Posted on 05/17/2024 9:18:27 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
By the early 400s, the Roman Empire was coming apart at the seams and in desperate need of strong, competent leadership. In theory, Honorius should have been the right man for the job.
Born into the royal household in Constantinople, Honorius had been groomed to rule, practically since birth, by the finest experts in the realm. So even as a young man, Honorius had already accumulated decades of experience.
Yet Rome’s foreign adversaries rightfully believed Honorius to be weak, out of touch, divisive, and completely inept.
He had entered into bonehead peace treaties that strengthened Rome’s enemies. He paid vast sums of money to some of their most powerful rivals and received practically nothing in return. He made virtually no attempt to secure Roman borders, leaving the empire open to be ravaged by barbarians.
Inflation was high. Taxes were high. Economic production declined. Roman military power declined. And all of Rome’s foreign adversaries were emboldened.
To a casual observer it would have almost seemed as if Honorius went out of his way to make the Empire weaker.
One of Rome’s biggest threats came in the year 408, when the barbarian king Alaric invaded Italy; imperial defenses were so non-existent at that point that ancient historians described Alaric’s march towards Rome as unopposed and leisurely, as if they were “at some festival” rather than an invasion.
Alaric and his army arrived to the city of Rome in the autumn of 408 AD and immediately positioned their forces to cut off any supplies. No food could enter the city, and before long, its residents began to starve.
Historians have passed down horrific stories of cannibalism– including women eating their own children in order to survive.
Rather than send troops and fight, however, Honorius agreed to pay a massive ransom to Alaric, including 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver, and literally tons of other real assets and commodities.
(The equivalent in today’s money, adjusted for population, would be billions of dollars… similar to what the US released to Iran in a prisoner swap last year.)
Naturally Honorius didn’t have such a vast sum in his treasury… so Romans were forced to strip down and melt their shrines and statues in order to pay Alaric’s ransom.
Ironically, one of the statues they melted was a monument to Virtus, the Roman god of bravery and strength… leading the ancient historian Zosimus to conclude that “all which remained of Roman valor and intrepidity was totally extinguished.”
Rome had spent two centuries in the early days of the empire– from the rise of Augustus in 27 BC to the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD– as the clear, unrivaled superpower. Almost no one dared mess with Rome, and few who did ever lived to tell the tale.
Modern scholars typically view the official “fall” of the Western Roman Empire in the year 476. But it’s pretty clear that the collapse of Roman power and prestige took place decades before.
When Rome was ransomed in 408 (then sacked in 410), it was obvious to everyone at the time that the Emperor no longer had a grip on power.
And before long, most of the lands in the West that Rome had once dominated– Italy, Spain, France, Britain, North Africa, etc. were under control of various Barbarian tribes and kingdoms.
The Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Burgundians, Berbers, etc. all established independent kingdoms. And for a while, there was no dominant superpower in western Europe. It was a multi-polar world. And the transition was rather abrupt.
This is what I think is happening now– we’re experiencing a similar transition, and it seems equally abrupt.
The United States has been the world’s dominant superpower for decades. But like Rome in the later stage of its empire, the US is clearly in decline. This should not be a controversial statement.
Let’s not be dramatic; it’s important to stay focused on facts and reality. The US economy is still vast and potent, and the country is blessed with an abundance of natural resources– incredibly fertile farmland, some of the world’s largest freshwater resources, and incalculable reserves of energy and other key commodities.
In fact, it’s amazing the people in charge have managed to screw it up so badly. And yet they have.
The national debt is out of control, rising by trillions of dollars each year. Debt growth, in fact, substantially outpaces US economic growth.
Social Security is insolvent, and the program’s own trustees (including the US Treasury Secretary) admit that its major trust fund will run out of money in just nine years.
The people in charge never seem to miss an opportunity to dismantle capitalism (i.e. the economic system that created so much prosperity to begin with) brick by brick.
Then there are ubiquitous social crises: public prosecutors who refuse to enforce the law; the weaponization of the justice system; the southern border fiasco; declining birth rates; extraordinary social divisions that are most recently evidenced by the anti-Israel protests.
And most of all the US constantly shows off its incredibly dysfunctional government that can’t manage to agree on anything, from the budget to the debt ceiling. The President has obvious cognitive disabilities and makes the most bizarre decisions to enrich America’s enemies.
Are these problems fixable? Yes. Will they be fixed? Maybe. But as we used to say in the military, “hope is not a course of action”.
Plotting this current trajectory to its natural conclusion leads me to believe that the world will enter a new “barbarian kingdom” paradigm in which there is no dominant superpower.
Certainly, there are a number of rising rivals today. But no one is powerful enough to assume the leading role in the world.
China has a massive population and a huge economy. But it too has way too many problems… with the obvious challenge that no one trusts the Communist Party. So, most likely China will not be the dominant superpower.
India’s economy will eventually surpass China’s, and it has an even bigger population. But India isn’t even close to the ballpark of being the world’s superpower.
Then there’s Europe. Combined, it still has a massive economic and trade union. But it has also been in major decline… with multiple social crises like low birth rates and a migrant invasion.
Then there are the energy powers like Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia; they are far too small to dominate the world, but they have the power to menace and disrupt it.
The bottom line is that the US is no longer strong enough to lead the world and keep adversarial nations in check. And it’s clear that other countries are already adapting to this reality.
Earlier this month, for example, China successfully launched a rocket to the moon as part of a multi-decade mission to establish an International Lunar Research Station.
By 2045, China hopes to construct a large, city-like base along with several international partners including Russia, Pakistan, Thailand, South Africa, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Egypt. Turkey and Nicaragua are also interested in joining.
This is pretty remarkable given how many nations are participating, even if just nominally. Yet the US isn’t part of the consortium.
