Ben Franklin
October 18th 2005, 05:22 AM
America's nightmare: Becoming Britain (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GJ01Dj01.html)
WASHINGTON - A combination of huge tax cuts, an insatiable appetite for foreign imports, especially oil, and record government spending is steadily eroding US independence and freedom of action, according to a "special report" released Thursday by the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
The report, entitled "Getting Serious About the Twin Deficits" calls for urgent measures to tackle serious challenges faced by the US economy, including reducing the government deficit by, among other steps, increasing taxes; reducing oil imports through the imposition of energy taxes or strict fuel efficiency standards; and managing a coordinated depreciation of the dollar vis-a-vis East Asian currencies.
Chinn's critique is not particularly new. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) voiced similar concerns at its annual meeting just last weekend, and fiscal conservatives within the Republican Party have displayed growing anxiety about the dollar's fate, particularly in the aftermath of Katrina. The CFR stressed that the new study represented Chinn's personal views only and not those of the organization. But the fact that the New York-based think tank, which has been seen since its creation shortly after World War II as the foreign policy bastion of US-based multinational corporate interests, commissioned and released the report is likely to be taken as a signal of Wall Street's growing unhappiness with Republican rule.
To address these threats, the report calls for a number of measures that will be very difficult for the administration to stomach. In particular, it calls for Bush to give up on making permanent the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and impose taxes on fossil fuels and/or meaningful fuel-efficiency standards to reduce consumption - steps the administration has so far steadfastly resisted. The study also called for eliminating the most costly provisions of the recently approved energy and transportation bills, which, according to critics, are laden with "pork" - that is, pet projects or other benefits that lawmakers take home to their constituencies or financial backers.
WASHINGTON - A combination of huge tax cuts, an insatiable appetite for foreign imports, especially oil, and record government spending is steadily eroding US independence and freedom of action, according to a "special report" released Thursday by the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
The report, entitled "Getting Serious About the Twin Deficits" calls for urgent measures to tackle serious challenges faced by the US economy, including reducing the government deficit by, among other steps, increasing taxes; reducing oil imports through the imposition of energy taxes or strict fuel efficiency standards; and managing a coordinated depreciation of the dollar vis-a-vis East Asian currencies.
Chinn's critique is not particularly new. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) voiced similar concerns at its annual meeting just last weekend, and fiscal conservatives within the Republican Party have displayed growing anxiety about the dollar's fate, particularly in the aftermath of Katrina. The CFR stressed that the new study represented Chinn's personal views only and not those of the organization. But the fact that the New York-based think tank, which has been seen since its creation shortly after World War II as the foreign policy bastion of US-based multinational corporate interests, commissioned and released the report is likely to be taken as a signal of Wall Street's growing unhappiness with Republican rule.
To address these threats, the report calls for a number of measures that will be very difficult for the administration to stomach. In particular, it calls for Bush to give up on making permanent the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and impose taxes on fossil fuels and/or meaningful fuel-efficiency standards to reduce consumption - steps the administration has so far steadfastly resisted. The study also called for eliminating the most costly provisions of the recently approved energy and transportation bills, which, according to critics, are laden with "pork" - that is, pet projects or other benefits that lawmakers take home to their constituencies or financial backers.