then our money was actually backed by gold.)
That’s just one example of how our Fed loves to sink the dollar for the sake of other currencies. But these days they seem to sacrifice our dollar’s value for our stock market.
Let’s fast forward about 60 years…

Currency Shock #2: Sinking Dollar Causes Market Crash

If you ask me, the “crashing dollar” ultimately caused the 1987 market crash. And it’s all thanks to the Fed.
At the time, the dollar had been falling since March of 1985. Our currency had been stuck in a steep decline for two years straight. Traders were losing faith in the dollar and many investors were starting to reassess risks.
By the time the crashing dollar started affecting stocks, a new way of trading had just become popular on Wall Street. It was called “computerized trading.” This meant computers monitored stocks, while setting and adjusting stop-loss levels.
The computers triggered the first line of stops, and then it just kept going. It was a vicious cycle. Stop-loss after stop-loss hit. Suddenly you had a panic on your hands.
When all was said and done, stocks had fallen over 500 points or just over 22% on that one day alone! It became known as the “biggest one-day drop in history.”
At the time, everyone naturally blamed this new computerized form of trading. Indeed, the computers played their part. But for the 60 years prior, the Fed had also been undermining our dollar.
The sinking currency cut the legs out from under our stocks. The computers took over from there. It was ugly! Thanks once again, Federal Reserve!

Currency Shock #3: The Fed Becomes the “Lender of Last Resort”

Back on September 23, 1998 the Fed engineered its first bailout based on “systemic risk.” Before that time, no one thought of the Fed as the lender of last resort.
I’m sure you know this story. The now infamous $4 billion hedge fund Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) caused the market panic.
This fund was so leveraged. They controlled over $100 billion through swaps, emerging markets and mortgage-backed securities (MBS).
As Long Term Capital’s bets went wrong, their assets shrank from $4 billion to under $500 million in a very short time. This was enough to shake up every single asset LTCM invested in.
So what happened? The Fed orchestrated a massive bailout. Even though it was funded by other banks, bailing out this “too big to fail” hedge fund still caused the dollar to fall for several months straight.
The Fed’s position as the “lender of last resort” has just grown in the past three years.
From 2007, to present, the Fed has cut interest rates to practically 0% and has poured billions of dollars into the market to buy up toxic assets all over the place. As you know, they now even buy our own debt, or Treasuries.
That has already caused its own serious jolts to the buck once again. However, the next shock will be the one that truly unravels the dollar…

The Next Currency Shock Coming Soon

GDPs are dropping all over the world. Countries are struggling to get by and possibly stave off new recessions.
So leaders around the world are trying anything and everything that will give them an added advantage over other countries. The easiest way to do that is to devalue/cheapen your currency.
This makes your exports look less expensive than your competitors. So more foreign nations buy up your cheaper goods, and more money flows into your country.
America doesn’t want to be left out. The government can do one of two things to make us look competitive. They can either devalue our currency or cut wages.
Which do you think the elected officials of our country will impose? If your paycheck starts shrinking, Americans will not only complain – we’ll strike back by voting those politicians out of office.
But very few Americans understand purchasing power. Most people don’t realize that every time the dollar falls 50%, your real cost of living goes up at least 100%. When it falls 75%, your cost of living goes up 300%.
So politicians (the “independent” Fed included) will capitalize on this ignorance, and will choose to devalue your dollars.
Now here’s the problem. In order to remain competitive with the rest of the world, it’s estimated the dollar will have to fall ANOTHER 50%.
So by now I guess you’ve guessed what’s coming next…one of the biggest devaluations of our currency that we’ve ever seen!

Your Quick Escape Route

The Fed has already ensured our disastrous currency will continue to fall. As victims of any disaster, you need to plan to your escape route now before its too late.
This includes investing in things that go up as the cost of goods rise, namely commodities. Or even better yet, commodity-currencies which can rise even more during those periods.
You see, inflation is simply the rise in the cost of goods. However, if you invest in the goods that are going up in price, or you invest in the country’s currencies that export these very necessary commodities, then you will profit (instead of suffer) from the Fed’s next move.
As a long-term investor, you can buy more fundamentally strong currencies like gold, the Australian dollar, and the New Zealand dollar. These are the long-term currencies that will prosper over the next few years. (Although gold will likely perform best in the short-term.)
Remember: the Fed isn’t in the business to protect your dollar’s value. Only you can do that. Take action now to protect yourself and your family.
Have a Nice Day!

Sean Hyman
Editor, Currency Cross Trader
P.S. With the Fed keeping interest rates near 0%, it’s almost impossible to earn income for your long-term portfolio. (That’s not even counting how the dollar continues to drop each year). It’s time to take matters into your own hands.

The Worst Mistake America Made After 9/11 - Anne Applebaum

The Worst Mistake America Made After 9/11

How focusing too much on the war on terror undermined our economy and global power.

