March 4, 2024 (EIRNS)—The U.S. federal debt explosion, accompanied by a period of rapid inflation imposed worldwide by U.S. and Federal Reserve policies, has been a dangerous factor exacerbating both geopolitical threats and a growing risk of potential financial crises.
In creating this debt explosion, the Biden Administration has followed up huge economic stimulus payments in 2021-22 (to all households, to the unemployed, to businesses of all kinds, states and cities, etc.) with multi-trillions in spending acts: The American Families Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Act in 202; the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022; and $100 billion/year in variously motivated Defense spending increases. The Biden team’s major objectives have included “ruining” Russia and intimidating China (dangerous failures); force-feeding mass electric vehicle production and sales (this has largely failed); exploding solar and particularly onshore and offshore wind power capacity (this is stalling and sputtering, requiring still more tens of billions in additional “unforeseen” subsidies); and grabbing global semiconductor domination to beat China at military and surveillance uses of AI.
Now the Administration, with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo leading, and Democrats in Congress are pushing a “CHIPS and Science II,” because the first, $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act, and associated economic warfare sanctions, have been met by a spirited mobilization of new semiconductor capacities in China.
All of this has “avoided recession” in the U.S. economy, but at the deliberate expense of causing recessions across Europe, including passing along greater expenses to agricultural production and farmers.
According to the Washington Post March 3, the Administration, with Biden personally leading it, is now also lobbying, and offering to subsidize, other countries to adopt “Open RAN” (open radio access networks), a relatively risky new technological approach for cell towers. This is simply because it could take business from Huawei and become, in the fantasy term coined by Brookings Institution fellows, the “Huawei killer.”
