How to Ruin the U.S. Economy

1) Have a fiscal policy that creates immense deficits in good times and bad, burdening America's posterity with staggering burdens of repaying the debt.

3) Have an energy policy that disallows producing our own energy and instead requires that we buy energy from abroad, thus making our oil prices highly volatile and creating large balance of payments deficits, lowering the value of the dollar and thus making the problem get progressively worse. 4) Have Congress mandate that banks and other financial entities lend money to persons they know in advance to have poor credit ratings or none at all.

8) Appoint as head of the United States Treasury Department a man whose whole life was spent on Wall Street, who became fantastically rich through his peddling of junk bonds at his firm while the firm later sold short those same sorts of bonds.

10) Propose to save the situation by surtaxing the oil industry, which is owned by our fellow Americans, mostly in their retirement plans, thus penalizing Americans for investing in companies that efficiently and legally produce an indispensable product. 11) Insist that the free market requires that banks and insurers with friends of the Secretary of the Treasury be saved but allow other entities not so fortunate to fail, thus creating total uncertainty and terror among financial institutions, and demolishing all of the confidence built up in financial circles since FDR. 12) Then have the Republican candidate say he would keep on the job the Treasury Secretary who facilitated the crisis, failed to protect the nation from the crisis, got the taxpayers to pony up to save his Wall Street buddies, and have the Democratic candidate, as noted, say he would save the day by taxing the stockholders of energy companies. There, that should do it.

Some of us have been ATTEMPTING to curtail this MADNESS on the part of the government for many years.

Sadly, over the years, the madness metastasized into the private sector with derivatives of derivatives and too many totally ephemeral and whacked out so-called “investment” and “credit” instruments to list them all. It was SO far out of control that a number of the top economic minds in the country admitted that even THEY didn’t understand them.

Then there was the idiotic move by Congress to FORCE lenders to make loans to manifestly unqualified borrowers, turning their quest for the “American Dream” of home ownership into their – and OUR – unfolding national nightmare. And THESE morons want the same government to take over HEALTH CARE?

But what the “Masters of the Universe” in the private sector failed to realize is that the GOVERNMENT has the printing press to bail THEM out. If they tried it, they’d be arrested for counterfeiting. The feds HATE competition!

Unfortunately, not many others felt any of this government and private sector insanity was – or would become – a serious problem. I can’t count how many LAUGHED at us during that period. Many of them right here at Free Republic (and you know who you are). Most of them have STOPPED LAUGHING!

And so the sheep will again be sheared.

Trust me, it is NOW A SERIOUS PROBLEM, one even the feds may not be able to print their way out of this time.

It is ALWAYS what happens when man – or SOME MEN – play god with the immutable laws of nature and economics. History teaches that they do so at great peril – and they ALWAYS fail. Insanity is doing the same things over and over while expecting a different result. Since these scams are always zero sum games, you have to wonder who wound up with all that dough. I sure didn’t get any of it.

What saddens me most is that – on the government side, at least — Newt either squandered or let slip HIS chance to get a grip on it. And, no, I’m NOT picking on Newt. Tales of “RICHES FOR ALL” from these cockamamie financial schemes lured many of US into the game as well.

In this 2 minute clip, he seems to be trying to tell us that he took a shot at it. (You’ll hear the audience groan as he does so. Some of the folks in the very conservative area didn’t believe him.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIo8FJJMps8

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