Ann Berg

Threatening an imminent economic collapse, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke have bamboozled Congress into enacting the most brazen confiscatory scheme ever concocted by government. The scheme would have American taxpayers fork over $700 billion of their cash to help recapitalize some of the country’s biggest banks – the same banks that … Continue reading “Down the Road to Serfdom”

According to legend, its flag sprang from the reflection of a star and the crescent moon in a pool of native warriors’ blood. The national anthem exults, "Martyrs would gush out were one to squeeze the soil!" Of all the Muslim countries created after World War I, only Turkey succeeded in expelling Western occupiers to … Continue reading “Turkey: From Bloody Birth to Power Broker”

While economic pundits point fingers at loose lending for the malodor in the housing market that is now filling the noses of financiers, they miss the primary cause: permanent war. Permanent war has caused the nation’s institutions – political, social, and economic – to be organized into an impervious structure without which war could not … Continue reading “Crackpot Realists and Permanent War”

See the faint jet plumes overhead? Once soaring high through the celestial sphere of finance, the dollar is starting to lose orbit – tugged by the drag of war. But this time it’s different. It’s different because war is being waged in a monetary climate that has no precedent: an inflationary fiat monetary system, a … Continue reading “War Drags the Dollar Down”

It begins with the visible swelling of the throat. Displays of agitation – bellowing, prancing, and stomping – follow and culminate in a frenzy of rivalrous assaults. The beastly nature of U.S. foreign policy becomes more apparent daily. As William Pfaff recently wrote, the current and future preemptive wars in the greater Middle East, Central … Continue reading “The Colonial Stag
in Rutting Season”

As writers note, the Suez Canal crisis 50 years ago marked the last hurrah of the British Empire. Significantly, it also spelled the demise of the pound sterling. When it broke away from the gold standard in 1931, the pound was the reserve currency throughout half the world. After Britain’s failed attempt to prevent Egypt’s … Continue reading “When Sterling Bowed
to the Dollar”

President Bush believes in the bogeyman – the bogeyman theory of history, that is. In order to frighten Americans, he paints the War on Terror as a rematch between the free world and the fascist monsters of the 1930s. But fascism wasn’t confined to a few errant nations, such as Germany and Italy. Propelled by … Continue reading “Bush Believes in the Bogeyman”

Anyone who has spent time in Turkey will find its people civil, generous, educated, and open-minded. Just don’t mention the Kurds. The day after I zigzagged through a sloped, ramshackle enclave to reach the ancient Alexandrian fort of Kadifekale overlooking the port city of Izmir, I received a stern lecture on this sinister group. While … Continue reading “Will Turkey Follow
Israel’s Lead?”

Beneath the bellows over Iran and the mayhem in Iraq, the real struggle for Mideast dominance quietly unfolds. As petrostates around the globe exert increasing command over their energy assets, Iraq is on the verge of ceding theirs to the control of American and British oil companies. If all goes as planned, the oil giants … Continue reading “Grand Theft Babylon”

Savoring the triumph of poking a stick in the eye of an upstart Arab country, U.S. lawmakers are girding for a face-off with a much larger opponent. With the rescue of the American seaboard from a shadowy sheikdom now a mission accomplished, they are steadying their aim at the second largest economy in the world … Continue reading “Those Zany Xenophobes”