Cunning Realist, callin’ ‘em straight as they are:

A phrase that’s become popular is “a clash of cultures” and variations of it. The description’s appropriate. The first culture is one in which policymakers believe they’ve repealed the natural business cycle. This culture of moral hazard and push-button Fed liquidity makes it possible for 30-somethings to sit in front of computer screens in Manhattan and Connecticut and make millions from the flickering green dots, while that same liquidity debases the dollars held by wage earners, retirees, and prudent savers; it allows mediocre corporate executives to exercise stock options and become fabulously wealthy; it tells stock and real estate speculators that if things go south, someone sitting in an office in Washington will press the “print” button and make everything okay; it makes “bridges to nowhere” possible; and it allows a nation to launch a preventive war and decades-long occupation without a thought about how to pay for it. This culture depends on dollar hegemony.

The other culture is composed of a few countries, non-allies, that happen to occupy the ground above the natural resource most sensitive to Washington’s print button. Since they have the gall to object to our insistence on exchanging ever-depreciating pieces of paper for their main (and finite) natural resource, they both complicate our attempt at reinflation and profit from it.

I’ve pointed out elsewhere that, fiscal pipedreams of the State notwithstanding, our money is pegging itself to oil.  Who has the oil, and how we expect them to act, shows why that’s such a terrible outcome.  The underlying conflict, despite claims of concern about terrorism or “regional stability” (as if that were our concern anyway), is over when — not if — we will reach a point where the guns of this country are the only currency anyone will take seriously, in both senses of the word.

To be honest with you, the more I ponder it, the more I can’t decide: which is more pathetic, the fact of the group we’re heading down this path for in the first place, or that “our” rulers expect this to work forever?  Either we’re systematically insane, or our dignity & long-term security are cheap sells.