Predictions
Save your candles – the Dark Ages are coming
by
Justin Raimondo
by Justin Raimondo
 A
new year, and a new president – plenty of grist for my prediction
mill, or, at least, for the obligatory January "predictions" column.
Not that there's anything special, really, about it: all punditry
is prediction, in an important sense. Every time a writer advocates
a particular policy or decries another, the author is predicting
a certain outcome, good or bad. The question is, which policies
will win out in the battle of ideas? As we look at the incoming
administration, especially in the context of trends that have been
building over time, a certain scenario begins to emerge, with the
first act unfolding on the domestic stage:
- Hyperinflation
and the collapse of the dollar. The trillions
President-elect Obama plans on spending to "cure"
[.pdf] our economic malaise will prove poisonous to the dollar,
with hyperinflation an inevitability. Whether this reaches Weimar
levels remains to be seen, but one can easily imagine all
sorts of unpleasant, Weimar-like consequences.
- A barrage
of legislation that aims to stop capital
flight, including draconian economic controls on the movement
of money across borders and the erection of a steep tariff
wall in the name of "national economic security." By the end
of the year, we will have so many economic czars, each in charge
of their own economic fiefdom, that Obama will have to appoint
a czar-of-czars.
- More Israeli
aggression. The Israeli offensive
in Gaza is but a prelude to a series of IDF military actions,
possibly including a third Lebanon blitz and an attack on Syria,
the weakest link in the chain of pro-Palestinian regional actors.
The whole point of this extended exercise is to involve the U.S.
militarily.
This will lead logically to the fourth not-so-great expectation.
Read
the rest of the article
January
8, 2009
Justin
Raimondo [send him mail]
is editorial director of Antiwar.com
and is the author of An
Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming
the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.
Copyright
© 2009 Antiwar.com
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