What's Worth Reading This Summer:

Kevin Phillips, a long time Republican strategist and one of the most intelligent Republicans in the wild, dedicates his most recent book, American Theocracy (Viking 2006), to "the millions of Republicans, present and lapsed, who have oposed the Bush dynasty and the disenlightenment in the 2000 and 2004 elections." I'm neither a Republican nor a Democrat—having no money or property to protect from the mob. As it happens, I'm not even part of the mob, but I do enjoy hearing and reading someone who has been close to presidents, slicing and dicing the reigning power figures. Phillips does a masterful job.

What I'd like to call attention to here is a telling passage about the current state of the economy:

German, Japanese, and Swiss export prowess puts the once-mighty United States to shame. In 2003 and 2004 the U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods rose from $470 billion to $552 billion. The three better-ballanced economies, by contrast, enjoyed huge surpluses in trade in manufactured goods and large ones in their overall current accounts. A set of statistics will demonstrate the point. Estimates for 2004 provided by the CIA in mid-2005 put Germany first in the world with $893 billion in exports (mostly manufactured goods)—this from a national population of 82 million. The United States placed second with exports of $795 billion, not exactly a triumph because (1) the United States had a population of 296 million and (2) these exports were dwarfed by $1.3 trillin worth of imports. The Japanese, chalking up the world's third-highest export total, $538 billion, did so with a national population of 127 million. Pocket-sized Switzerland was even more of a per capita powerhouse: with a national population of only 7.5 million, it exported $131 billion worth of goods in 2004. Keep in mind the entire equation: the Germans, Japanese, and Swiss do this with workforce wages and benefits and industrial-production costs as high as or higher than those in the United States. (313-4)

In other words, old Europe and Asia are beating the pants off of the American worker despite the much vaunted American productivity achieved, not through technology, but through paying lower or stagnant wages, requiring longer hours, and paying fewer benefits.

Although Phillips' title calls attention to the growing religious fanaticism in the country that has been criticized in other places, he devotes considerable space to discussing the dissolution of the American economy and the forces behind it, big oil and banking in particular, and their influences on the current administration.

Still think we went into Iraq for purposes other than oil? Remember, Iraq owns its oil. It was nationalized a few decades ago. Exxon Mobil and the other major oil companies want to get their hands on that oil. That's how the Bush administration spells democracy—the privatization of other countries' natural resources.

And, no, Exxon Mobil et al are not particularly worried about getting it to you any time soon. They'd just as soon leave it in the ground with American military bases sitting on top of it. After all, the oil companies are producing as much gasoline and heating oil as they possibly can already. If anything, they want to make sure that ultra cheap Iraqi oil does NOT get to the market any time soon. That's what Sadaam was trying to do, get it out of the ground and into the market place. The oil companies wanted him stopped.

By the way, it costs all of $1 per barrell to pump Iraqi oil, the cheapest in the world. And no one knows just how much oil there is under Iraq. The oil companies themselves believe Iraq has more oil than Saudi Arabia.