9/11: 20 Years Later
On September 11th 2001, I was in a dentist’s waiting room on Kingsland Road, east London. The TV was tuned to BBC News 24 and there were early reports that a light aircraft had flown into one of the twin towers. The dentist came to watch just as the second plane hit. We gawped …
The Past
You’ve probably seen enough about the 9/11 attack, so I’ll keep this short:
On September 11th 2001 I was in a dentist’s waiting room in Kingsland Road, east London.
The TV was tuned to BBC News 24. There were early reports that a light aircraft had flown into one of the twin towers.
The dentist and his assistant came to watch just as the second plane hit.
He closed the practice, made coffee and we gawped until the first tower collapsed. I went home to gawp some more.
It didn't feel real.
The dentist was from Pakistan and he prayed that Muslims were not responsible.
Unfortunately, his prayers were answered. The attack launched America's War on Terror, and was the pretext for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Since the 1990‘s America has been forced to fight to support the international role of the dollar. This requires control of trade and energy flows across Eurasia.
This control was made possible by issuing the world reserve currency, so that America’s giant warfare/welfare state was paid for by the rest of the world.
But one by one, America's creditors (Russia, then Europe, then China) stopped buying US Treasury paper. Cutting off the funding for enormous US deficits led to the crazy levels of money printing which keeps the wheels on the US economy.
(Covid, infrastructure and climate change provide cover for money printing that had to happen anyway).
The Present
As the War on Terrorism winds down, Americas new #1 enemy is China.
Here they have a problem, one that makes all-out war between China and the US unlikely:
China was America’s last major creditor, and as former US Admiral Mullen said:
We are borrowing money from China to build weapons to face down China. I mean, that’s a broken strategy. It may be okay now for a while, but it is a failed strategy from a national security perspective.
Now the US must fund its government programs by typing billions of dollars into existence and giving them to commerical banks.
Someone once said “What an empire does abroad, follows it home.” and we can see this starting to play out in the US.
Yesterday George W. Bush gave a 9/11 commemoration speech. and declared the War on Terror will also be waged on 'extremists at home', as 'we have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within.'
The Future
Anyway, as we accelerate towards the end of US dollar-based global currency system, I predict the next 20 years won't be anything like the last 20 (I know, not a difficult prediction to get right).
It is hard to predict the future of complex systems accurately, but the outlines of the next global currency system are becoming clear. And I will be writing about the likely winners, and likely losers, so that readers can plan accordingly.
x C x