Kalk,
Excellent commentary. Thank you. We are wasting our time with Met; he is a conspiracy theorist with an obsession and desire for the end of the Western (primarily US) military and economic system. "Debating" with Met is pointless. He ignores facts and prefers factoids and badly researched and written articles which support and confirm his biases. The next time he posts on these topics I'm simply going to post "Met's greatest hits." A research of his OPs shows an obsession with E.T., aliens, UFOs, conspiracy theories and the soon-to-occur downfall of the US/Western miltary and economic power.
It takes about five minutes of surfing on the 'Net to find his Libertarian and Conspiracy Theorist sources. Ultimately this is about one thing: Met's immature, narcissistic obsession to be proven 'right.' Admitting he knows nothing about global/macro economic theory and practical application and global/military/political strategy would be too simple. But it's the world wide web; there are dumbass views continuously poured into it, and any dumbass viewpoint will quickly collect a den of like-minded dumbass followers. I've asked him several times to conduct a 360 degree study of these topics, but he always does the same thing - gets shot down in the OP only to return a few weeks later with what he thinks is a 'gotcha' article or viewpoint. It has become a Lady Gaga Bad Romance.
I avoid OPs where I am not an SME or can provide significantly to the discussion. If he could only do the same, the intelligence level of this site would improve immediately.