Iran is wooing and winning sympathizers, the U.S. is not

By Martin Love

NORTH CAROLINA - France’s Macron allegedly want to defuse tensions between Iran and hostile Westerners and maybe even Zionists at the upcoming G-7 meeting, but this Frank, Macron, cannot even effectively address protests on the streets of Paris and elsewhere in France except with police violence, so one cannot expect much, and anyway, it seems that many “leaders” cannot or won’t say what the U.S. and its Military Industrial Complex are really all about, and neither can the Western mainstream media.

 The U.S. has become a country that literally thrives, if it thrives at all, on war plans or a war ongoing, somewhere, anywhere. There is no particular idea or ideology or forward, productive vision behind any of this, and in fact what “thriving” the U.S. has enjoyed since the last recession in 2008-09, which has mostly been relative to other countries, looks to be reversed soon.

Because no amount of bullying can win the day when one is losing friends hand over fist, which is exactly what is happening because of the Trump Administration. And on top of this mess of bad policies is one overriding fact about the U.S. monetary and financial system: it is unsustainable and may be dying. (And never forget it was Trump who, campaigning for the Presidency, vowed he would put an end to deficit spending, but now trillion-dollar deficits this and every fiscal year ahead are baked in the cake.

For the first time in thousands of years interest rates across all the major economies are plunging to zero or going negative, and in the case of the U.S., there really is no good alternative. Why? Because a normalization of interest rates, which would mark a healthy system, would mean that paying interest to bond holders (given all the debt) would crowd out virtually most all other expenditures starting with sacred items to the U.S. public like Medicare and Social Security and ultimately moving on even to the roughly trillion-dollar budget for the Pentagon and “defense”.

 Yet some Western economists think they have an answer to this which, described simply, involves conjuring or printing fiat “money” out of thin air, otherwise known this past decade as “Quantitative Easing” or “QE”, which has not resulted in a particularly robust U.S. economy.

Voodoo economists believe the U.S. and the E.U. can get away with money printing to solve fiscal problems and stimulate demand when historically it has never worked for long. Weimar Germany in the 1920s is one stark example where it did not work and where first there was some deflation and then runaway inflation and impoverishment. And the canary in the coal mine? Precious metals which have just begun a historic ascent. The wisest of minds have suggested that gold could be priced at $10,000 an ounce or more in coming years, which would mark the utter debasement and evisceration of fiat currencies against what has been real “money” for 4000 years.

Against the possible impossibility of further future U.S. overreach and imperialism bolstered by a financial system that appears to be disintegrating, Trump and minions continue to ratchet up threats and sanctions and tariffs against its major trading partners like China and against alleged enemies like Iran, perhaps imagining that at some point the world (China, Iran, etc.) is just going to cave to petulant U.S. demands and do its bidding.

This has to be the gravest mistake of a notion the U.S. has ever imagined. And amidst this madness is the further madness of Trump crowing about comments that he has become the “King of the Jews”, the “best President for Israel in the history of the world”, that he is the “Chosen One” – and all the while telling American Jews that vote Democratic (as a majority of American Jews have always done) they are “disloyal” Americans…and reaping scorn even from many powerful, established Jews/Zionists inside the U.S.

At bottom here? The Trump Administration seems to be going berserk and Trump himself seems to be almost insane. And it’s no secret that aside from cutting corporate and other taxes, especially for the wealthy, and sanctioning other countries wildly, Trump has been primarily Zionist-centric such that his foreign policies are beginning to look like a massive train wreck.

The U.S. has been deploying military force or the threat of it to gain influence and wealth for decades, but longer term this merely creates effective opposition to the so-called “empire” and not merely in the Middle East but globally. Iranians at this point can probably rest easy that the U.S. will not (or cannot) attack Iran militarily, because the result would likely be a regional war (at least) that would spell the end of the American presence through much of the region and collapse the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, too. An attack would also likely result in a global economic disaster as oil and natural gas prices would soar. Thus, one must ask, what good has been all the bluster and sanctions of the Trump gang? What good for the U.S.? So far, no good at all.

And to boot we have the fine spectacle of Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif carefully and studiously traveling the world and presenting Iran’s case for more accord and wisdom. It is a complete shame Trump failed to appoint wise counselors to his team and cannot do the same. No doubt Iran’s patience may be wearing thin, but it sure has been a quietly effective posture so far that is winning sympathizers steadily.