Sunday, July 02, 2006


DOOMED?

"A clear picture emerges of a government completely out of control. The blue line is the history of the U.S. Federal Government debt. The green line shows the path we are now on, with debt soaring to impossible levels against projected GDP. Importantly, the source isn't some crazy hand-waving blogger [sic this!]: these are the government's own projections--and we all know they have every incentive to accent the positive. If this is the best they can do at this point, then you know things are not just bad, they are calamitous.

This glimpse at the future clearly shows that the debt of the U.S. will, in the foreseeable future, go from being a troubling yet manageable fraction of the economy to being several times the size of [the] economy. That can't happen without serious repercussions.

The government will be spending money they don't have, which means creating more of it out of thin air and diluting the value of all the dollars that came before.

The government is closer to bankruptcy than anyone who has not studied the situation can guess. You will hear government apologists claim that the government can't go bankrupt because they are the government, and along with a complicit Federal Reserve, they can meet any debt obligation because they have the printing press. That is precisely the problem. They can print any amount of money they want. That has been theoretically possible since we went off the gold standard in 1971.

It is this loss of any constraint on government spending that has let the genie out of the bottle. The track is now laid. The long-term future of the dollar is not in question. And to the extent that it is the basis of all other currencies, the reserve currency of the world's central banks, all currencies are doomed."

Might as well stock up on some good wines...

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Interesting afterlink: Is Cheney Betting on Economic Collapse? (Tax free, too!)

4 comments:

Maya's Granny said...

Our grandchildren are being turned into indentured servants and there seems to be no way to turn the red tide from racing up the shore and overcoming us all.

Robert Brady said...

Integrity will prevail.

Anonymous said...

...so much for the concept of a blind trust into which public officials place their financial affairs when entering into public office. The MSM will leak anything these days if it paints a Republican in a questionable light.

Robert Brady said...

Democracy in action always makes some folks uncomfortable. Frist had a blind trust too, and we know where that went. Kiplinger's Personal Finance and the Palm Beach Post are hardly MSM. Google-News "Cheney portfolio" and it's hardly mentioned (esp. in the US). Bet you don't see anything about it on US mainstream tv. For a simple comparison of MSM in-depth coverage of financial shenanigans, see Clinton+Whitewater vs. BothBushes+Enron. This isn't about Republicans or Democrats, it's about malfeasance at the highest levels of government. It happens to be mostly Repubs at the moment; it may go the other way some day, and honest folk will jump on that too, if it happens. That's what genuine democracy allows.