citizens increasingly see if the power of the big banks have override that big banks have over them artes spotlight takes a look at who's to blame for the global instability that's reaching critical levels stay with us.

hello again on the welcome to spotlight the interview show and i take time out today my guests on the program william. global markets are depressed by the fear of recession which but very weak and economists proud the great americans are protesting against the policies of the wall street sharks and while some economists are looking for a financial plane others are digging deeper into the reasons of the fever so who is to blame and eventually what's there to do to get back on track to answer this eternal rushnell question political analyst and author of a book called the money. most of the economists see the reason of the current crisis is purely financial but william and l. says the evil lies deeper the argues the global fiscal system based on the

influence of the dollar is to blame on the dollar he says his power concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite. this power is hard to overthrow as it is protected by the american. dollar and welcome to the show. thank you thank you very much for being with us well first of all the world financial center wall street is in the grips of mass protests which are called occupy the wall street i mean this and this is the motto of the protesters do you think they will they will influence. financial policy or american government can afford to to ignore these protests but i don't think they'll influence the obama financial policy the obama financial policy has been drafted by wall street. his cabinet is all those key financial advisors or handpicked either by citi group or goldman sachs more so even than the bush

administration so it's a wall street presidency from start to finish. but after the collapse of the soviet union which we both witnessed the us conservatives thrived strategists and they they dreamed of the twenty first century being the century of american dominance of the american century but a your recent book is titled gobs of money wall street and the death of the american century so can we say that the dream didn't come true and it's not coming true well it's. the voters still out when i say the death of the american century i refer to the phrase used by henry luce in one thousand nine hundred eighty one in an editorial in life magazine where he proclaimed the american century at the time hitler was proclaiming the german thousand year reich. they were a little bit more modest perhaps but the idea of this system that was set up in one thousand nine hundred four with bretton woods the i.m.f.

the world bank and so forth as the projection of american power that is what began to come to an end in two thousand and seven two thousand and eight with the financial crisis and you say in the book that we are in the midst of an apocalyptic tonic shift meaning the shift of power from from from the west to the east. am i right that are people right to interpret it as china do you mean china no no i said this earlier today in a presentation at moscow state university the shift is toward the east but you regime as a totality china alone is not capable of being a counterweight to american superpower germany or dominance of. russia alone is not capable certainly economically and otherwise. be a. wait the combination of all your asian nations working in cooperation

economically and otherwise is the one possibility that could be here including the e.u. perhaps country by country i think he was an entity is a dysfunctional entity and country by country certainly germany italy perhaps france so it means the whole world against america is that what you mean big chunk of the well america's capability to preserve its leading role in the global economy has recently been questioned and one of the questioning was in the media spotlight . in kenya rates a quarter of the world's g.d.p. and is home to was third of the world's millionaires for decades the united states has enjoyed the status of the largest economy in the world the image of the superpower has been marred by this year's debt ceiling crisis the danger of a technical default and the country's economy having been downgraded by a ratings agency meanwhile the world's manufacturer and the u.s.

his biggest creditor could. can only call their chain a supervised chip bent to become the second largest economy this year and this chase in the u.s. forced a few analysts predict the u. long could overtake the dollar as the principal reserve currency and china could become the world's largest economy with decade others say it would take much longer while the u.s. criticizes china for keeping its currency artificially low to make its cheap goods more competitive in world markets the state control the works in china's economy has been growing at nine percent a year unsatisfied by the status of the world's manufacturing china has been developing its in the vein of capability throughout the last decade the effort has already borne fruit. in a year when the u.s. has wound down its space shuttle fleet china has put its first research more into

orbit and plans to eventually construct a food for aged between platform the launch has been described this change is a new milestone on this road to what superpower status. our reporter seems to be more impressed by the chinese miracle than you are so there's it makes sense what we've just heard now the chinese economy is a highly impressive thing i've been there five times in the last three years and traveled extensively across china it's astonishing what they've accomplished in the thirty years it's incapable of challenging the u.s. might well simply because its military capacity isn't capable of challenging the u.s. might that's that's the key economically they're quite strong the vulnerability the achilles' heel is their energy import dependency on oil and natural gas and that the u.s. knows full well why do you need military capacity to challenge countries. canonically well because they're up against the superpower which is spending more on its annual

military outlays than the next fifty two nations in the world combined and there's a reason that all these american bases are being set up in afghanistan and iraq in countries throughout the middle east and now in probably in libya still you think that the transition power. power africa on the united states to what we call the rest of the world has started how long will it take. no one can say whether the american elite will will stop their denial of the loss of erosion of their power as the british elite it took them two world wars to admitted finally between nine hundred fourteen and forty five zero is the first step to acceptance finally like ok except fairly soon because it's it's bad for the united states and it's certainly bad for the rest of the world the policy of full spectrum dominance and. and being the sole superpower it's just disproportionate but maybe this shift

