{"content":[{"text":"them to even have independent economies or national currencies. As a result most of the \n world’s population and any of the newly independent countries that did not adopt a version \n of a Euro-‐American currency had no way to monetize their economic activity in \n international trade. They were left entirely dependent upon the USD, GBP, and for foreign \n trade of any kind. In order to limit USD hegemony in Africa, the French invented the CFA-‐ \n Franc. This African franc tied its former African colonies to France by giving the CFA-‐franc a \n favourable exchange rate with French franc, although not parity. Overall however the post-‐ \n war independence movements were all faced with the inherent dependence of their \n currency systems from the machinations of US and European banks with their control over \n the two major foreign exchange markets, the City and Wall Street. The exceptions to this \n regime were the Soviet Union and COMECON as and after 1959 Cuba.","bbox":{"left":0.102926,"top":0.051633,"width":0.79411,"height":0.193726}},{"text":"When the US economy faced possible ﬁnancial collapse toward the end of its war in Vietnam \n (it had been fairly successful in transferring the costs of the Korean War to the “United \n Nations”), secret negotiations by the Nixon administration with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia \n ad through their oﬃces","bbox":{"left":0.102926,"top":0.262587,"width":0.794157,"height":0.06900599999999996}},{"text":"within OPEC, saved the USD by abolishing the gold ﬁxing and establishing the USD as the \n sole currency for the world oil trade. At one fell swoop any country that did not have \n domestic oil supplies or had to trade oil on the world market was forced to use US dollars. To \n prove the point the US regime has never hesitated to wage war against any OPEC member \n that does not comply with this iron rule.Of course the US is the only country which can issue \n US dollars and its banks are the only ones who can sell USD denominated debt, directly or \n indirectly, hence the central role of the Federal Reserve System-‐-‐ the private banking \n cartel chartered to issuedollars and control US monetary policy. The US regime has also \n pursued rigorous policies-‐-‐ even if not always entirely successful-‐-‐ to draw all those \n dollars back into US assets or to permit US entities to acquire foreign assets through the \n unlimited capacity to generate USD and to monetize private business (while on the other \n hand prohibiting the monetizing of public debt for social services, infrastructure etc.)","bbox":{"left":0.102926,"top":0.348822,"width":0.794108,"height":0.21154199999999995}},{"text":"This is the context in which the current economic war with China and to a lesser extent with \n Russia has to be seen. This economic war entered a new phase with the Wuhan attack.","bbox":{"left":0.102926,"top":0.577593,"width":0.794058,"height":0.03337199999999996}},{"text":"Fast-‐forward: European and US authorities order various degrees of “lockdown” and \n international travel, even within the EU itself, comes to a virtual halt. Airlines, hotels, and \n the rest of the travel sector have practically no more than essential business. The transport \n sector is also substantially restricted. The everyday economy is almost in coronary arrest.","bbox":{"left":0.102926,"top":0.628193,"width":0.794017,"height":0.06900600000000001}},{"text":"What are the beneﬁts of the general lockdown in the West? I sit really possible that the \n corona virus was so shocking that the economy as a whole was only an afterthought? Are \n we to believe that it was merely an oversight on the part of government to contemplate \n contingencies for epidemics but not for economics? It would be nice to think that Western \n governments care so much about the health of their citizens but that is rubbish. What is \n really very important-‐-‐ in fact, it is the only important issue for those who own our \n governments is MONEY and of course the powerthat goes with it.","bbox":{"left":0.102926,"top":0.714428,"width":0.794124,"height":0.12245700000000004}},{"text":"What are the immediate consequences of the lockdown in economic terms?","bbox":{"left":0.102926,"top":0.854113,"width":0.6478,"height":0.015554999999999986}},{"text":"restriction of travel by masses of a generally mobile and consuming population \n (at least in the EU) \n restriction-‐-‐ soon to reach extinction of a substantial percentage of SMEs","bbox":{"left":0.200569,"top":0.884402,"width":0.6961940000000001,"height":0.05118899999999993}},{"text":"| 2","bbox":{"left":0.905167,"top":0.951943,"width":0.02340999999999993,"height":0.01659200000000005}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}