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Supermodel Spurns the Dollar - Dollar's Fall Collapses the American Empire; Bring Those 737 Overseas Military Bases Home! by Paul Craig Roberts

This from an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, and former Associate Editor of The Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review:

"The US dollar is still officially the world's reserve currency, but it cannot purchase the services of Brazilian super model Gisele Bundchen. Gisele required the $30 million she earned during the first half of this year to be paid in euros.

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The macho super patriots who support the Bush regime still haven't caught on that US superpower status rests on the dollar being the reserve currency, not on a military unable to occupy Baghdad. If the dollar were not the world currency, the US would have to earn enough foreign currencies to pay for its 737 oversees bases [for starters; there are many other components of the military-industrial complex, which accounts for over half of discretionary spending by the U.S. government - J.F.], an impossibility considering America's $800 billion trade deficit.

When the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency, foreigners will cease to finance the US trade and budget deficits, and the American Empire along with its wars will disappear overnight. Perhaps Bush will be able to get a World Bank loan, or maybe one from the 'Chavez bank,' to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Foreign leaders, observing that offshoring and war are accelerating America's relative economic decline, no longer treat the US with the deference to which Washington is accustomed. Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, recently refused Washington's demand to renew the lease on the Manta air base in Ecuador. He told Washington that the US could have a base in Ecuador if Ecuador could have a military base in the US.

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In his state of the nation message last year, Russian president Vladimir Putin said that Bush's blathering about democracy was nothing but a cloak for the pursuit of American self-interests at the expense of other peoples. 'We are aware what is going on in the world. Comrade wolf knows whom to eat, and he eats without listening, and he's clearly not going to listen to anyone.' In May 2007, Putin criticized the neocon regime in Washington for 'disrespect for human life' and 'claims to global exclusiveness, just as it was in the time of the Third Reich.'

Even America's British allies regard President Bush as a threat to world peace and the second most dangerous man alive. Bush is edged out in polls by Osama bin Laden, but is regarded as more dangerous than Iran's demonized president and North Korea's Kim Jong-il.

President Bush has achieved his dismal world standing despite spending $1.6 billion of hard-pressed Americans' tax money on public relations between 2003 and 2006.

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Even as Gisele throws off the dollar's hegemony, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Columbia are declaring independence of the IMF and World Bank, instruments of US financial hegemony, by creating their own development bank, thus bringing to an end US suzerainty over South America.

An empire that has lost its backyard is finished."