"Professor Igor Panarin said in an interview with the respected daily IZVESTIA published on Monday: "The dollar is not secured by anything. The country's foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse."
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"Asked why he expected the U.S. to break up into separate parts, he said: "A whole range of reasons. Firstly, the financial problems in the U.S. will get worse. Millions of citizens there have lost their savings. Prices and unemployment are on the rise. General Motors and Ford are on the verge of collapse, and this means that whole cities will be left without work. Governors are already insistently demanding money from the federal center. Dissatisfaction is growing, and at the moment it is only being held back by the elections and the hope that Obama can work miracles. But by spring, it will be clear that there are no miracles."
He also cited the "vulnerable political setup", "lack of unified national laws", and "divisions among the elite, which have become clear in these crisis conditions."
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"He predicted that the U.S. will break up into six parts - the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong."
He even suggested that "we could claim Alaska - it was only granted on lease, after all." Panarin, 60, is a professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has authored several books on information warfare.
The mechanism for peaceable break apart is not mentioned. It would have to encompass a vast migration from one area to another, as Republicans are purged from the West Coast, for example. But rather than an economic spur for such a separation, a political/philosophical incentive for separation seems more likely, as socialists and anti-socialists clash. What would be gained, economically, for the separation of the states? Every state is economically challenged, so it is not possible to quarantine off one region to fix another region.
No, the Russian is wrong, at least for now. He is projecting the embarrassment of the collapse of the USSR onto the crisis of credit we are in now. But the great depression, which the USA survived intact, incurred an unemployment rate of around 30%, compared to the roughly 6% or so right now. These times are not tough enough to break up the USA. But under blue state socialism, who knows?
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