Posted on 10/02/2008 3:57:25 AM PDT by Kaslin
Ancient thinkers from Thucydides to Cicero insisted that money was the real source of military power and national influence. We've been reminded of that classical wisdom these last three weeks.
In a manner not seen since the Great Depression, Wall Street went into panic mode from too many bad debts. The symbolic pillars of American monetary strength for years - AIG, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Shearson-Lehman and Washington Mutual - in a matter of hours either went broke, were absorbed or were reconstituted. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed like the house of cards that they were.
Even though the U.S. government rushed to restore trust, hundreds of billions of dollars in paper assets simply vanished. Friends and enemies abroad were unsure whether the irregular American heartbeat was a major coronary or a mere cardiac murmur. How strong really was the world's greatest economy? Was this panic the tab for years of borrowing abroad for out-of-control consumer spending? Had America finally gone too far enriching dictators by buying energy that it either could not or would not produce itself? Had the chickens of lavishing rewards on Wall Street and Washington speculators rather than Main Street producers finally come home to roost? Allies trust that the United States is the ultimate guarantor of free communication and commerce - and they want immediate reassurance that their old America will still be there. In contrast, opportunistic predators - such as rogue oil-rich regimes - suddenly sniff new openings. We've seen the connection between American economic crisis and world upheaval before. In the 1930s, the United States and its democratic allies, in the midst of financial collapse, disarmed and largely withdrew from foreign affairs. That isolation allowed totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia to swallow their smaller neighbors and replace the rule of law with that of the jungle. World War II followed. During the stagflation and economic malaise of the Jimmy Carter years, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, the Iranians stormed our embassy in Tehran, the communists sought to spread influence in Central America and a holocaust raged unchecked in Cambodia. It was no surprise that an emboldened Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once again last week called for the elimination of Israel. He's done that several times before. But rarely has he felt brazen enough to blame world financial problems on the Jews in general rather than on just Israelis. And he spouted his Hitlerian hatred in front of the United Nations General Assembly - in New York, just a few blocks away from the ground zero of the Wall Street meltdown. Flush with petrodollar cash, a cocky Iran thinks our government will be so sidetracked borrowing money for Wall Street that disheartened taxpayers won't care to stop Tehran from going nuclear. At about the same time, a Russian flotilla was off Venezuela to announce new cooperation with the loud anti-American Hugo Chavez and his fellow Latin American communists. The move was a poke in the eye at the Monroe Doctrine - and a warning that from now on the oil-rich Russians will boldly support dictatorships in our hemisphere as much as we encourage democratic Georgia and Ukraine in theirs. Chavez himself called for a revolution in the United States to replace our "capitalist" Constitution. The lunatics running North Korea predictably smelled blood as well. So it announced that it was reversing course and reprocessing fuel rods to restart its supposedly dismantled nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, some shell-shocked American bankers looked to our "friend" China, which holds billions in American government securities, for emergency loans. But the Chinese - basking in their successful hosting of the Olympics, their first foray into outer space, and a massive rearmament - showed no interest in sending cash to reeling Wall Street firms. During this Wall Street arrhythmia, Islamic suicide bombers attacked the American embassy in Yemen and the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan. Suspected Islamic terrorists were caught boarding a Dutch airliner in Germany. And suicide bombers were busy again in Afghanistan and Iraq. The natural order of the world is chaos, not calm. Like it or not, for over a half-century the United States alone restrained nuclear bullies, kept the sea lanes free from outlaws and corralled rogue nations. America alone could provide that deterrence because we produced a fourth of the world's goods and services, and became the richest country in the history of civilization. But the bill for years of massive borrowing for oil, for imported consumer goods and for speculation has now has finally come due on Wall Street - and for the rest of us as well. Should that heart of American financial power in New York falter - or even appear to falter - then eventually the sinews of the American military will likewise slacken. And then things could get ugly - real fast
Millions for defense! Not one cent for paragraph tags...
Good article.
VDH get’s it in a BIG way.
Crickets chirping in the background...
If it's anything more profound, you'll have to elaborate.
