Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

I accessed this article by typing the title in google search How the US is weaponising the world economy

"Hobbes once remarked that if you are forced at gunpoint to go through a door, you are still free to go through it: you can be forced and be free. For most of us today this is a perversity that smacks of Stalinism. But what if someone throws walls around you on three sides and then leaves you to decide for yourself what to do? Are you still free to determine your future, assuming that the wall builder has at least as much right to build the walls as you do? ... [U]unfortunately most conventional discussion ... either fails to spot the walls or assumes that they are natural structures deriving from the very substance of market economics, rather than the work of political hands. As a result, conventional wisdom does not for a moment doubt that ... peoples ... have at last entered the realm of freedom and self-determination... [W]hat right do a handful of capitalist states assert their political power over the world economy? It is in this field of what conventional liberal thought...

"US imperialism continues to reveal its long-term vulnerability. The US now has a net investment liability with other economies in the world to the tune of 9.8% of world GDP.  This compares with countries which are net creditors: Japan (3.9%), Northern Europe (6.4%) and China (2.3%).  This US net liability measures the stock of investment and the amount of credit made by other countries into the US after deducting US investment and loans abroad.  US imperialism is extracting more net value from other economies to fund its growth, but at the expense of becoming more dependent on ‘tribute’ rather than trade.  The IMF forecasts that the US net liability to foreigners will reach 50% of its GDP by 2023, or 10.7% of world GDP.  That compares with the combined liability of the exploited peripheral economies of the world of 7.8%.  US imperialism gets away this because it is still the world’s largest economy, with the biggest financial sector, with the dollar as th...