Russia and China Can Expel the US from Eurasia—by Exposing the Petrodollar Fraud

My forthcoming article in Crescent International. -KB

Russia and China Can Expel the US from Eurasia—by Exposing the Petrodollar Fraud

By Kevin Barrett, for Crescent International

John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, has observed that the US empire is the first in history whose primary weapon and control mechanism is riba (usurious debt). Perkins argues that the international bankers, the real rulers of the empire, deliberately saddle Global South nations with unpayable debt in order to seize control of their natural and human resources.

But the empire rules not only as a creditor, but simultaneously as a debtor! This, too, is historically unprecedented. In the past, nations that ran deficits were at the mercy of their creditors. Weimar Germany, for example, owed so much war reparations debt that its currency and economy collapsed, leading to Hitler’s rise, debt repudiation, and war.

How does the US profit from being the world’s biggest borrower? As J. Paul Getty said, if you owe the bank $100, that’s your problem; if you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem. With its gargantuan balance of payments deficit (currently pushing $200 billion) driven by an even bigger trade deficit (currently pushing $700 billion) the US owes “the bank”—the rest of the world—so much money that calling it in all at once would crash the global economy. Total US debt, now pushing $30 trillion, is rapidly expanding as the US floods the world with dollars using COVID and “quantitative easing” as excuses.

The unique American privilege of running endless deficits is, in essence, a license to create unlimited money out of nothing and force others to take it in exchange for real goods and services.