The American Empire’s Barbed-Wire Canoe

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The American Empire has finally done it. After strutting the globe like a prize bull in a china shop, for what seemed an eternity, (the blink of an eye in world history), it has tripped over its own tie or Lifts or lies or something and smashed all the valuables. Not an oops-a-daisy. Not a wobble. The full catastrophe.

The sort of monumental cock-up that makes the fall of Rome look like a rounding error in Accounts Payable.

While the carbonated Caesar in the White House spends his mornings, listening to adoring sycophants, shouting at clouds, putting his name on everything and trying to flog Greenland like a third-hand Commodore with a blown head gasket, the rest of the world is moving on.

They’ve checked the balance sheet, noticed the red ink bleeding through the page, and decided to take their business elsewhere.

This was the week it became undeniable: not collapse, not crisis, but something worse. A yawn.

The United States didn’t fall off a cliff. It was edged out of the money club.

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The Ledger of the Lost: Friday’s Fiscal Funeral

Friday brought a U.S. Treasury auction; the kind of dull, fluorescent-lit theatre where everybody has to wear a suit, upon which empires depend. Washington tried to move roughly US$120 billion in new 10-year notes, expecting the usual foreign buyers to do what they always do: fund the American lifestyle.

Instead, the room was … quiet. Shivers sought in vain to take out positions on spines to run up.

The “indirect bidders” — diplomatic BS for foreign central banks, took about 58 per cent of the issue. That may sound cool, until you remember this mob used to hoover up closer to 70 per cent without blinking. As if it were a white powder. The bid-to-cover ratio slid to around 2.3. Not a crash. Just a collective shrug.

Japan and China didn’t boycott the auction. They simply behaved like people halfway through packing up a house: buying only what’s necessary while shifting the real valuables elsewhere.

Increasingly, that elsewhere is gold.

George Carlin nailed it: “The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged.”
What’s changed is that the house itself is now borrowing to keep the lights on.

Interest on the U.S. national debt is now racing toward US$1.1 trillion a year; nipping at the heels of the entire Pentagon budget. America is no longer paying for a superpower. It is servicing a hungry ghost.

A collective delusion.

As they say in France, folie de la foule, the madness of the crowd.

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The Subscription-Service Superpower

While the bond traders are recalibrating and recaffeinating in Manhattan, the “most powerful military in history” is having a moment of unintended self-reflection in the South China Sea.

No cyberattack. No enemy interference. Just a prioritisation conflict. The Internet is buffering.

In the name of efficiency and “commercial partnerships”, the Pentagon has increasingly outsourced its digital nervous system to the digital barons. Sensible, we’re told. Cost-effective. Shareholder-friendly.

The problem with the billionaire tech bros and their networks is that they work only commercially. User pays. It’s not a network; it’s a toll road. Not a commons; a cash register. Not “service”; a subscription. No money, no honey, no funny.

During a carrier group transit, “bandwidth constraints emerged”; not because of Beijing or Moscow, but because civilian traffic was being prioritised under contract terms. People with movies to watch.

No sabotage. No subterfuge. Just capitalism doing what capitalism does. Like devouring an entire carrier group or two for breakfast. Picture a carrier strike group attempting to coordinate responses while a quiet, system message says: As a valued customer, we must remind you: premium customers first.

No explosion. No scandal. Just a technological lobotomy performed for the sake of quarterly earnings.

“The empire has been downgraded to Standard Tier. Dial-up backup is part of our premium package.”

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The Southern Front and the Dollar’s Slow Fade

In the Caribbean, Washington’s attempt to revive the Monroe Doctrine; rebranded here as the Donroe Doctrine, because it has Trump’s name on it; has backfired like an HQ Holden with a crook timing chain.

Billions have been sunk into sanctioning and blockading Venezuela, weaponising the dollar in the hope of economic suffocation. Instead, Caracas simply changed payment rails.

Through emerging multi-central-bank settlement systems such as mBridge, a growing share of oil shipments are now settled in local currencies and gold, skirting both the U.S. dollar and SWIFT.

Not every barrel. Not every time. But enough to matter.

The “exorbitant privilege” of the dollar, the ability to print the world’s reserve currency without consequence, is eroding in slow motion. The greenback’s share of global reserves has slipped toward 58 per cent, its lowest level in decades.

Washington didn’t stop the oil. It made itself optional to the transaction.

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The Greenland Gaffe and Europe’s Exit Strategy

Then came Greenland.

Midweek, the White House floated the idea that if Denmark didn’t want to sell the island, the United States might simply “administer” its mineral rights anyway, in the name of hemispheric security.

The Danes, usually as orderly as pickled herrings in a can with a key, told Washington to get forked.

Brussels followed by doubling down on its Strategic Autonomy agenda; redirecting hundreds of billions of euros into European defence procurement. French and German hardware. European supply chains. Who needs a partner of advanced years and declining faculties, who can act like a two-year-old.

The U.S. eyes off an icy rock it already has a 233,000 acre base on, and alienates its best customers.

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The Loyal Appendage: Australia Paddles On

As the world quietly steps back, who remains in the fabulous, unique and exceptional US canoe?

Australia.

Specifically, two of its keenest waiters: Joe Hockey and Scott Morrison. The Barbed-Wire Canoe Duo. It’s a win-win. Trump just loves arse-lickers. ScoMo and Joe just love sucking up to Trump.

There they sit, smiling for selfies, assuring Washington that the current is “robust” and “full of opportunity” as the water audibly accelerates. Hockey does Fox and all the Sundays, telling viewers working two shifts to pay rent and buy groceries, that if they can’t afford seven-dollar bread, they should get better jobs.

Morrison floats a “Freedom Credit” scheme that is a badly packaged payday loan for a declining empire.

Australia has mistaken proximity to power for influence, yet again, and is paddling frantically toward the lethal Niagara Falls while insisting its great and powerful friend will look after it.

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State of the Empire

If America were to deliver an honest State of the Union, it might sound like this:

My fellow Americans, I have alienated our allies, bloated our interest bill beyond reason, and turned our military into a subscription service. The nations we once led now ignore us, and our remaining friends are two blokes from Australia who think a budget crisis can be fixed with a slogan and a mug. Back in black?

Instead, the speech will be about winning. About greatness. About strength. But mostly about Trump.

Behind the podium, burly Latino repo men are quickly wheeling out the best bits of furniture.

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CODA: How Empires Actually End

Empires rarely fall to invasion. They fall to invoicing.

This one didn’t lose a war. It lost an Excel, colour-coded spreadsheet. With macros. It wasn’t defeated by an enemy armada, just a roomful of creditors who quietly stopped believing the story.

America once underwrote the world. Now it tells the world to underwrite it; and the answer, increasingly, is a polite but unmistakable no. Or as the Danes are doing, adding the odd fork to make the no stronger.

The American Century didn’t end with a bang or a whimper. It ended with a missed auction, a throttled signal, a frozen island too far, and two loyal Australians paddling gamely toward a fatal and inevitable drop they ignore at their peril.

The canoe is gone. The creek is gone. What remains is the debt, and the sound of water closing over a very loud, but, on the whole, not very surprised empire.

The Sunday Supplement is closed.
Grab your gold bars, your life jackets and any rare earths you may have kept handy.
It’s going to be a rough ride over the falls.