of power well let's suppose it happens maybe the shift of power to the east led by by by your asian and chinese economies doesn't mean does it mean. threats to democracies world wide that because when we say democracy when people of the state say democracies they meet america and the anglo-saxon oriented countries . you know this word democracy is a word that gets sore on iran very lightly by people governments who. don't really have much concern for it. i think it's a loaded word i would rather. directed toward the concept of representative government was some kind of checks and balances on power and the influence of private lobby groups in the united states congress and in the election of presidents is such today that you can't speak of a democracy you can speak of. such a concentration of private power that the president is bought as actually by special interests will the east soon done in the world of east and mineta world

economy. will it be less comfortable for europeans for people used to the the order that we have now i don't think it is i don't think you need be less comfortable it could even be much more comfortable simply because. china india russia eastern europe and central asia require the kinds of goodison manufacturing products that the european union countries especially germany still manufacture united states doesn't manufacture anymore. we've outsourced everything over the past thirty years and now it's been manufactured in other places we have been reading in the news that u.s. senate leaders are considering legislation that would that would threaten sanctions against china if it if it does. some of the currency manipulation is do you think this is a measure that may help revive u.s.

economy that will help it all now to know the u.s. economy is a basket case economy right now the official government data that's released every every month by the labor department the commerce department has been faked essentially so systematically and so long that the real economy is running at a level of best estimates of economists friends of mine who monitor this of twenty to twenty three percent of the employable labor force so a twenty three percent unemployment is as levels of the great depression of the thirty's so so. the language x. of sanctions. he isn't something isn't the language understood by countries like china here you know it's saber rattling by by washington and they're dependent on china buying. more than two trillion dollars of u.s. government debt the debt situation of the federal government this is different from the great depression because today the debt of the federal government is simply

growing exponentially it's out of control this is the this is what make them made me wonder by the way u.s. and chinese economies are so into dependent they have become so into dependent over the last decades so how can they fight at all i mean they should be back for a while the chinese i think are proceeding extremely cautiously they're not dumping their treasuries but what they are doing is diversifying they're focusing more on the regional asian markets currency stability with between its major asian trading partners i think the shanghai cooperation organization as c.e.o. with russia as as a key member of that is going to become more important in the future for china as a diversify their markets also in the last three years the chinese have gone more and more toward the european market and less. the u.s. says williams and our political analyst and author of. spotlight will be shortly right off to stay with the fact.

that. it was created to serve public interests to inform and to entertain. these days there's nothing easier than opening up a new media outlet but there is nothing harder than revoking its license in case of corruption. when just from. san antonio ways.

you can involve in a community where you have one large corporation controlling the daily newspaper the radio stations television stations the cable outlets you tell me that that sounds like democracy public opinion versus f.c.c. broadcast blues on archie. welcome back to the spotlight on al green often just a reminder that my guest on the show today is william engdahl political analyst and author of a book called gods of money. you mentioned just a couple of minutes ago in the first part. since you view the united states keeping the you on pretty loudly to make a price competitive do you think that a us. as one of the measures may may devalue the dollar in order to make its

products more competitive because some people say it may be and it may be a measure the us they'd never heard of the dollar if you look at it over the last several years has devalued quite dramatically. and what they're trying to do i think in washington is do a slow motion devaluation to make the repayment of american debt to foreign debt holders like china or japan to make it much more palatable for the u.s. . but the problem is lower dollar for boosting american exports nobody wants to buy detroit automobiles anymore if they're german or even chinese cars are a better manufacturer than the the american car america doesn't produce things that the world wants to buy anymore they've outsourced that they've they've done that they've left the by and large left industry behind and maybe the silicon valley is an exception hollywood hollywood is you know hollywood is

a huge export that after that ok so they can export double that many hollywood films ok now but but you say the process is the devaluating of dollars going on and it's done purpose you said but slowly what can it mean for the future of the dollar as a world where the reserve currency well this i think is the background to the situation between the euro in the dollar in the last two and a half years the in my view the greek crisis was. a ticking time bomb that was detonated precisely at the time the chinese government spoke of diversifying out of the dollar into the euro the euro right now is the only potential contender for the reserve currency status for the u.s. to the u.s. dollar and we're. for that to happen that the u.s. loses reserve currency status that would mean that the u.s. would lose one of the major pillars of wall street financial power worldwide and

they would you levers major levers and also they wouldn't be able to finance their wars given the budget deficits are running. ironically the chinese with their investment in u.s. treasury debt and the japanese are financing wars against chinese national interest in afghanistan and iraq and now in libya so it's a very diabolical situation that wall street and the treasury have manufactured if they lose that they lose a huge one of the two major pillars of american post-war power when you mentioned challenges the u.s. will dominance you said it may be china only together with other countries and together with russia when you mentioned i mean you mentioned that there are that that china is very. it's scientists dependent on natural gas when it gets from russia so that do you mean

that in this new construction this new world situation russia will still be. a role material producer and provide either for europe for china for whoever rules the world well i think for the near term there's nothing wrong with that and that's a very constructive thing that russia can use and the putin diplomacy in the past decade has used that quite skillfully to build economic bridges to germany and other european countries and that it was sensible for russia i think russia has something far greater to export once once its infrastructure is up to western european standards rail and. other infrastructure and that is the export of its intellectual powers it has intellectual capital that's barely been tapped on the in the in the world in terms of science and engineering capabilities. of its education system and that that is above world class that is beyond what american universities are turning up but many people have as many critics inside inside russia say that's

