From a recent piece at Lew Rockwell,  Nightmare on Wall Street

March Madness

Insurance giant AIG, already rescued by the public, comes back for more. The bill now totals almost $200 billion, nearly half of which goes to foreign banks, including the very banks that shaped government policy on the bank bail-out, a criminal conflict of interest.

1. China and the US face off over US surveillance in Chinese waters, as well as over Chinese currency pegging
2. The Bernie Madoff investigation reveals that family and friends of the ex-Nasdaq chief connived in his fraud, which prosecutors charge, has been going on since the 1980s. Money-laundering through an English bank is part of it.
3. After three rescues, Citigroup ends up trading at around $1 and needing another round of government aid. That brings the government’s total commitment to Citi to over $300 billion.
4. Net capital flows to the US turn negative, auto sales fall sharply, and pension-funding shortfalls are destroying company balance sheets.
5. The Fed Reserve commits to buy $300 billion in Treasuries (creating $1 trillion in new money). The bond market reacts positively. But, in what seems like a warning from the other side of the Atlantic, when the Bank of England tries to auction British bonds, it fails to find enough buyers for the first time in seven years. The market is signaling its belief that the UK government is effectively bankrupt.
6. Upward pressure on LIBOR, the London interbank offer rate, continues relentlessly. This is a measure of the willingness of banks to lend to each other and it’s showing severe credit market stress…..

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and,

“As reports about the AIG deal circulate and stir up public anger, the USNS Impeccable, a survey ship (read, spy-ship) faces off with Chinese ships in what the US claims are international waters off Hainan island. But the encounter is also within 200 miles of the Chinese coast, a zone China considers its exclusive economic zone. Hainan is also a key strategic base in the South China Sea and the location of China’s biggest submarine base. This comes just days after US military talks with China resume.

The US claims it’s a Chinese provocation, although it’s hard to believe that a Chinese spy ship snooping around Americans coasts would be greeted with brotherly love. It seems more likely to be a US provocation.

Notice that the incident reinforces Barack Obama’s provocative warnings to the Chinese about currency manipulation during the presidential campaign. Obama was apparently playing to the part of his base that is China-hawkish and protectionist. Notice that this is also a neo-conservative position, as human rights interventionists (let’s call them liberventionists) would like to see a tougher US posture in places like China and Darfur.

In short, the big government wing in both parties likes the “Chinese currency manipulation” motif……”

And in a recent piece at Lew Rockwell and Human Events,  Pat Buchanan writes:

 March Madness in 1939

“Made a fool of by Hitler, baited by his backbenchers, goaded by Lord Halifax, facing a vote of no confidence, on March 31, 1939, Chamberlain made the greatest blunder in British diplomatic history. He handed an unsolicited war guarantee to the Polish colonels who had just bitten off a chunk of Czechoslovakia. Lunacy, raged Lloyd George, who was echoed by British leaders and almost every historian since.

With the British Empire behind it, Warsaw now refused even to discuss a return of Danzig, the Baltic town, 95 percent German, which even Chamberlain thought should be returned.

Hitler did not want a war with Poland. Had he wanted war, he would have demanded the return of the entire Polish Corridor taken from Germany in 1919. He wanted Danzig back and Poland as an ally in his anti-Comintern Pact. Nor did he want war with a Britain he admired and always saw as a natural ally.

Nor did he want war with France, or he would have demanded the return of Alsace.

But Hitler was out on a limb with Danzig and could not crawl back.

Repeatedly, Hitler tried to negotiate Danzig. Repeatedly, the Poles rebuffed him. Seeing the Allies courting Josef Stalin, Hitler decided to cut his own deal with the detested Bolsheviks and settle the Polish issue by force.

Though Britain had no plans to aid Poland, no intention of aiding Poland and would do nothing to aid Poland – Churchill would cede half that nation to Stalin and the other half to Stalin’s stooges – Britain declared war for Poland.

The most awful war in all of history followed, which would bankrupt Britain, bring down her empire and bring Stalin’s Red Army into Prague, Berlin and Vienna. But Hitler was dead and Germany in ashes….”

My Comment

In an earlier piece,  Nationalization In a Time of Monopoly, I noted the ominous end game in which we’re finding ourselves:

“First, it [the state] creates debt everywhere until the capital base of the economy is destroyed and production is in tatters. Banks become bankrupt, except for those that have government connections and can consolidate. The monopolies have nothing to restrain their anti-market behavior and push their own agendas in concert with the state. With no limit to cheap credit, the money supply swells. Workers can no longer keep up with inflation. The lopsided development of the state sector crushes savings and production in the remainder of the economy. Jobs dwindle.

To supplement them, the corporate-state creates make-work programs on the domestic front. When bad times and discontent persist, it looks abroad.

Then comes war.

That is where nationalization in a time of monopoly will take us.” (Lew Rockwell, March, 2009)

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That warning cannot be emphasize enough. We meddle further at our own peril.
Beware any further ceding of power to the government.

Before any more doing  –  undo, undo, undo.

Or , as Buchanan shows in his gripping time-line, when this end game rolls out, we will find that even countries that do not want war with us now,  will be forced into it.