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Lawrence Wilkerson: Travails of Empire – Oil, Debt, Gold and the Imperial Dollar

Lawrence Wilkerson: Travails of Empire – Oil, Debt, Gold and the Imperial Dollar

 “We are imperial, and we are in decline… People are losing confidence in the Empire.”
This is the key theme of Larry Wilkerson’s presentation.  He never really questions whether empire is good or bad, sustainable or not, and at what costs.  At least he does not so in the same manner as that great analyst of empire Chalmers Johnson.It is important to understand what people who are in and near positions of power are thinking if you wish to understand what they are doing, and what they are likely to do.  What ought to be done is another matter.

Wilkerson is a Republican establishment insider who has served for many years in the military and the State Department. Here he is giving about a 40 minute presentation to the Centre For International Governance in Canada in 2014.

I find his point of view of things interesting and revealing, even on those points where I may not agree with his perspective.  There also seem to be some internal inconsistencies in this thinking.

But what makes his perspective important is that it represents a mainstream view of many professional politicians and ‘the Establishment’ in America. Not the hard right of the Republican party, but much of what constitutes the recurring political establishment of the US.

As I have discussed here before, I do not particularly care so much if a trading indicator has a fundamental basis in reality, as long as enough people believe in and act on it. Then it is worth watching as self-fulfilling prophecy.  And the same can be said of political and economic memes.

At minute 48:00 Wilkerson gives a response to a question about the growing US debt and of the role of the petrodollar in the Empire, and the efforts by others to ‘undermine it’ by replacing it.  This is his ‘greatest fear.’
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