russia's intellectual powers is is rather the russian but the heritage we got from the soviet union and i think it goes further back by may i think the heritage goes back to the german classical education system of the nineteenth century the late nineteenth century which was very much the model that was used in czarist russia so but they've held on to it and during the soviet era i know from russian friends of mine who are academics that that was the one area where you could excel is academically and not in a moneyed way the american system you excel in money and that defines your value but i prefer the russian system frankly. you see the revolutions in north africa in your book as i quote careful strategy of controlling one of china's most strategically important oil and raw material so he says and you just hear he just said and mentioned an interesting thing that china has actually been financing this

thing but doesn't it sounds sound like another conspiracy theory is it possible to control such massive protests that we've been seeing use over the arab spring it's well documented that this was coordinated an organized by human rights n.g.o.s that are working very closely with u.s. state department hillary critic clinton hosted some of the leaders of the egyptian . protest movement the twitter folk and so forth they were trained by old poor which is financed by by the us historically in belgrade and then sent back to egypt to tunisia to these other countries in the case of libya it was a pure military operation. u.s. intelligence pumped arms with the help of the french into the eastern opposition the so-called transition. national council the french brought them up to paris and offered them huge deal on the on the oil revenues if they if they work with the french so it was just a crass intervention from outside

a lot of youthful protesters may have been naive enough to think that they this was real democracy that they were risking their lives for but it was a manipulated thing egypt is a good example nothing actually happened in the future just a group of generals moved mouton and the other group move lower and that some of them flee the country and you know that's it yeah but nothing changed. ok now you mentioned the problems in the end european mentioned the european the e.u. no actually being and then to these problems inherent problems with the euro as a as a major pain currency do you think it's also a conspiracy is this also also a result of a war of the us against the euro what with oh i think we really want to fight sure i think there's a huge tug of war going on behind the scenes it's not a conspiracy theory it's actual coordinated action between the federal reserve the credit rating agencies moody's standard and poor's the treasury treasury secretary

tim geithner who's very close to wall street. and they were the ones who in two thousand and two actually showed the previous greek government how to hide their actual debt in order to get into the euro and have a bonanza in terms of your membership for greece and the greek economy. and they were the ones who pulled the plug on greece under the pump and came into office just at the time the dollar was under threat. the rating agencies downgraded the debt standard and poor's on the day that the european. union heads of state agreed to a print in principle to a greek bailout they downgraded greece three notches which is unprecedented for sovereign debt downgrade down to a level of junk and that meant that all pension funds around the world had to dump greek government sovereign debt immediately by you know by rules and regulations

and that triggered the crisis into a whole new dimension so just as the crisis was nearing a solution. the rating agency stepped in people who are conservative bankers who never think in terms of conspiracy told me in europe that this if there ever was doubt before they didn't have any doubt now it's interesting interview we having here. as your answering my question i think about what you said previously i think coming out with me when new questions about about china financing were against itself well we remember that a war against afghanistan was actually the beginning of the end of the british empire once it was the beginning of the end of the rise of soviet empire now america recently said we'll be there until victory so do you think this may be the beginning of the end do you think that the american budget will withstand this war for a long time. while china i can tell you realizes that the presence in afghanistan

has nothing to do with combating the taliban or certainly not with al-qaeda which some u.s. military officials questioned whether it even exists anymore. so the question is what does it have to do and in my view it has to do with a permanent us military base in directed at two major powers potential opponents one is china and the other is russia and for the first time the pentagon is able to position itself directly in the heart of central. against those two potential opponents in the future so i think that's what we're looking at and victory is possible i think not absolutely not. do you welcome china's china's intention to bail out the e.u. problems problem economies. i think the chinese are talking about helping in some of the e.u. basket case economies like greece and portugal but how far they're willing to go

and on what terms i think the chinese are very shrewd bargain when it comes to that and it remains to be seen how far that will go what about africa do you think the africans will well come china replacing the anglo saxons as the patrons of the continent up until now it's been mixed but the chinese have done one thing that's extremely clever in terms of their african diplomacy since about two thousand and four two thousand and six and that is they've come in they've ignored the international monetary fund they've come in with soft loans they've built schools hospitals highways dams and so forth across africa and they said our interest is quite simple we want long term secure role materials oil gas minerals and the africans are quite happy to have that kind of arrangement the american approach was similar to the british kind of colonial looting of africa which the africans certainly are not wanting to continue so this offers an entire new kind of economic

diplomacy for africa thank you thank you very much for being with us and just to remind you that my guest on the show today was william and political analyst and author of a book called gobs of money that's it for now from all of us here if you want to have your say on spotlight grab someone in mind to think i mean to me in my next show just drop the spotlight will be back with more face time comment on what's going on in and outside russia until then stay on r.t. and take care. thank you.

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