Posted on 02/11/2011 2:25:29 PM PST by mojito
....Egypt has no oil, insignificant industry, small amounts of natural gas, and 40 million people who are about to become very, very hungry. Without figuring out how to feed the destitute bottom half of the Egyptian population, all the talk of "models" is window-shopping.
[....]
What happens next? Egypt's stock market has collapsed, and its pound has fallen to the lowest level since 2005, with some brokerage-house analysts warning of a 20% decline during the next several weeks. Foreign investors have deserted the market for Egyptian treasury securities, so the central bank will print money to give to the banks to buy government debt.
After half a century of military rule since the 1952 Free Officers' coup, Egypt's wealth is concentrated in the hands of the old regime and its family and friends. If this regime is overthrown, and the corrupt nexus of army and business faces expropriation, the entire liquid wealth of Egypt will make a run for the border, along with its current proprietors.
This is a formula for a classic currency breakdown and galloping inflation, which invariably means panic purchases of commodities and hoarding: a collapse of the Egyptian pound, uncontrolled capital flight, inability to finance a current account deficit in the $15 billion range, and chaos in the Egyptian economy. Egypt might appeal to the international community for help, but the largesse offered to 450,000 Gazans will not extend to the 40 million Egyptians living on less than $2 a day.
Egypt's rulers had a good run as an American client. They have not yet absorbed the enormity of Washington's abandonment of a reasonably faithful and consistent ally.
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
I didn’t have much choice in the matter, but I like mine the way it is.
Those protesters are going to be pissed off as their means of growing food dwindles and the general cost of food world wide increases.
“They hate us because we are not Muslim...”
And that is why Western Civilization has been wildly successful and innovative. Our system creates wealth and theirs doesn’t.
So, with typical Islamic thinking, they will bring everyone down to the same level: hence, Islamic “Democracy” in a global caliphate.
It means everyone is destitute EXCEPT for the tyrant king who rules. It is Allah’s will — some crap like that!
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Nonesense! The Saudi king has already let the contract to Egypt for the printing of 300,000,000 korans and 2 million each of the other four muslim ‘holy’ books to be distributed in the USA during the reign of King Obama, the One, the Glorious, the Leader of the Muslim Umma, the Caliph, and Antichrist.
Most of Egypt’s population are uneducated peasants that have lived by the price of bread, subsidized by the state, their entire lives. Nothing good is happening in Egypt. The educated class, those that can actually get a passport stamp to get out, read that as the military officers and connected friends, will be leaving soon. Egypt will be a Muslim Brotherhood, radical state, within 6 months.
Holy Crap. You ain't kidding.
According to the CIA World Factbook Egypt's GDP is approximately $500 billion. The Mubarak's are worth approximately $50-70 billion. If they and their cronies smell an islamic regime taking power and pull their money out of Egypt what would that be? $200 billion? The $12 billion a year that comes in from tourism is gone. Rising food prices drive down everyone's purchasing power. The government already has $400 billion in debt (according to CIA). They can't print that much money. No one can afford to give them that much aid.
Goodbye pro western moderate muslim Egypt.
Hello Sudan/Zimbabwe times 10.
All on Israel's border.
They do not hate us because of thirty years of Mubarak. They hate us because of the sermons preached every Friday in nearly every mosque. Look them up on memritv.org.
Done :)
The rest of the antiquities will be torn apart on rumors of hidden treasure...
It’s breathtaking, isn’t it?
I’ve read it twice just to try and “get it” all...
That certainly says it all.
The winter wheat in my area could sure use some good moisture. It did get some snow cover to protect it from the recent severe cold, which is something.
Actually, the problem of increased demand for corn does get passed on to wheat and any grain that can be fed to livestock and poultry. China, as a primary case, consumes far more meat, mostly chicken and pork, although a taste for beef is growing, than it ever did before.
If corn costs too much, livestock producers will substitute another grain, even and including wheat. This drives demand, which raises the price for all grains. While indirect, a raise in corn prices has a profound affect on all grain prices. I’ve even heard that some folks are using more potatoes, sugar beets and mangels for livestock feed. So even those items go up in price.
Definitely a good read
Cutesy name calling doesn’t count for much off a playground.
I have great respect for Spengler. First ran into him in the summer of 2008 when things were heating up for the election. He wrote an article in February, 2008 in Asia Times: Obama's women reveal his secret in which he said, " Obama's women reveal his secret: he hates America. . . The probable next president of the United States is a mother's revenge against the America she despised. . . When Ann Dunham chose to follow Lolo Soetero to Indonesia in 1967, she brought the six-year-old Barack into the kitchen of anti-colonialist outrage. . . Radical anti-Americanism, rather than Islam, was the reigning faith in the Dunham household. . . He has the empathetic skill set of an anthropologist who lives with his subjects, learns their language, and elicits their hopes and fears while remaining at emotional distance. That is, he is the political equivalent of a sociopath. The difference is that he is practicing not on a primitive tribe but on the population of the United States."
About the same time I read, Barack H. Obama, The Unauthorized Biography,
I was in shock for weeks after I read these two articles and passed them on to everyone I knew. This was before my FR days. I told people, "Man, this guy can't be elected President. . He'll destroy the country." My friends who read these two article were equally shocked and agreed. I still remember election night in Washington D.C. and those people waving the old USSR flags with the hammer and sickle. .
Now, here we are. . Now what? We all work full bore to make sure he doesn't get reelected in 2012. I highly recommend those two articles if you haven't read them. Very sobering. . .
Do you go through this policing exercise every time one of us calls a democrat a rat?
bfl
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