readx;

Two days after the U.S. military returned to Manhattan, the Federal Axe issued its first official statement to the media and the public. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 At a press conference that lasted only 15 minutes, the Federalist press spokesman released only a general set of damage figures, and did not answer questions from reporters, nor did he mention the question that reporters were most concerned about, that is, who was responsible for the deadliest attack in U.S. history.

Who did it?

That's another problem Norris faces, and one that may never find out the truth.

The search for the transport plane is still ongoing, but even Lucas of the CIA has little hope. As the CIA's investigative network was fully rolled out, it was almost certain that the other six C-17s did not land on land, but made a forced landing or crashed in a certain sea area.

The Atlantic Ocean is so vast that looking for a couple of crashed transport planes is simply looking for a needle in a haystack.

Two days later, the National Guard's search and rescue efforts on the island were also in full swing, finding thousands of survivors, but not a single body of the attacker, or even a clue left by the attacker. According to the clues provided by the surviving civilians, it is almost certain that the attackers were Arabs or Persians, spoke Arabic and English, were very well armed and equipped with excellent combat qualities. Among the many clues, the most important is the size of the attackers. Although none of the surviving civilians saw all the attackers, it can be roughly concluded that the size of the attackers was not very large, numbering around 500.

The screening process is still ongoing, and the results are not satisfactory.

Of the more than 50,000 people who have been screened, no suspicious persons have been found. According to FBI estimates, the attackers had been prepared for a long time and were not hiding among civilians.

The attackers have disappeared without a trace, and it has become more difficult to track down the real culprit.

Only one thing is certain, they are not terrorists, but trained military men, moreover, in the service of a certain country.

The question is, which country was behind the attack?

Few countries have the ability to plan and launch such a large-scale attack, and to keep all the attackers out in their entirety, to be counted on five fingers.

The problem is that there is no evidence, not even a clue, and even if you guess who did it, you can't get it on the table.

The question before Norris is: Should this be declared a terrorist attack?

It's not just about who to retaliate against, it's about the international situation, and even has an impact on interest groups in the United States.

Among other things, the problems of the insurance company mentioned by Sternberg alone were enough to make Norris think twice.

Although in the strict sense, terrorist attacks can also be regarded as "acts of war", according to the general insurance regulations, insurance companies will not pay for war losses, but after the 911 incident, the United States has been peaceful for more than 10 years, and basically no large-scale terrorist attacks have occurred.

According to statistics submitted by the five largest U.S. insurance companies, at least five percent of Manhattan residents and companies have purchased such insurance, with a total insured amount of more than $10 trillion. If the federal political axe had named the incident a "terrorist attack," 90 percent of U.S. insurance companies would have gone bankrupt.

In addition to insurance companies, arms dealers also do not agree that this is a "terrorist attack".

Although the United States is still able to launch a large-scale war on the pretext of "terrorist attacks" and bring countless benefits to the world's largest arms interest groups, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been fought for more than 10 years, bringing only a serious economic recession to the United States, and it has long been proven that Bush Jr.'s reason for launching the Iraq war is completely untenable, and it is difficult for the people to accept a "war on terror" again.

Looking at the bigger picture, this is not the ideal time to launch a "war on terror".

When George W. Bush launched the war on terror, the United States had just experienced a golden decade after the end of the Cold War, with a rapid economic development, and the previous president had not only repaid all the national debt owed by the United States during the Cold War, but also had a slight surplus. In other words, Bush Jr. is holding the economic foundation laid by the president of the Ben Cook Party, and the country is thriving, and the vast majority of Americans still do not know what to do after the end of the Cold War, launching two wars, pushing the United States to the throne of global hegemony, and at the same time bringing the United States into the biggest recession period after the war.

Norris was able to live in the White House precisely because of the poor economic environment.

The financial crisis has been raging for several years and shows no signs of abating, and the global economy is still not improving, resulting in frighteningly high unemployment. Although from an economic point of view, the essence of the economic crisis is the unfair distribution of social wealth, excessive wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small number of people, resulting in a great reduction in social purchasing power, that is, consumption power, the labor remuneration obtained by producers can not buy back all the products, social overproduction, product prices have declined, enterprises have no active surnames, reduce the scale of production, lay off employees, and reduce wages, thus further weakening social purchasing power, resulting in a cycle of bad surnames. But fundamentally speaking, the economic crisis is mainly manifested in overcapacity and a large backlog of products. If the surplus product cannot be consumed, the price of commodities will not be able to reach the bottom line required for the production of enterprises, and it will not be possible to increase the positive surname of enterprises, so that enterprises can expand their production scale, hire more laborers, and fundamentally resolve the economic crisis.