By Anne ApplebaumSlate, Sunday, Sept. 4, 2011, at 7:13 AM ET

We reacted to 9/11 with the war on terror. Was it a huge mistake?On Sept. 11, 2001, the post-Cold War era that began so euphorically on Nov. 9, 1989, abruptly ended. The long decade that stretched from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the fall of the World Trade Center was marked by military spending cuts, domestic political scandals, and a general sense that American foreign policy was adrift. President George H.W. Bush had talked of the "New World Order" but had no policy to fit the clever phrase. President Bill Clinton had a clutch of policies but never found a neat way to describe them.

In the wake of al-Qaida's attack on New York and Washington, an organizing principle suddenly presented itself. Like the Cold War, the new "war on terror," as it instantly became known, clearly defined America's friends, enemies, and priorities. Like the Cold War, the war on terror appealed both to American idealism and to American realism. We were fighting genuine bad guys, but the destruction of al-Qaida also lay clearly within the sphere of our national interests. The speed with which we all adopted this new paradigm was impressive, if somewhat alarming. At the time, I marveled at the neatness and cleanliness of this New New World Order and observed "how like an academic article everything suddenly appears to be."

And we were, in the terms defined by the war on terror, successful: Ten years after 9/11, al-Qaida is in profound disarray. Osama bin Laden is dead. Fanatical Islam is on the decline. Our military remains the most sophisticated and experienced in the world. And yet, 10 years after 9/11, it's also clear that the war on terror was far too narrow a prism through which to see the entire planet. And the price we paid to fight it was far too high.

The events of 9/11 reverberated through many spheres of American life but nowhere more profoundly than in American policy toward the outside world. Slowly, the supertanker that is the American foreign and defense establishment turned itself around, creaking and groaning, as Americans prepared to face new enemies. During the subsequent decade, we created a vast new security bureaucracy, encompassing some 1,200 government organizations, 1,900 companies, and 854,000 people with security clearances, according to a Washington Postinvestigation carried out last year. We launched two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq. We organized counterterrorism operations in far-flung places such as the Philippines and Yemen, changed the culture of our military and reoriented our foreign policy. We sharpened our focus on al-Qaida and its imitators. And we spent, according to one estimate, $3 trillion.

In our single-minded focus on Islamic fanaticism, we missed, for example, the transformation of China from a commercial power into an ambitious political power. We failed to appreciate the significance of economic growth in China's neighborhood, too. When President George W. Bush traveled in Asia in the wake of 9/11, he spoke to his Malaysian and Indonesia interlocutors about their resident terrorist cells. His Chinese colleagues, meanwhile, talked business and trade.

We also missed, at least initially, the transformation of Russia from a weak and struggling partner into a sometimes hostile opponent. Through the lens of the war on terror, Vladimir Putin, president of Russia in 2001, looked like an ally. He, too, was fighting terrorists, in Chechnya. Though his was quite a different war against quite different terrorists (and not only against terrorists), for a brief period he nevertheless convinced his American counterparts that his struggle and their struggle were more or less the same thing.

Thanks to the war on terror, we missed what might have been a historic chance to make a deal on immigration with Mexico. Because all of Latin America was irrelevant to the war on terror, we lost interest in, and influence on, that region, too. The same goes for Africa, with the exception of those countries with al-Qaida cells. In the Arab world, we aligned ourselves closely with authoritarian regimes because we believed they would help us fight Islamic terrorism, despite the fact that their authoritarianism was an inspiration to fanatical Islamists. If we are now treated with suspicion in place like Egypt and Tunisia, that is part of the explanation.

Finally, we stopped investing in our own infrastructure—think what $3 trillion could have done for roads, research, education, or even private investment, if a part of that sum had just been left in taxpayers' pockets—and we missed the chance to rethink our national energy policy. After 9/11, the president could have gone to the nation, declared an emergency, explained that wars would have to be fought and would have to be paid for—perhaps, appropriately, through a gasoline tax. He would have had enormous support. It's hard to remember now, but I could just about fill the tank of my car for $20 back in 2001. At the time, I'd have been happy to make it $21 if it helped the marines in Afghanistan. Instead, the president cut taxes and increased defense spending. We are only now paying the price.

Plenty of other mistakes have been made, both abroad and at home, since 9/11, and I'm sure that plenty of people will use this anniversary to reargue Iraq, Guantanamo, or the shocking wastefulness of homeland-security spending. But our worst mistake was one of omission. In making Islamic terrorism our central priority—and in some times and places our only priority—we ignored the economic, environmental, and political concerns of the rest of the globe. Worse, we pushed aside our own economic, environmental, and political problems until they became too great to be ignored.

Let me repeat: The U-turn that American foreign policy made after Sept. 11 was not a failure. But under President Bush, we narrowed our horizons, stopped thinking in broader strategic terms, and paid little attention to future competitors and even less attention to our own domestic weaknesses. President Obama, dealt a bad hand from the beginning, hasn't had the energy, the resources, or the willpower to do much better. Ten years after the events, I now find myself asking: Could it be that the planes that hit New York and Washington did less damage to the nation than the cascade of bad decisions that followed?