Fear of being overpowered, greed, lust for power, nationalism, ethnic scorn, and past wars are of course common seeds of confrontation. However, they all pale compared to the need for all countries, including the U.S., Europe, China and India, to have guaranteed access to the world’s largest oil and gas … Continue reading
Category Archives: Opinions
The Players
Top Ten Economies, Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Real GDP Manufacturing Manufacturing Trillions $ Percent Trillions $ United States 20.94 11 2.30 China 14.72 27 3.97 Japan 5.05 20 1.01 Germany 3.84 18 0.64 United Kingdom 2.08 9 0.19 India 2.66 14 0.37 France 2.63 9 0.24 … Continue reading
Historical Record
Breton Woods Roots In 1944, with the approaching defeat of Germany all but certain, representatives of forty-four nations met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to create a new international monetary system. This Bretton Woods System, which became fully operational in 1958, was essentially a mechanism to settle international accounts in … Continue reading
Incipient Changes
The world is changing, and the speed and scope at which it is doing so in terms of economic and military dominance has not been seen in centuries. For starters, gone are the days when Saudi Arabia was unquestionably in sync with the needs and wants of the U.S. The … Continue reading
China, the U.S. and Taiwan
October 9, 2021 A month ago Presidents Biden and Xi had a crucial telephone conversation that according to the White House, covered a number of unspecified issues. Then, almost a month later, President Biden acknowledged that Taiwan was one of them and that the two had agreed to abide by … Continue reading
Trillion-Dollar Infrastructure Bill
BackgroundThe Senate recently approved a bipartisan 1-trillion infrastructure bill that earmarked 8.3 billion for water projects in the drought-stricken West. Assuming the House concurs and the President signs it into law, the bill will appropriate 1.15 billion for improving water storage, transport infrastructure and projects to replenish aquifers, 1 billion … Continue reading
Dominance
Quotation “The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one … Continue reading
Security and Logic
July 4, 2021 BackgroundA long-awaited, unclassified Preliminary Assessment of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is an unexpected silver lining to the Covid-19 pandemic: The $2.3 trillion relief bill signed by then-President Donald Trump actually required the Pentagon to continue investigating UAPs and … Continue reading
Update – May 2021
May 23, 2021 A Strategic Commodity Winston Churchill’s decision to replace coal by oil for the primary source of power of the Royal Navy forced Britain, which at the time had no known domestic oil fields, to seek, acquire and maintain control of oil deposits in distant lands. On May … Continue reading
Winning Over Republican Voters
November 9, 2020 The frenzy of election day may be behind us, but the turmoil and uncertainty continue: the calm before the storm, if you will. The reason for that grim assessment is because the Democrats did not win the hearts of roughly half the population. In simple terms, unless they … Continue reading