America Cannot Loot Its Way to Greatness

America Cannot Loot Its Way to Greatness

Paul Craig Roberts 

Last year Congress passed a law requiring the Chinese government to divest from TikTok, alleging that the social media company collects sensitive data and information on Americans. But so does the US government, and Trump’s nominee Tulsi Gabbard has been forced by the US Senate to back off her opposition to the US government’s police state surveillance of American citizens in violation of the US Constitution.  

It is OK with the US Congress for Americans be be subjected to surveillance as long as it is not the Chinese doing it.

We don’t know if the Chinese are using TikTok for surveillance.  It is an accusation, the purpose of which seems to be to force China to fork over to US investors an interest in half of their company. The Speaker of the House is our bad cop saying he is going to shut down the company.  Trump is the good cop issuing an executive order to keep it open while he performs the art of the deal.

In America where the Sherman Anti-Trust Act is a dead letter law and monopolization has stifled productive investment, looting of foreign assets and foreign countries is America’s access to profits.  American corporations fire their American employees and replace them with foreign labor abroad or with foreigners on H-1B and L-1 visas paying them less than the American wage.  The saved labor cost goes to profits, higher stock prices, and executive “performance” bonuses.

But this is only the beginning of the story of American profits’ reliance on looting. For the past quarter century Americans deceived by blatant lies have poured hundreds of billions of their incomes taken by Washington to bomb women and children and bring destroyed countries to “democracy.”

Ukraine is an example.  The corrupt Biden regime has shipped hundreds of billions of dollars of hard-pressed Americans’ incomes in the form of weapons to Ukraine.  These weapons are not a gift. They have to be paid for, but it not the American taxpayers whose money was sent who get paid. It is Blackrock and US agri-businesses to whom Ukraine has to sell its productive farmland in order to pay for the weapons.  According to reports  one-third of Ukraine’s farmland have been sold to American interests. In reality, the war in Ukraine is a mechanism for transferring  Americans’ incomes to Blackrock. 

Conservatives rant and rave about welfare, financed by transferring income from hard-working Americans to those who live off of them. But the worst transfers are those that enable Washington’s exploitation of foreign countries.

Just consider the energy situation in Europe, especially in Germany. A Russian gas pipeline delivered low cost energy to Europe. Washington blew it up.  The replacement is high cost American liquified natural gas, the expense of which is forcing industrial companies such as German car companies out of Germany. Germany, Washington’s puppet, pays for American profits with  German unemployment and falling GDP. Yesterday European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that Washington’s sanctions on Russian energy has caused “sky-high” energy prices throughout Europe. Washington is looting its own allies, the true cost to them of NATO.

John Perkins’ book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, explains in detail the extent to which the United States rests on the exploitation of foreign countries than on its productive capacity.  The NY Banks, perhaps with the participation of the World Bank, an American exploitative institution, sell a development package to a third world government. For example, here is a development plan . Borrow money from us to electrify your country. This will produce economic developments that will provide the resources to repay the loans. 

As Perkins admits, it is a shell game, one that often requires payments to the ruling elite to take on the loans.

When the promised development does not occur and there are no revenues to repay the loans, up shows the corrupt International Monetary Fund (IMF).  The IMF tells the country,  ruined by the US loans and the corruption of the leaders who were paid to take them out, that if you don’t pay your credit will be ruined and you will be cut out of the ability to borrow.  

The IMF has a plan how they can retrieve their dangerous situation:  Sell off assets such as energy, minerals, protected timber in national forests, fisheries, and accept an American air base.  By turning your country over to Americans you can pay your bills.

The world has worked this way for many decades. Marine commander Smedley Butler said thathe and his Marines were the enforcers for the New York banks.

The corrupt EU did the same thing to Greece. I covered it as did Michael Hudson and James Galbraith. The northern European countries got Greece in debt by paying bribes to the corrupt  Greek government. The Greeks couldn’t pay, so Greece was forced to sell off their municipal water systems, their ports, their protected islands, to strip the government’s budget of education, medical, and social payments, and to fire government employees in order that Greek tax payments could be rerouted to  German banks. So many Greek women were forced into prostitution that the price of a trick was reduced to the cost of a sandwich.  You can find the articles on my website.

MAGA Americans must be brought to understanding that not only must American be restored, but it must be restored without exploiting others. Washington is responsible for massive crimes in addition to those that Americans have suffered. 

Accountability awaits.  Will Trump acknowledge this accountability and hold those responsible, or will he  continue it as part of the profit dimension of making America great again?

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