It is amazing how the media can be so intentionally blind as to why American ISIS hostage Kayla Mueller is dead. She is dead because the likes of  Sen. John McCain, Sen Lindsey Graham and President Obama funded terrorists that overthrew Qaddafi and who are currently trying to turn Syria over to Islamic extremists. Why? Because the same people who aided the Saudi pilots who started this whole 9/11 mess in 2001 want to control even more of that gas and oil rich region. Pres. Obama basked in the glory of the raid that allegedly took out Bin Laden and yet, Obama backed FSA Rebels who named their Brigade “Osama Bin Laden”.

As tragic as the death of young Kayla Mueller is, it is equally tragic when Obama backed rebels killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Christians and Jews in that region. If anyone wants to really honor Kayla Mueller demand that their members of Congress force the release of 28 classified pages of the 9/11 commission report implicating Saudi Arabia, our alleged ally in their role of the 9/11 attack. Both GW Bush and Barack Hussein Obama II have fought the release of this report.

Sincerely,

Joseph DuPont

Towanda, PA

Make no mistake about it, the US is skating on thin ice. This nation of plenty could turn overnight into the land of want. It all depends on a dictator and a Muslim one at that. If this monarch was to fall, our economy would crash-dive into a depression the likes of which are without historical precedent.

The paradox of how America, the land of the free, came to rely upon a totalitarian regime began shortly before the end of WW II.

At the conclusion of the second global war, the United States was the last man standing as was its currency. The rest of the world and their currencies were in shambles.

The process of reconstruction began in 1944. In Bretton Woods, a small town in New Hampshire, the 44 allied war nations attempted to reconstruct financial order from fiscal chaos. They chose the US dollar to be the world's reserve currency.

A reserve currency is the standard monetary unit used for international trade. The US pledged that the dollar could be traded “on demand” for gold or silver coin. Sound as a dollar became a byword.

But the only constant in this world is change and change the world dollar did.

As the industrial engines in Germany, Japan, and France, revved up in the '50s and '60s, there was less demand for dollars and more for Deutschmarks, yens, and francs. At the same time, spending for the Vietnam War was met by printing-press money and inflation.

Concerns about President Johnson's programs of warfare and welfare weakened faith in the dollar. A run to exchange green paper for yellow metal began. Soon the run became a stampede.

Fearing Fort Knox might become as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard, President Nixon slammed the vault door shut. That ended one problem only to be confronted with another more vexing dilemma.

How could the dollar remain the world's reserve currency without a gold backing? The answer was as simple as it was clever.

In 1973, the US struck a deal with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. Later the 13 other nations of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) joined the Saudis. The US promised to protect OPEC. In return, they agreed to price oil exclusively in dollars. The dollar was now backed by black gold. It became known as the petrodollar.

If a nation wanted to buy Mideast oil, it must do so with dollars. This created a worldwide demand for dollars. The dollar would remain as the world's reserve currency and the US could continue its unbridled spending for guns and butter.

In 1989 the inevitable happened, the US shifted from being a creditor nation to a debtor nation. But that was no problem. Other nations were eager to buy our IOUs, a.k.a., Treasury paper. But that, too, was changing.

Recently China and Japan, that respectively hold $1.3 trillion and $1.2 trillion in Treasury paper, have become increasingly uneasy about the US's debt now topping $18 trillion. The stability of the dollar and the bargain-basement rate of interest paid on their Treasury investments were becoming questionable. Will they and other nations continue to buy our IOUs so that we can continue to spend beyond our means?

And there's another problem.

Cracks are starting to appear in the petrodollar. Twenty-three nations have abandoned the petrodollar. They buy and sell oil in their own currencies. Among them is a powerful alliance called the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) which represents 18 percent of the world's economy. The US's share is 22 percent.

If the petrodollar buckles and dollars are no longer needed to buy OPEC oil, the world would be awash in 500 billion surplus dollars. Devalued dollars would cause the cost of cheap imports to takeoff like a Saturn V rocket. It would be the end of a 70-year joyride through a cornucopia of plenty.

But nothing lasts forever. The ruling empires of Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, France, and Britain, thought it would. It didn't. Now it's our turn at the helm.

As long as foreigners continue to buy our Treasuries and as long as the petrodollar survives, the joyride goes on. But nothing lasts forever.

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA