[lutherquick]

Micki,

Sorry, but you are WRONG.
America's economy is FREE.

We get imports from China, virtualy FREE sincde China loans back the money to us...

We print extra money and send it all over the worl because we tricked people from peasants to mega millionairs in China to folks like Yukos in hording our currency, thus subisizing our US economy, that's FREE...

Next, we invite Mexicans to come here and work, they then take our extra printed money and mail it out back to Mexico, and it never comes back, thus some Mexican working for $8 /h gives us the effect like they are working for $2 /h, this again is free gains for America...

I could go on and on...

But our economy IS free, and it's FREE to take from the world.

[Micki]

OK OK. You use the word free in a slightly different manner.
I meant more like not gov manipulated, unshackled.
Somehow I think you understood this and wanted to just give an ironic twist.

[lutherquick]

Micki,

Yes, you were right on both post... I was only using sarcasim to amplify your point...

[evilgenius]

So, after Iraq tries oil for euros and gets plastered and Iran does the same and winds up in a game of verbal brinksmanship now Russia is proposing oil for rubles.

Was Iran ever serious or were they just trying to get the US to make statements that later in dealing with Russia they would have to contradict?

If dollar hegemony is driving all of this then US policy is doomed to fail. The US doesn't have a full arsenal in dealing with Russia on this. They are dragged down by the possiblility of a crash in the housing market. The Fed can't raise rates high enough to entice foreign investment back into the US bond market if along the way they exacerbate gold to 1,000 and at the same time the other central banks aren't too far behind with their own rate structures. Then again maybe that is why the new bankruptcy bill was passed by Congress after such a prolonged period of trying and failing.

Looks like the fear-filled Bushies are going to first exhaust the economic viability of the US then they are going to leave themselves with only war as an option. Does anyone think that Russia will just wait for that to happen or that they will make key statements and take key actions to help the US desperation along thus ensuring the bankruptcy?

If it were going to be any other way the talentless Bushies would already be proposing an integrated high-speed rail system be built in the US by say, 2012. They aren't and neither are they, for all their talk, putting any serious money behind funding other alternatives.