There is no longer any doubt that they intend to distroy us by destroying the moral essence of the country. I have kept the following quote for many years:
“Adversity employs great talents; prosperity renders them useless and carries the inept, the corrupted wealthy and the wicked to the top.
May they bear in mind that virtue often contains the seeds of tyranny. May they bear in mind that it is neither gold nor even a multitude of arms that sustains a state, but its morals.
May each of them keep in his house, in a corner of this field, next to his workbench, next to his plow, his gun, his sword, and his bayonet. May they all be soldiers.
May they bear in mind that in circumstances where deliberation is possible, the advice of old men is good, but that in moments of crisis youth is generally better informed that its elders.”
Denis Diderot
Apostrophe to the Insurgents, 1782
Note:
1)Imported goods
2)Bill finally due
Albeit, the meddling of the government has hastened or exacerbated the current crisis.
Much like the "bill" for for the energy crisis is the result of decades of governmental neglect of domestic exploration/production. And when do you think the "bill" will come due for the following?
Before approving a massive financial bailout package Wednesday, the Senate attached language that would hit the oil and gas companies up for higher taxes to help fund tax credits for renewable energy and other tax breaks.The point is that you can't blame free-market economics for the sub-prime debacle (unless you're a Democrat), just as you can't blame it on me for buying imported beer. Nice try, though.
[]
The legislation would freeze the tax deduction oil and gas companies receive for their domestic manufacturing operations at 6 percent, while other American manufacturers will see that deduction rise to 9 percent in 2010.
Houston Chronicle, Package includes bite out of oil industry, October 1, 2008.
We have to send our dollars to countries who don't have our best interests in mind because we won't exploit the trillions of barrels of oil that exist on our own soil. Whose fault is that?
The government forces lenders to finance homes for deadbeats who will never be able to repay the loans and then demand the taxpayers bail them out when the worst occurs. Whose fault is that?
Now, as usual for you, you demand more government intervention to create a "level playing field" (like that ever exist anywhere) to appease your belief that America can't compete with the third-world. You've learned nothing from all of this and continue to do what you do best: whine. Will you be voting for change and hope in November? Maybe "The ONE" can protect you from the competition you fear so much.
I can’t read an article without paragraphs.
As far as I can tell, Mr. Hammer is against the bailout.
Ok. But he’s against the freedom to trade and has argued here for as long as I can remember that we need protectionism to save our economy. Who implements economic protection? Yes, that’s right, the fedgov. The same people who got us into the financial mess we find ourselves today. Hammer is against government intervention to stabilize our financial system but will be the first to demand government tariffs and quotas to protect American industry from competition. As if the fedgov can make life fair. I can’t think of one example of a level playing field. That’s because it doesn’t exist. I’m simply pointing out the hypocrisy.
Gotcha. I guess I’m just a freaky libertarian who opposes all of that as well as the bailout. A lot of people like to talk the talk when it comes to “free markets”, but I like to think folks like me walk the walk.
Gotcha? I have no idea what you’re talking about. You must be assuming facts not in evidence. Whatever makes you feel better about yourself.
You're totally misunderstanding. By "gotcha", I meant, "understood". I was just acknowledging the points you made in the previous post.
That’s the point, though: what sort of a person, when casting-about to find blame for the mess we find ourselves in, focuses on economic liberty as the cause? Who sees regulation as the cure for regulation? Think about that for a minute.
A confused person
Who sees regulation as the cure for regulation?
It seems like everyone but me sometimes. One one hand, you have people that want to tariff and regulate the hell out of everything, and then on the other hand, you've got people who support the bailout who are deluding themselves if they think that won't cause more regulation. And then you've got people like me who are considered libertarian kooks by all of the above for not wanting any of it. Go figure.
A liberal. Same thing. LOL!
And then you've got people like me who are considered libertarian kooks by all of the above for not wanting any of it.
I didn't want any of it (Fannie, Freddie, CRA, etc) either. But now, unfortunately, we need to do something. They'll f*** it up, because that's what Congress does, but I think the alternative could be worse.
Term limits, now! I wonder, are term limits okay with libertarians?
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