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.
It is unlikely to be true about anyone that would be reading this article ... it was a shot at his readers (”you”), not the general public.
SnakeDoc
I don’t understand your optimism. Modern Americans are not like past ones. Too many of them have been conditioned by the media to demand a government paycheck or subsidy. Whole farms states, populated with otherwise personally responsible people, live on subsidies. In addition, there have been two generations who have lived in the credit card era, a shocking cultural transformation from the time when I was a younger person instilled with thrift.
There is a litmus test for when you will recognize that a U-turn is in progress: Republicans will honestly be calling for severe cuts in Federal outlays, and not just nibbling.
I have one thing to say about that: don’t hold your breath.
Great post. Anyone who can do a spreadsheet knows that the numerical obstacle is just about impossible to surmount. In fact, given the sorry state of the citizenship, I will declare that it IS impossible.
Great.
:(
LOL.. He is an old man who will be dying soon. What is he going to do with all his wealth? Take it with him in his casket!
My 5th grader has been dumbed down tremendously by government provided skewls. Get a bad grade? Take the test again. Want a good score on Standards of Learning? Test the kids all year long on the same stuff they will see on SOLs. Homework? If she gets 30 minutes a night then that’s something. When I ask her to think through something she claims that the teachers don’t force them to do it in a way that requires effort. Year after year of learning about the Virginia native population and topography but you can forget math, financial basics or civics.
It’s like this everywhere. Meanwhile all the Indian and Paki families have their kids at Kumon on the weekends to max out the learning potential so they can get ahead.
The problem I see is that no matter what you do to prepare yourself and your family for the SHTF, you still have to be able to defend your supplies from the mobs. There is no practical way to do that on your own. If you live with a day’s walk of a large city, forget all the normal rules of civilization. The “entitled” will pour out like a wave of army ants devouring all in their path and your careful preparation will be swept away. Whoever is left will best be served by a fuedal system.
Laugh if you will, but the best scenario analogy may be a zombie infestation. Large hungry mobs roaming aimlessly only looking to bite.
It’s not dying that’s going to happen, only relative impoverishment. When national income is growing at 1-2% and the debt is growing at 8-10% annually, the divergence between the two graphs has reached runaway proportions. What if YOU were getting 1% raises and your spouse was racking up credit card bills by 10% annually, how long would you last financially? You wouldn’t die immediately, but you would feel like killing someone probably. And not just your creditors that are forsaking you.
How long are you going to let that go on?
Consult your local homeschool association for help.
Homeschooling is not an option
The personalities involved would result in mass destruction!
Is there anyone out there who doesn’t believe that Obama is purposefully and systematically destroying our country?
Yes but in this morning’s headlines George Soros is dumping on him, so apparently he sucks at that as well.
You can make a lot of money shorting currencies...especially if they go to zero.
Soros has made his fortune betting against world currencies, to the point I think he manipulates the currency markets.
The president and congress alone cannot do that. Even if every branch of the fedgov was on board it still couldn’t be done without THE most important piece. The citizens must be willing to go through it. I will bet you real money that the socialsts in academics and the media will make sure that a significant portion of the population is fearful enough of the needed changes to riot in the streets.
Soros made his money from shorting currencies.
He also has stated that the road to global governance is through global currency.
We all gwonna surely die, but some us gwonna die awake and fightin’.
I agree with whoever said what a great post/thread this is, and thanks as well to whomever for that great link to the Preparedness Capability Checklist - very well thought out.
Toilet paper? I’m ready for the first of the month sale at my local grocery store.
Only the good die young. You will live forever.
So I will agree there is a possibility that he is a complete stooge of someone like George Soros and is being told to do a series of disasterous things to destroy our nation. It's possible, but like I say, I think the simpler answer is the better fit.
But, I keep reading and looking for new evidence either way.
Will I be hitting it, forever, enshrined by the stars and perpetually in motion?
Where do you get the IV supplies?
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