If a private company noticed that 363 tons of U.S. currency had gone missing, they would be alarmed right? Not so with the government. It can just print some more.
Everybody remembers the images of U.S. troops passing out greenbacks in Baghdad back in 2003. It turns out these were not just isolated incidents, but part of a concerted effort to buy the “hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people. All across the country, U.S. soldiers and CPA officials were handing out hundreds like party favors, paying people for lost property and relatives, and using cash to compensate contractors submitting bills into the millions of dollars.
What we would consider outrageous waste and criminally negligent accounting back home are just part of running an empire.
You see, in Iraq the greenback is nothing but monopoly money. Their price system and domestic markets are sufficiently insulated from world currency exchanges that the Treasury is actually quite free to run the printing press. The important part for you future emperors to remember is that the increase in money supply is accompanied by a corresponding increase in the number of people who do business in dollars. So long as Iraqi markets operate in dollars and keep it out of the U.S. there is no problem. Money for nothing.
Money printing is horribly inflationary under normal circumstances, but due to Iraq’s economic isolation, the effect is distributed over a longer period of time as cash slowly filters back into the international market.
The so-called “inflation tax,” the gradual erosion in the value of the dollars we all hold, allows the Bush administration to come out in favor of tax cuts while still shoveling cash into the Sunni Triangle. That Congress is cut out of the deal is just gravy for the administration.
The effects will be felt for years, but the extra nickel you pay every time you go to the grocery story will be impossible to trace back to the Commander in Thief.
Brilliant.
