When one compiles a list of progressive, free speech activists, Larry Flynt (publisher of Hustler) doesn’t immediately come to mind. In fact, he would never have come to MY mind at all if my regular news analysis site (counterpunch.org) had not provided a link to his site. Here’s something he wrote in June following a description of how China and Russia are eager to ditch the dollar as international reserve currency. Once the dollar has been completely shut out of international trade, here’s what’s going to happen to the U.S. economy:
The cost of daily living, from buying food to getting medical care, will become difficult for all but a few as the dollar plunges. States and cities will see their pension funds drained and finally shut down. The government will be forced to sell off infrastructure, including roads and transport, to private corporations.
We will be increasingly charged by privatized utilities—think Enron—for what was once regulated and subsidized. Commercial and private real estate will be worth less than half its current value. The negative equity that already plagues 25% of American homes will expand to include nearly all property owners. It will be difficult to borrow and impossible to sell real estate unless we accept massive losses.
There will be block after block of empty stores and boarded-up houses. Foreclosures will be epidemic. There will be long lines at soup kitchens and many, many homeless. Our corporate-controlled media, already banal and trivial, will work overtime to anesthetize us with useless gossip, spectacles, sex, gratuitous violence, fear and tawdry junk politics.
America will be composed of a large dispossessed underclass and a tiny empowered oligarchy that will run a ruthless and brutal system of neo-feudalism from secure compounds. Those who resist will be silenced, many by force. We will pay a terrible price, and we will pay this price soon, for the gross malfeasance of our power elite.
How much more time can Wall Street buy with their shenanigans? How much more time will it take for China and the Arabian oil-producing countries to empty their reserves of dollars? Do you think I’ll find a job before then? And will it really matter? On the bright side, thank goodness I never bought property. As long as they don’t start taxing cardboard boxes, I should be all right.