This would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. But today the rest of the world realizes that they no longer need American funding, leadership, or expertise.
We can see similar examples everywhere, most notably in Israel and Ukraine. And I believe one of the next shoes to drop will be the US dollar.
After all, if the rest of the world doesn’t need the US for space exploration, and they can ignore the US when it comes down to World War 3, then why should they need the US dollar anymore?
The dollar was the clear and obvious choice as the global reserve currency back when America was the undisputed superpower. But today it’s a different world.
Foreign nations continuing to rely on the dollar ultimately means governments and central banks buying US government bonds. And why should they take such a risk when the national debt is already 120% of GDP?
In addition, Congress passed a new law a few weeks ago authorizing the Treasury Department to confiscate US dollar assets of any country it deems an “aggressor state.”
While people might think this is a morally righteous idea, the reality is that it will only turn off foreign investors. Why should China, Saudi Arabia, or anyone else buy US government bonds when they can be confiscated in a heartbeat?
All of this ultimately leads to a world in which the US dollar is no longer the dominant reserve currency. We’re already starting to see signs of that shift, and it could be in full swing by the end of the decade.
[Pretty wife, cute kids. You’re a lucky man, Laz.]
I’m not sure that those kids, ah, ummm, belong to Laz...
DNA test?
BTW, I have always loved your screenname...LOL
It was probably Fauci’s COVID-19(84) that put him on MD2020
Da Mad Dog.
MD 20/20 (often called by its nickname Mad Dog) is an American fortified wine. The MD stands for its producer, Mogen David. MD 20/20 has an alcohol content that varies by flavor from 13% to 18%. Initially, 20/20 stood for 20 oz at 20% alcohol.
How about a nice game of chess?
The difference is the output quality of goods from China isn’t good, a lot less dependble/durable than the usa was after wwii.
I think they have no solution (because there really is no solution after this much damage)
So I think they intend to nuke everything to try and hide the wreckage ... in bigger wreckage.
20 years ago I don’t think you could have made me believe all that has gone on in just the past 17 years.
Right wingers have been saying this for years.
Consider the 1869 Gold Panic engineered by the Gold Ring composed of Jay Gould, James Fisk, and Abel Corbin, a brother in law to the new President, U.S. Grant. With the US was on the gold standard, they cornered the gold market and drove up the price in dollar terms, which then triggered a financial panic as gold denominated debts began to come due -- with President Grant unavailable because he was on vacation.
The panic broke only when a US Treasury official acting on his own authority approved the sale of gold bullion from US Treasury, which Grant wisely approved as soon as he was informed. Speculators had been recruited to the scheme on the false basis that with Grant's brother in law involved, Grant himself was in on it as well.
With a gold standard, bad policy decisions can also disorder the money supply, with catastrophic effects on prices. That was a key cause for the Great Depression. In the 1920s and 30s, the US and France adopted a policy of gold accumulation in which the government bought and held gold without issuing new money reflecting those gold holdings.
This deprived other countries of access to the normal flow of newly mined gold that added to the global base money for national currencies. In effect, as with the Gold Ring, the result was a gold shortage that led to a shortage of currency to run national and global economies.
This caused a worldwide deflation that crushed banks, ruined debtors and businesses, and impoverished hundreds of millions who had been employed, productive, and prosperous. The ensuing poverty and discontent brought down governments and disordered societies around the world. The Second World War followed.
If a return to the gold standard is no answer to our financial problems, what is? Spending restraint leading to balanced budgets and stable monetary value for the dollar. More is required, but that is the essential remedy.
” So you think the dollar will be the world’s reserve currency forever? There have have been dozens of world reserve currencies...”
That’s the Boomer blind spot. They can’t see the vulnerability of the $US.
Just like some people in Britain even after WW1 thought that the sterling would reign forever.
Perhaps that job could be, being a trained nurse.
Nah... Kodiak bears have taken over that profession.
Proof: Here's a photo of two bears giving an elk a colonoscopy.
Thanks!
And why would they not be Laz’s progeny? Granted his heretofore established libido, there may be three more in his castle, and one in the oven.
LOL
I guess the Elk has a right (and a left) to Bear arms
[Does Schiff think if he says something for enough years (decades in his case) that it will eventually become true?
His mistake is that he’s too emotionally tied to gold and silver. There’s nothing wrong with commodities, but it’s a very small segment of finance.
The US dollar is too strong in the opinion of many - including President Trump.
This issue is debt-based money - not precious metals.
That is what is enslaving the citizens of the world.]
The drive-by conclusions about the Roman empire are silly. The issue they ran into was mutual adaptation and rivals who were as intelligent as the Romans themselves, so capable of matching, then surpassing their innovations. Everything that gave the Roman military an edge, its rivals adopted. But those rivals also came up with new approaches the Romans failed to keep up with.
In other words, Rome fell to its enemies for the same reason the remnants of the Greek empire fell to Rome - an inability to permanently stay ahead of the opposition. There is a measure of luck and circumstance involved in getting to and staying at the top. That serendipity eventually shifted to its rivals, and then to the rivals of those rivals and so on.
petrodollar propped up by endless wars
I wonder how getting rid of fossil fuels is going reconcile with the petrodollar.
China is ALREADY circling the drain and is doing (with media compliance) a tremendous job of concealing it
Until there is something to replace the dollar, it will remain the reserve currency.
Period.
I have been hearing this since the 1970s. Yawn.
The Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) started in June 2009, six months after Obama took office.
Why was the government begging people to turn in old cars and take out new debt?
They were trying to stimulate the economy via consumer spending and keep the doors open at General Motors among other things.
Interest rates were close to zero back then, so borrowing money to buy a car (or house) wasn't expensive.
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