Here Thar Be Monsters!

From the other side of the argument to the other side of the planet, read in over 149 countries and 17 languages. We bring you news and opinion with an IndoTex® flavor. Be sure to check out the Home Site. Send thoughts and comments to bernard atradiofarside.com, and tell all your friends. Note comments on this site are moderated to remove spam. Sampai jumpa, y'all.

17.2.11

American Idle

It's official. America is now bankrupt. There can be no equivocation or hem-haws about it. The country now owes its entire annual output of all goods and services from all people and machines and factories to the banksters.

On top of that, Obama has the audasity to submit a $3.6 TRILLION federal budget for the coming year, beginning in September. Hey BUDDY! There probably won't be a country to run come September!

Let's see here...300 million people, divided into 3.6 trillion dollars, comes out to $12,000 per person, working or not, or just sucking up resources as a government employee. In other words, Banny wants HALF of the average working American's annual income to run the federal government for ONE FREAKIN' YEAR!

Quick! Run to the kitchen, grab a glass and fill it with sodium fluoride sludge and slam it! Because any red-blooded, thinking, non-pacified human being would be outraged, not to mention scared to death, just about now.

Over on the US Debt Clock, which is a sobering site to see, we notice that the entire unfunded liabilities of the US federal government is over $112 TRILLION! Let that sink in for a minute. According to their calculations, which on a bad day are bound to be better than my best days, the average American is on the hook for over ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

According to the Census Bureau, the average American (that works) can expect to earn a little over $1 million in their LIFETIME.

So, to sum up a bit, the US National Debt is now equal to the sum total output of the nation's economy in one year, PLUS folks are on the hook for another million or so to fund Social Security, Welfare, Medicare/Medicaid, etc.

As far as I can tell, and I'm no economist, but it looks like there is absolutely no wealth left in America. It's all officially debt, and you and I don't have a gnat's ass of a chance to get out of hock, at least through the end of our kids' lifetimes.

Do you feel an Egyptian night out coming on yet? No? Then let's keep going shall we?

About a dozen states are on the ropes, financially. Forclosures are running at record highs with more and more folks getting upside-down on their mortgages. Jobs are vanishing and the Bone-heads in CONgress hear from the Fed Chairman that they won't be coming back, at least any time soon. Food and energy prices are soaring with nothing but more bad news on that front. And there's a couple of wars, with more in the wings, to pay for, as well.

There is no way this is sustainable. You can stick your head in the ground. You can deny and obfuscate. You can rant and rave about 'America, love it of leave it.' You can't change the debt. Piles, mounds, scads, and oodles of debt.

The only way to pay it off is to print more money, which since that's controlled by a private corporation, the money would have to be borrowed to pay the debt, which is akin to getting a new credit card to roll over your old ones. And that's all fine and good for some amount of time (granted it's gone on for YEARS now), but at some point, debt must be paid of repudiated. When that time comes, there will be hell to pay, one way or another.

It will either cause massive inflation, as in Zimbabwe or Argentina, or it will cause depression, the likes of which would make the former Great Depression look like fun. The only other option is that every man, woman and child work for one year without pay, so that the debt can be brought down to something more reasonable, which is unreasonable.

Sure, you can say, "It can't happen here! This is America!" Yeah, they said that in Rome, they said it just before the fall of the Byzantine Empire, they said it before the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It all goes away at some point. Empires are unsustainable.

Eventually, all empires must expend so many resorces, to project power to maintain the level of fear necessary to hold empires together, that they crumble under the weight of their own glory. What normally happens is that empires face challenges on multiple fronts, and so must split their energy. This process leaves the core unprotected and vulnerable. It then only takes the flick of a finger and the whole thing collapes overnight.

Citizens of the USSR went to bed one night in one country, and woke up the next day in another. It's that fast. The Visigoths and Vandals sacked Rome in a week. Oh sure, people spoke Latin for another 1,750 years, but the empire was long gone by the time the language died. Egypt changed in 18 days. Tunisia took even less time to crumble.

It's going to happen to America. I know that's really hard to comprehend, but the empire will die and something else will replace it. It will happen, whether you like it or not. The writing is on the wall, or at least on the balance sheet. The country has dug itself a massive grave in the ground of debt. ONE MILLION DOLLARS PER MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD.

There's no way out of it.

Already, the Vandals are at the gate (Chinese). America's bonds are losing their investment grade status, while countries like Indonesia are about to gain that status. The vultures are circling waiting to pick up the juicy bits before the carcass gets full of maggots.

Can't happen, you say? It already is.

A $3.5 trillion federal budget is a dream. It can't happen. You are looking at the end of empire in that one bill. Lopping off a hundred billion here and there, as the Tea Partiers are singing about doesn't even begin to solve the problem. There's no wealth left. There's nothing to pay for it. Even Ron Paul can't pull this crate out of its death spin.

I could be wrong, but I'm usually not. I've read enough history, studied enough economics and pondered the trends to great length. Short of discovering an asteroid made of gold and bringing it home tomorrow, there's no solution but to dissolve the federal government, repudiate the debt and let the States fend for themselves.

The odds favor the prepared mind. The time for preparing is fast fading in the rearview mirror.

To borrow another metaphor, the king is in check and there's only one move left. But after that move, it's checkmate. From out here, we can see the whole board, and it looks pretty grim. From what I can see, the only move remaining is to seceed from the Union, and the free States form a new order of things. It won't solve the problems, but it will sure slow the impact a little.

And thos corporations that are going transnational? They're just the rats jumping ship. The wise boater will follow them while there's still lifevests available.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Feel free to leave your own view of The Far Side.