With an annual turnover greater than the total GDP of Sweden, Wal-Mart has said it will soon bring back the sale of firearms, including rifles and shotguns, at more than 500 of its US stores. And we wonder why the USA is one of the most dangerous countries in the civilised world!
Anyone can see that the regular school shootings, the myriad bank robberies and gang warfare in most inner cities, are out of control and leave thousands of innocent people dead every year. So why this decision?
As usual it is based on the dollar, the greenback, as it always is in this country that is and has been in decline for more than 20 years. How long can it retain it unquestioned pre-eminence in the world to claim that it is the world's policeman both morally and economically?
Euro Pacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff comments on an IMF forecast that China's economy will surpass the U.S. in 5 years
Not long if the decision to downgrade it's debt taken this week by Standard & Poor, a ratings agency, and the news that the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) all want to change the dollar as the main currency for purchases like oil and other wholesale commodities. For me, the writing is on the wall as G. John Ikenberry argues...
"...as China gets more powerful and the United States' position erodes, two things are likely to happen: China will try to use its growing influence to reshape the rules and institutions of the international system to better serve its interests, and other states in the system -- especially the declining hegemon -- will start to see China as a growing security threat. The result of these developments, they predict, will be tension, distrust, and conflict, the typical features of a power transition. In this view, the drama of China's rise will feature an increasingly powerful China and a declining United States locked in an epic battle over the rules and leadership of the international system. And as the world's largest country emerges not from within but outside the established post-World War II international order, it is a drama that will end with the grand ascendance of China and the onset of an Asian-centered world order."
As Alex de coqville says, “A great civilization can not be conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”
Enough said - let the party begin!
2 comments:
I really like that quote...“A great civilization can not be conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”
But it makes me think, does this pertain to our current society, in which borders are increasingly meaningless and globalization is rampant.
Civilizations have been replaced by empires, empires by superpowers and now I think superpowers will be replaced by globalization. I guess the question is...Is our world conquering itself from within? I would say it is...capitalism is going to be a bad word in the future...
Yes, you make a good point: the old notion of borders is largely disappearing as we enter the globalised world.
I guess that means that we may be entering a new notion of border e.g. a supranational notion of statehood or nationhood.
Some say it's a corporate notion of nation owned by big conglomerates like MacDonalds, or Burger King, or Prada, or WalMart.
Finally, I'd say capitalism is already a dirty word and has become synonymous with all the worst forms of excess: greed, selfishness, arrogance, and corruption.
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