From: odin@world.std.com (Hank Roth)
Subject: plots
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 03:33:33 GMT

COUPS, COUNTER-COUPS, AND THE CIA
       by *Hank Roth

It seems too convenient that the system of USSR bureaucratic 
Communism joined the world market just at a time, when the U.S. 
was (is) in the throes of its own disasterous economic crisis. 

Our national debt tripled during the years under Reagan and 
Bush, from over 900 billion to more than 2 1/2 trillion. The 
prosperity of the 80s, that bred a generation of Yuppies, was 
based on borrowing from our future, which is now. How do we pay 
that debt? 

Our investment in the infrastructure of this country has fallen 
drastically. Drive through downtown of any large city today and 
see the deterioration. Social services have been practically 
eliminated. There is massive crime. Bankruptcies have hit an all 
time high; in the last year, almost a million personal and close 
to 80,000 businesses have filed and many just closed their doors 
and abandoned those businesses without filing so they are not 
apart of those statistics.  Unemployment benefits have run out 
and the chronic unemployed are still unemployed. Many others are 
working at temporary jobs and jobs without benefits. There is no 
security in the job market. Middle age workers have been released 
from jobs without pensions and few prospects for their future. 
Confidence is waning. In "Day of Reckoning," ("88") the author, 
Benjamin M. Friedman wrote, "We are living well by running up our 
debt and selling off our assets."  

We have essentually two out of control government debts, the 
money borrowed to pay or finance our budget deficit, and the debt 
for the money obtained abroad to finance our trade deficit. And 
we have personal debt, not least of which is credit card debt. 
Like the government, we have been borrowing against our future, 
which increasingly looks very bleak. 

Reagan claimed we would grow out of this abyss of high deficits. 
It hasn't happened. His program of cutting taxes to the rich 
(Kemp-Roth legislation) didn't stimulate more capital 
investments and it didn't "trickle down." The poor got poorer, 
the rich got richer and the middle class is disappearing.  Even 
his VP, Bush called it "voodoo economics." His own budget 
director, David Stockman, discredited "supply-side" economics in 
his book. 

The need to service our huge foreign debt caused by an 
accumulating trade deficit, means to us a reduction in our own 
rate of consumption, and consequently lowering of our standard of 
living. Eventually we will run out of foreign lendors. We won't 
be able to sell off our assets, nor should we. The dollar will 
eventually fall and no amount of manipulation will stabilize it. 

Countries are out-competing us with their exploited cheap labor. 
Products are cheaper when obtained from abroad. Our own 
industries have been moving to Third World countries to take 
advantage of this cheap labor, forcing up unemployment here. We 
now obtain cameras, TVs, most of our computers, air conditioners, 
autos, all kinds of electronics, toys, cloths, etc. from abroad. 
Our manufacturing base, which made this country strong is 
disappearing. 

We now have a policy of so-called "Free Trade" that encourages 
trade with countries where labor costs are way below ours, so 
our own products cannot compete and our workers lose their jobs 
or are foced to work for less than liveable wages. Businesses 
can't compete either and are forced out of business. Capitalism 
becomes manic-depressive. The mania of good years becomes the 
depression of bad years. In psychiatric terms, it is sick. 

A world wide contraction will also reduce our standard of living 
even more and if we continue to mortgage the future, a few bad 
calculations could conceivably turn into a pair of recessions, as 
we did in 80 and again in 81-82. A world-wide depression is a 
possibility. 

To save our standard of living requires foreign markets for 
American goods----such as the USSR and Eastern Europe. And it 
appears that we may have a respite from our crisis with these 
new markets opening up vis-a-vis their new shift in economics. 
(In time, however they will also become competitors--as did 
Japan and West Germany) 

Due to the absolute economic need for new markets for our products, 
we surely have had forces at work destabilizing countries under 
communism. We did these things when I worked for the government 
and I have no reason to believe we're not still doing it.

There are a lot of dynamics at work here, not least of 
all our own clandestine influence in Soviet, East European and 
Third World political developments. The world is changing rapidly. 
There is a constant state of flux and I believe these are extremely 
critical times.

*Formerly employed as an army voice security cryptologist at the 
 White House and in the War Room at the Pentagon prior to and during 
 the initial stages of the Vietnam War.                           

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