A Caesar In Our
Future?
What Happens If The Shutdown Causes The Treasury To Run Out Of Money
By Paul Craig Roberts
What Happens If The Shutdown Causes The Treasury To Run Out Of Money
By Paul Craig Roberts
October 09, 2013 "Information
Clearing House - In a speech to the Commonwealth Club, San Francisco,
November 23, 2010, Peter Dale Scott gave a history of the various directives concerned
with government continuity during a state of emergency. He showed that these
directives could be used to supersede the Constitution.
The ease with which both the Bush
and Obama regimes were able to set aside the due process protections of the
Constitution that prohibit indefinite detention and execution without conviction
in a trial indicate that Professor Scott’s concern is justified that these
directives could result in executive branch rule.
Scott describes how the executive
branch efforts to provide government continuity in the aftermath of a nuclear
attack dating from the Eisenhower administration were gradually converted into
executive or national security (later Homeland Security) orders that confer
secret powers to the White House for any event that the executive branch
considers to be an emergency.
Generally these various
executive orders and directives refer to “national emergencies,” or “national
disasters.” However, President Bush’s National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential
Directive/HSPD-20 issued on May 9, 2007 use the term “Catastrophic
Emergency.”
The directives speak of “enduring
constitutional government” which the president maintains by coordinating “as a
matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches,” but it
is up to the president and his advisor, the National Continuity Coordinator, to
decide what constitutes constitutional government during a catastrophic
emergency.
What comprises a catastrophic
emergency? It is reasonable for a president to regard a government shutdown,
which can threaten everything from national security to default and economic
collapse, as a catastrophic emergency, and to take such steps as are necessary
to prevent it, such as raising the debt ceiling, on his own
authority.
The Federal Reserve also has the
power to prevent a government shutdown. If banks are too big to fail, so is the
federal government. If the Federal Reserve on its own authority can issue more
than $16 trillion in loans to US and European banks in order to prevent their
failure, the Federal Reserve can issue a loan to the US government.
I don’t expect either of these
two possibilities to come into play. A shutdown and default of US debt
obligations would terminate the US as a superpower and dethrone the dollar as
world reserve currency. Neither Congress nor President Obama desire such an
outcome. Also, Congress would not want a presidential directive to be
implemented that subordinates their position and possibly eliminates their
meaningful participation in governance. Therefore, I expect a resolution of the
current standoff prior to the Treasury running out of money.
I did interviews on this subject
with King World News and with Greg Hunter. The interviews are played to the
sensational side, but I do not expect it to go that far. However, it
could.
My interview with King World News is relatively short, but Eric King
knows how to bring it to the most controversial point. What everyone should
wonder is, “How did we, a free people protected by the US Constitution, become
one step away from rule by Caesar?
My interview with Greg Hunter of USA Watchdog is, in my opinion, one of my
best.
The interview covers a broad
range of issues or possibilities and makes it unnecessary for me to write a
column about the government shutdown and its implications and possible
consequences.
Paul Craig Roberts was
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of
the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News
Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His
internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution
of the West is now
available.
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