Short article from Bahrain weekly 'The Gulf' in which the author of 'Super Imperialism' and 'Global Fracture' makes what is hardly the 'modest proposal' he pretends it is, and perhaps also gives a clue as to what he thought he was doing as 'economic adviser' to Denis Kucinich's presidential run. Hudson proposes that an unspecified bloc of 'Middle Eastern' state-capital should try to settle the dollar-standard blackmail once and for all by offering to buy the US out of the military infrastructure (i.e. Iraq bases) built to enforce said blackmail. A prompt and 'fair' offer, he seems to believe, might be accepted as someone's presidential campaign plank. There's no suggestion at all of why Hudson imagines that any such 'offer' would not be taken as an Act of War by US diplomacy, which long since declared that ANY hesitation in recycling petrodollars through its financial system would be treated that way.

America's Free Lunch is Over
How Should the Middle East Invest Its Oil Profits?

By MICHAEL HUDSON

Thanks to Meltdown III stalwart Jon Amsden for finding and introducing this impressionistic but telling survey of what a dollar free-falling towards worthlessness ('Monopoly money', anyone?) means in terms of everyday survival in some parts of the world.

For those who may wish to take a break from the lofty abstractions of financial skullduggery and dollar decline, here's how it looks on the fishmarket floor and in other places where the dollar was once the basic currency of international trade but is now losing its former luster.

Michael Hudson on the fiscal policy continuity from Reagan's supply side 'voodoo' through (Bill) Clinton-era government by Goldman Sachs bond traders (a tradition continued with Bush's appointment of Paulson) to the present crisis.

Resurrecting Greenspan
Hillary Joins the Vast, Rightwing Financial Conspiracy

By MICHAEL HUDSON