Posted on 03/01/2010 6:39:45 AM PST by shortstop
The other week, while you were watching “American Idol,” Greece went bankrupt.
Not all the way, but pretty close.
And people have been rioting in the streets.
See, the government had been financing things for years on end with debt. The government was taxing and spending, of course, but it was also borrowing. A lot. A staggering amount.
So much that the people who do the lending decided they’d had enough. Which left Greece insolvent. Which brought the economy to collapse.
Which created a crisis for the European Union and for its currency, the Euro.
Which made the world jittery.
Which endangered you.
But Germany and France bailed the Greeks out, so now you don’t have to worry anymore.
Except, of course, for the fact that the United States is in the same position. America is only a half a step behind Greece.
Our politicians are as stupid as theirs, our policies are as unsustainable as theirs, our peril is as great as theirs.
The simple fact is that the American economy can collapse at any moment, because of the suffocating load of federal-government debt. That is not a political opinion, it is not a talking point, it is not the ranting of an alarmist. It is a simple economic truth. We are living beyond our means and money does not grow on trees. The simple truths that govern family budgets apply as well to the affairs of nations.America is bankrupt.
And the only thing that keeps our entire economy from disintegrating is the fact that there are still people and nations who will loan us money. But as they increasingly realize that there is no honest way we can pay them back, their willingness to give us their money will evaporate.
And then we will riot in the streets.
Because our money will become valueless, the government trough will be empty, our jobs and savings will be lost, and we will go hungry.
In the end, nobody is too big to fail.
Not even us. Not even the United States.
And the current policies of the United States government, building on some 70 years of fiscal foolishness, destine the nation for failure.
Let me repeat: We are destined for failure.
It is not a question of if, it is a question of when.
Unless a dramatic and painful sea change is made, our financial doom is certain.
Here’s why.
Our annual budget deficit for the foreseeable future is in excess of a trillion dollars. More than a trillion dollars of new borrowing every year.
On top of the other trillions we’ve already borrowed.
That poses two immediate threats.The first is that our creditors will recognize that we are a bad risk – that we are sub prime. That will hurt our credit rating and, consequently, increase the interest we have to pay.
That’s kind of what happened to the Greeks. It would be devastating to us, as the cost of government – already unsustainable – would jump dramatically.
Which would come out of our hide.
The other threat is that the government will try to cheat its way out of debt. It is called monetizing the debt. The government can simply print more money and make its payments that way.
Doing so, however, would cause inflation. That would be good for the government, as it would be paying debt with devalued dollars. It would be terrible for us, because the true value of our paychecks, investments and savings would plummet.It would force an overlay of poverty upon the nation, devaluing not only possessions but dramatically lowering lifestyles.
We would all be poor.
Our economy would not work.
Our prosperity, our security, our freedom and even our existence would be jeopardized.
It’s not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of natural law. You can’t spend what you don’t have, and if you try, it’ll come back to bite you.
We’re about to get bitten.And neither we nor our politicians have the stomach for the austerity necessary to avert catastrophe.
On the contrary, our dependent class demands more, our politicians want to spend more, our greed lusts for more. Our culture has become drunken on entitlement and government beneficence.
At first, politicians promised beyond their means because they knew they wouldn’t be around to pay the bill and clean up the mess. Now, it seems, they promise beyond our means because the want to hasten and benefit from the ultimate collapse.
And so they promise more benefits and take over more of the economy, further enmeshing the nation’s wealth in their failed and immoral policies.
That will soon end – either by our wiser choices, or by our nation’s economic collapse.
Welfare and entitlement programs must be gutted or scrapped. All citizens must be brought into the shared burden of income taxation. We must return to the understanding that the only American entitlements are those listed in the Bill of Rights. Politicians must stop bringing home the bacon, and realize that they never should have taken it away from there in the first place.
The government must get its hands and its snout out of the economy.
Or it will kill the economy.
Something which, as the Greeks could tell us, is horrifyingly close to happening.
And that’s what they’ve had a hard on for for 10 forevers.
>> The other week, while you were watching “American Idol,” Greece went bankrupt.
Its always good to start off with an insult aimed at your readers.
SnakeDoc
The truth hurts.
Ping.
Yep! Today's prostitution of our economy to support the current federal reserve won't be anything compared to the IMF/Soros Cabal.
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Howdy, norraad! How ya doin', Hon?
Repeal, Repeal, Overturn, Overturn ... the entire 'progressive' agenda heaped upon America for the last 100 years, starting with Amendment XVI.
This isn’t about Obama....
It is about the overall decline in America and its values. It is about socialism, the belief that government is supposed to take care or everyone and that you can put wars on the credit card.
Obama reflects the ills of society, nothing more, nothing less.
He speaks the truth though. Most people in America know a ton about pop and sports culture and know very little about what is going on around them that will spell their doom.
Says it all.
Unfortunately, there are still too many - including prominent Republicans - who insist that Obama is acting in good faith toward the nation. Those who believe that Obama is tearing down the nation to build a new one as a lib-left-socialist-progressive utopia, are accused by the “mainstream” Republicans as alarmists and/or kooks. How quickly they’ve forgotten Obama’s own words from the election:
“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” ~ Barack Hussein Obama, Missouri, October 30, 2008
Those who ignore Obama’s promise are the same ones who don’t believe Iran’s Ahmadinejad, when he says he wants to destroy Israel. They are wrong on both counts.
Again--what would he gain from that? He's already got a lot of control over the current system. He's got wealth in any currency he chooses.
I still don't see where he'd gain if we all just started over.
Not just him.....
Answer me this-
If someone borrowed [and agreed to pay back later] a LOT of something from someone else, what happens when that payback time rolls around but that something that was borrowed no longer exists?
He lost me right there. I'm not sure the folks who finance this abomination care whether they are paid back in a "honest way". They are buying slaves and they know it.
Is there anyone out there who doesn't believe that Obama is purposefully and systematically destroying our country?
Precisely! It's the 21st century slave trade.
bump
I don’t. I wish that Limbaugh would get off of that stupid talking point. It makes him sound like a truther or Roswell adherent. Obama sincerely believes that socialism will work, if given good intentions and performance. But he is a half-bright character like many highly-educated people that I personally know: misguided and not WELL-educated in business experience.
If it gets that bad we won’t be paying taxes.
Wheat, beans, rice, canned soup/meat, rifles, bullets, medical supplies -
these don’t “inflate”.
That's not technically impossible, but highly improbable given Congress' refusal to cut spending. To the contrary; they wish to increase it dramatically. The mathematics involved at this point is daunting, even if Federal spending and interest rates were frozen at current levels, neither of which is going to happen.
As an example: for GDP to double (from approx. $14T to $28T), it would need to grow at 6% annualized for 14 years... which ain't happening. The national debt, assuming a ridiculously low fixed interest rate of 3% over the same period would increase by 42% (adding more than $5T in new debt). But, only a small percentage of GDP growth could possibly be applied to reduce the debt... which still does not include the unfunded mandates of SocSec, Medicare & Medicaid (to the tune of $107.6T and growing very, very fast).
We might yet be able to use Zimbabwean-style inflation to reduce the future value of our current obligations, but that tends not to work out real well for the average Joe and Joanne...
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