Quote:by Ghassan Kadi

The financial collapse of the United States grows more inevitable, and more obviously so. Thus far during the Obama tenure alone, the formal and declared American debt has doubled, sky-rocketing from 10 trillion to 20 trillion dollars. Estimates of total American debt however, and which include unfunded liabilities, are much higher and range from 150 trillion to 350 trillion dollars. But even at twenty trillion, every American man, woman and child owes something in the vicinity of $60,000, and at the higher estimate, the per capita debt figure balloons to nearly $9 million.

Estimates of America’s total assets also vary from 300 to 550 trillion dollars. But as America has lost much of its manufacturing base as well as much of its resources, a big fraction of those assets are in real estate, bonds, shares and other commodities that are valued in accordance with general economic performance, and when the performance drops, they follow suit. Those estimates do not take this economic fact into account and even the low figure of 300 trillion could well and truly be over optimistic.

It is therefore rather difficult, if not impossible to know the actual totals of either American assets or liabilities. That said, if the liabilities figure is indeed in the vicinity of the high 350 trillion dollars figure and that of assets is in the vicinity of the low 300 trillion (if not less), then America could currently be well and truly literally insolvent.

The truth is that we don’t know, and perhaps we will never know, until a collapse spontaneously eventuates, or until the tsunami of the rising of new economic giants sweeps all what is in its way and make that collapse happen.

Quote:What is more sinister about the collapse of America is not only evident in its economic decline, but rather in the multitude of facets that seem to be all concurrently chewing away at the foundations of that nation that has led the world at many levels.

The fallout of an American collapse is not only going to be restricted to the United States itself. It will have global repercussions that will bring upon new challenges to the rising powers at more levels than just merely economical.

However, the economic collapse does not seem to be a haphazard phenomenon. It is the result of failures upon failures at a myriad of levels and aspects.

Throughout its history, the nation that developed in the “New world” and became eventually known as the United States of America has failed on three major counts.

The first historic failure was in America’s failure in accepting and recognising the human rights of indigenous Americans.

Native Americans, made to be known as Indians, were subjected to a systematic genocide that went on for four centuries. Four hundred years of massacres, displacements, broken promises, broken treaties, lies and deception that kept driving the “Indians” further and further West until they had no place to find refuge in.

To refer to this epic mass genocide as a violation of human rights would be a very gentle term to cover up a huge crime with. The systematic ethnic cleansing of indigenous Americans has probably been the most violent state-sponsored and longest in duration in the entire history of humanity. It dwarfs all other similar barbaric acts. But the American brutality did not stop there.

Quote:The second historic failure came about when the new and independent entity of the United States of America, a nation that was founded on a revolution that was meant to seek equality and justice for all, a revolution that was supposed to have inspired the French Revolution, a revolution that had the “Bill of Rights” to crown it as the first amendment of its constitution, has in fact allowed this so-called “Bill of Rights” to exclude the black man, endorsed his enslavement and the superiority of the white man over his freedom and destiny.

And even after Lincoln’s monumental thirteenth amendment, laws of segregation continued to rule the land until the 1960’s and the freedom of the black man was paid for by the blood of Dr. King and his brave and gallant comrades.

The third historic failure was in America’s inability to uphold Lincoln’s preamble-like statement about government that is “of the people, by the people, for the people”. Successive American governments from both sides of the political divide have proven to be anything but what Lincoln aspired for his nation. The word “people” was replaced by big business, the Israel lobby and the banks.

As a result now, ordinary Americans have little say as to who runs their government and what objectives they seek.

Historically-speaking therefore, and as the American forefathers were building the nation that was meant to represent the “New World” with a flavour of classlessness and freedom, underneath the thin façade, it was indeed built on racial and ethnic inequalities.

When Americans today lament the days of the forefathers, their highly-principled loftiness and achievements, they seem to conveniently ignore that any good that those forefathers stood for was exclusive to the white man.