The International Writers Magazine: Opinion

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Dollar Sinks • Dean Borok The new managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn of France, reiterated that body’s opinion that the dollar is still overvalued.  His opinion is echoed by supermodel Giselle Bündschen, who insists on being paid in euros, and super billionaire Warren Buffett, who advises seeking refuge in non-dollar currencies.

Taken together the future prospects for the American economy do not present an encouraging perspective.  Stan O’Neill, the chairman of Merrill Lynch, was let go with a severance package of $150 million after losing $10 billion for the firm.  Chuck Prince has been let go from Citigroup with a comparable package after that bank suffered comparable losses.
 
Critics are castigating Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez for seeking a long-term contract in the neighborhood of $350 million, but he at least gives value for his money, unlike the aforementioned bozos, who can’t hit homeruns or field ground balls.  They are so lazy and ignorant that they couldn’t even do a capable job of evaluating the real value of the billions of dollars of worthless securities their banks bought.
 
$350 million sounds like a lot of dough now, but it won’t seem like so much in a couple of years’ time, when a bottle of beer costs $10,000.  In Colombia an iPod costs two million pesos and nobody thinks twice about it.  When worst-case scenarios have been presented in past years, I always brushed them off, saying, “Nah, it’ll never come to that.”  But after George Bush, where reality has surpassed any worst-case scenario that could ever be imagined, I have come to accept that the worst can indeed happen.
 
Even the reactionary elements know a political earthquake is coming with next year’s elections, but they behave as though it’s due to some irrationality on the part of the electorate.  Fox News Channel, The New York Sun and the rest are discussing what they concede to be an inevitable Clinton presidency with a tone of incredulity.  They are deploring the trend of “economic populism” and “soak the rich class warfare,” as they see it.
 
Even a monkey has the sense to connect the disparate elements of a situation in order to form a conclusion.  If you present an ape with a banana suspended from a string and a box, he will push the box over and stand on it in order to reach the banana.  The American press is not capable of following this kind of logical progression.  Indeed, they were hired for their stupidity.  The Mayan religion teaches that when the sun god made the first men out of corn they saw too clearly, so he destroyed them because he didn’t want his creations to have powers of observation equivalent to his own.  There is a world of truth in that fable and it explains the dolts who are pre-digesting our news and opinions in accordance with the wishes of their masters, whose goal is to retain their position of dominance.  What’s going on in this country is not terribly difficult to explain, but they don’t want you to know, so they intentionally confuse you with disinformation and useless nonsense, telling you that the Canadian medical system stinks (yeah, for the insurance companies), or how the Swedish economy is inferior to that of Mississippi.  Pleeeeze!
 

Giselle wishing you luck with your dollars. This is a girl who knows her euros...

The reason I seized the opportunity to write Internet articles is that I suffered a lifetime of having these idiotic opinions jammed my throat and no opportunity to fight back.  What was I going to do, write them a letter?  Ohhh surrre!   “Dear New York Times, you are a bunch of butt-kissing, middle-brow conformists.  Why don’t you tell the truth once in a while?  Judith Miller is nothing but a shill for the Bush administration.  Thomas Friedman is a hick writing garbled nonsense.  I dare you to print this!”  Good luck!

All right, so I have an agenda that is to present a point of view at least as informed as theirs and let the reader decide. 
Let’s examine the facts.  By whatever measure you choose to employ, George W. Bush, who became president by means of a coup d’état, has been an unmitigated disaster.  All he has ever cared about was consolidating wealth and power in the hands of his friends.  Even his unbelievably bellicose approach to the Middle East makes sense in that it has caused oil to rocket from $20/barrel under Clinton to its current price of just under $100/barrel, with the difference going into the pockets of his friends in the petroleum industry.
 
His destructive fiscal and monetary policies have destroyed the dollar.  Whatever ambitions Hillary Clinton had to institute appropriate social programs to bring the US into line with the rest of the industrialized world, she will be forced to preside over an era of austerity that will last for many years, just to restore confidence in the American economy.  The dollar is so blown out at this point that it might be easier to get rid of it completely and establish a new system of currency.
 
The Democrats are content to let the Iraq war drag on until Election Day.  They can say, “Hey, we tried, but Bush refuses to budge.  Let the electorate decide!”  In the meantime Bush is pushing for a missile defense program costing in the hundreds of billions of (worthless) dollars to protect us from – Iran!?

The problem with the Democrats is that they are so tedious and incompetent that after a few years of watching these idiots mess up the Republicans start to seem fresh and exciting by comparison.
 
But if there is one issue that terrifies Hillary Clinton, it is anything to do with cars and licenses.  The only time Bill Clinton ever lost an election was when he got thrown out as governor of Arkansas for raising license plate fees.  It took him years of crawling on his knees and apologizing, all because he raised license plate fees by a couple of bucks.  Americans are a bunch of weirdos when it comes to their automobiles, and if you put together the combination of drivers’ licenses and Mexicans it’s Welcome To My Nightmare!  She tried to dodge the issue but the press and the other Democratic candidates are holding her feet to the fire, knowing that the mess of undocumented Mexican workers driving cars has no solution.  She’ll stall, hoping that the issue blows over, but I would like to take a baseball bat to New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who decided to raise it as an issue right before a presidential election.
 
Let Spitzer eat shit!  Let him withdraw the proposal to grant drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants and cop a plea that he made a mistake.  Fuck him, throw him to the wolves.  This country can’t stand any more Republican misrule, and the overriding issue is to get the Clintons back in power so they can get the economy on life support, or all is lost.

© Dean Borok November 8th 2007
deanyorkave@yahoo.com
New York City Report
Dean Borok
OK, I killed myself after the Yankees lost last night, and now I’ve come back from the dead and I feel better.  No use crying over spilt milk, but it drives me nuts to give so much satisfaction to the Yankees haters who inhabit bridge and tunnel-land.
Flying Bankers
Dean Borok
The Coney Island Cyclone roller coaster ride may be closed for the season but don’t worry, your bank account is getting ready for the ride of its life

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