Mohammed exeggerates a bit, Jackpine.  The petrodollars are not worthless, just declining.  And most oil is still traded in dollars.

However, Mohammed is right, when oil goes off the dollar, the economic situation in the US will not be a happy one.  The Bushites have been funding the military by international debt, and this is not possible indefinitely. 

Since both Obaden and McCain want to increase the military, and both are now in favor of a draft, the US debt will increase and the US in a short time, indeed rest in piss.

Chalmers Johnson in his trilogy of books thinks this is the most likely scenario.

Awe shucks folktruther, I don’t deserve the credit for being a comedienne. All I did was add to troublesums post in suggesting that the numbers just move around on the pages.

If ya’ll wanna call it/them ‘symbols’ I’ve got no problems with that. I just know that WHATEVER ya wanna call it, (money) I don’t have any. “They’ve” spent all of my money. And, for any other person who’s given them a portion of their earnings for years and years (to hold) “they’ve” no doubt spent that too. So, the money (symbolic or otherwise) is gone.

Now, I’m not really sure how that’s ‘funny’, but…whatever blows your hair back…

Mr. Idris does have a point about the petrodollar system.  And i can’t help but feel that “rest in piss” was no typo.  Perhaps not everyone loves America…though i can’t understand why.

Just a test - ignore - moderator, delete if you wish.

Since Bush was a history major, we don’t need to worry, he can get us out of this. Just like he was in the National guard and got us into a war. We need never worry, be happy, go long on Hallaburton.

A mismanaged war, The Katrina disaster, and now this. If anyone could turn this financial crisis into a great depression, it would be President Bush.

The problem is Capitalism, unregulated capitalism, and the piracy has now bottomed out. We’re all going to pay for it but we can see our payments subsidizing the wealthy class so they can screw us some more or we can subsidize a more rational and accountable, approach.

Basically, we either socialize the debt of the wealthy or we can socialize the banks and the largest economic structures and invest that money in rebuilding a publicly owned infrastructure for the 21st century.

The posts of troublesum and Cyrena are really funny.  “I don’t think we can have a crash because money isn’t money amymore; it’s jusst numbres in a data base.”

Money has always been numbers, but not ‘just numbers.’  They are symbols, as Anarcissie says, of aspects of politial, economic and social reality.  The wages people get are expressed in numbers but what those numbers turn out to be are very important to people.  They are even more important to rich people.

Unfortunately the American power system lies in numbers in the same way it does in words.  So, as Anarcissie says, people begin to no longer believe the numbers.  When this trust is diminished-an the economic as well as the whole social system is based on this trust- the power system loses power.  People won’t do what they want because we don’e believe what they say.

The American power system can rely for a time on other power systems in the world, since e3conomic interests are all intermixed.  But since the US is increasingly hated by the people of the world for its brutality and irrationality, this hatred will eventually penetrate their power systems, who eventually will withdraw their support.  And since the US is massively indebted to them, the US will then go down the toilet historically.

The solution to the problem offered by both parties in this election is increased war and class inequality, and delusion.  And Hope, I forgot Hope.  And Change.  Change is Comong and Change you Can Believe In.  Meanwhile both parties plan to promote neocon-noelib policies to the RIGHT of Bush, continuing the fraudulent War on Terrorism, and increasing military expenses.

Bullshit doesn’t do it, folks.  The population must mobilize against the ruling class and their Elite consensus to frighten them enough to make structural changes.  And we must do it in sufficient numbers, which I assure you that the ruling class take seriously, even if their acolytes don’t.

Indeed, there isn’t much actual money burning…see what i said on another thread about leveraging (freddie and fannie at 80 to 1)

Numerian Roubelini (who’s been accurately calling this mess from before the beginning) and others figure that AIG may not even make it through the week…share prices are approaching the critical $5 mark.  That’s big and bad, because AIG may be exposed to tens of trillions.

Truthdiggers may be upset to learn that at this point, the financial toxic waste is being firewalled with actual deposits from actual people…in other words, very real money.

And some of this money is real, the Lehman employs now out on the street are worse than broke because around 30% of their compensation was in stock options.  So not only have they lost their jobs, but their savings, retirement, and education funds as well.

Shoes are dropping like their attached to the ankles of Gregory Hines.

Money has always been symbolic.  However, as it became more separated from physical substances, it became easier to play games with.  It was some trouble to the Roman emperors to debase the currency; it had to be melted down and remanufactured.  Paper had only to be printed.  Now we have credit money, those figures on sheets of paper and coded into databases.

However, regardless of how the symbol is represented, people have to believe in it.  To keep people believing in it, the symbols have to be treated to some extent as if they have material limitations, like finite quantity.  When the government abuses its power to create money, as the U.S. government has been doing for the last thirty years at least, there eventually comes a moment when people no longer believe in it, or they don’t believe in their prospects for obtaining it or trading it for something they want.  That is what is happening now.  It is hard to say how far it will go.  For instance, the Chinese could stop believing in the U.S. government’s ability to pay back its debts in real dollars, and stop lending it the one billion dollars a day it’s presently hooked on.  A lot of stuff would then come loose pretty rapidly.  I’d call it a crash.

Troublesum,

This is your best post ever!!

“...I don’t think we can have a crash because money isn’t money anymore; it’s just numbers in a data base.  What has happened in the last few years is probably worse than what happened in 1929 but numbers don’t crash, they just move around on a page….”

YOU ARE SO CORRECT. The numbers only move around on the page. The money is long gone…

“Is money money or isn’t money money?”  That was the title of an essay written by Gertrude Stein way back when economics became a science and no one including economists understood it anymore.  Things have only gotten worse.  I don’t think we can have a crash because money isn’t money anymore; it’s just numbers in a data base.  What has happened in the last few years is probably worse than what happened in 1929 but numbers don’t crash, they just move around on a page.