"But where?" No-bid contract money-pits, drug money, petro-dollars, money-laundering schemes, off-shore hidey-holes, safety-deposit boxes full of gold, numbered Swiss bank accounts, artificial money creation, the outrageous use of credit, Enron-style boondoggles.... If you add in all these shadow sources of revenue, NOW the booming U.S. economy makes sense." Holy sheep dookie. "That means that corruption and nepotism and crony-ism and bribes and embezzlement and money-laundering and drugs are holding our economy together!" The chicken nodded again.
"Since we stopped taxing the rich and 'offshore' corporations, the money hemorrhaging out of OUR wallets is only a drop in the bucket in staunching the flood of national debt. If the national economy was only financed by us measly taxpayers, this above-ground economy would be a train-wreck waiting to happen. Yet the underground economy of billionaires just keeps chugging happily along." The chicken agreed.
But wait. It gets worse. "If the dollar crashes tomorrow, none of the Bush bureaucrats will be effected. WE depend on the dollar. We would go belly-up. THEY depend on a shadow economy and the dollar's evil twin who they keep locked up somewhere in the Caymen Islands -- or in the new mega-embassy in Baghdad. They will be fine." The chicken squawked.
"But how did we Americans allow this to happen? How did we degenerate into a bunch of poor little match girls, standing in the snow and staring longingly through the window as the dollar's evil clones live high on the hog?" The chicken had no idea.
Then I thought of one of Whitney's other comments. "By collapsing the dollar, Bush can shift the wealth of the American middle class to corporate mandarins in the blink of an eye. Industry profits will soar while working class people drown in an ocean of red ink."
Then the chicken pooped on my foot.
1 | 2