The most direct way to consume surplus products is war.

Anyone with a bit of historical knowledge can see that after the global financial crisis, the world pattern is very similar to that of the Great Depression of the twentieth century.

The Great Depression of 1929 was also marked by financial market turmoil, with the stock index of the New York Stock Exchange falling by more than half in a week, and only rising to pre-Depression levels more than two decades later. After the stock market disaster, it was not immediately transmitted to the real economy, but there was a brief boom, and it was not until 1933 that the real economy encountered serious difficulties. Although Roosevelt's New Deal stimulated the U.S. economy to a certain extent by replacing consumption with investment, it was not Roosevelt who really saved the United States, but the outbreak of World War II six years later. The largest war in human history, which consumed all surplus materials within six years, and the need for more materials for post-war reconstruction greatly stimulated the production of enterprises.

From this perspective, starting a large-scale war would not only restore America's international prestige, but also find a way out of the worsening financial crisis.

The problem is, Norris doesn't think it's time for war.

Although Norris is not an economist and knows far less about economics than those experts and professors, as a wise politician, Norris knows very well that he is not Roosevelt, and the United States today is not the United States of Roosevelt's administration.

Compared with the United States during the Great Depression, the United States today has a very obvious feature, that is, the use of plundered resources has enabled all Americans to maintain a high standard of living that is completely incompatible with economic development. To put it bluntly, it is to take advantage of the hegemonic position of the United States in the financial, monetary and other fields to plunder other countries by issuing a large number of banknotes that do not maintain their value, and seriously overdraft the future.

Although, in theory, Americans do not have to worry about the huge foreign debt at all, because as the dollar depreciates, the foreign debt will shrink significantly. For example, two-thirds of the more than $3 trillion in foreign exchange held by the mainland has purchased US Treasury bonds, and with the sharp depreciation of the US dollar, by the time the US repays its national debt, the US dollar is no longer worth anything. But as the saying goes, you will always pay back when you come out. This is the situation that the United States is now facing, that is, plundering other countries, resulting in the abnormal development of the domestic industry in the United States, and there is both a serious surplus of labor at home and a high degree of dependence on imports.

At this time, the United States is not rich, but a poor egg!

No matter what kind of war it is, in addition to competing for military strength, it is also necessary to compete for economic strength. It can be said that war is a game of burning money, and without money, no matter how powerful the army is, it will not be able to win the war.

If the United States wants to start a war at this time, it will inevitably increase its military spending by a large margin, and the only way to raise military spending is to expand the issuance of national bonds, and eventually these debts will have to be repaid with tax revenues, which will be passed on to taxpayers, raising the tax burden of the people, and thus weakening the consumption power of society.

While economic experts have proposed a solution to further devalue the dollar, Norris believes that this path is largely unworkable.

There is one reason: does the dollar still have value as a store of value?

There are two main reasons why countries around the world are willing to exchange goods for dollars. First, the U.S. dollar has a high degree of recognition, that is, many countries are willing to settle in U.S. dollars in trade, and in the final analysis, the U.S. has sufficient repayment capacity and hard currency reserves that far exceed those of other countries. Second, the United States is the safest country in the world, and its assets are not easily damaged.

Unfortunately, both pillars collapsed after this attack.

The United States has lost all of its strategic gold reserves, and it will not be able to make up for this loss for the foreseeable future. Manhattan, the heart of the United States, was reduced to rubble within a week, and the security of the United States was severely tested, and I am afraid that no one will believe that the United States is the safest country in the world.

As a result, the dollar's hegemony in international finance is gone.

Affected by this, if the US federal political axe continues to issue Treasury bonds, even if Congress makes a comprehensive compromise, when not many countries are willing to increase their holdings of US dollar bonds, the American people will have to pay for it, which is tantamount to diluting domestic consumption power in advance and aggravating the domestic economic predicament.

Leaving aside the question of whether citizens with votes will support the federal government axe to issue additional national debt, the question of whether Congress will agree to raise the national debt ceiling with Republican obstruction.

Without money, what to wage war with?

Norris is not a fool, so from the beginning, he did not start a war during his term in the general election, but decided to throw the conundrum to the next president.

(To be continued)