A lot of rubbish has been written lately about “religious faith”. The fact is, there’s a force that’s more powerful than faith; the power of denial. America is drowning in denial. Most people would rather keep their heads stuck in the sand than face the disaster right before their eyes.
Congress just voted to spend another $92 billion for a war that nobody wants and, yet, we don’t hear a whimper of protest from the people. They’ve raised the national debt to a whopping $9 trillion, every penny of which will be paid off by our children and their children’s children. They’ll be indentured servants until the end of time.
Do the American people care? No way; a few soothing bromides from our doltish president and they’re lulled back to sleep.
It’s called “denial”. D-E-N-I-A-L.
Maybe you’ve already figured out that the Bush administration is fudging the numbers to make them look good? You’re right. Walter J. Williams (Dartmouth, BA in Economics and an MBA; economic consultant for Fortune 500 companies) has compiled the data and found that “real unemployment is running at 12%, real CPI (Consumer Price Index) is running at 8%, and real GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is in contraction. The country is already in a recession and headed for much worse.
No one with any sense believes this can go on forever. The administration has racked up another $3 trillion in debt in just 6 years most of it going to Bush’s well-heeled friends via the “tax cuts”. At the same time, they’ve expanded government spending by 30% while making the tax cuts “permanent” even though they know that it will increase deficits by $400 to 500 billion per year. Deficit spending has become a permanent function of government.
The only thing that keeps interest rates from skyrocketing is the massive and “unsustainable” trade deficit.
When Reagan initiated his tax cuts he produced deficits of $200 billion the first year. That pushed interest rates up to 9.5% killing the real estate market and causing the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Greenspan bailed him out by raising Social Security payments and then diverting that new money into the general fund. (SS has basically been a Flat Tax ever since) That’s right; our Social Security dollars now pay for roads, social programs, and endless war.
Last year the trade deficit soared to a new high of $725 Billion and is headed for $800 billion this year. Foreign countries now hold so much of our debt that Dubai can afford to buy our ports and China can snatch up Fannie Mae. China alone has an $800 billion account surplus; 75% of which is US debt and securities.
The Bush team likes this arrangement because it fits with their belief that national sovereignty should be transferred to the multinational corporations. As for the rest of us , who think that our ports, public lands, water, and resources should be the sovereign property of the people of the US, well, we’re out of luck, because $3 trillion worth of those assets now belong to China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia.
The other reason the American people haven’t felt the pinch of excessive government spending yet, is because of the unique relationship between the greenback and the sale of oil on the global market. Countries are forced to keep stockpiles of US currency in their central banks because oil is only denominated in dollars. This creates a de-facto monopoly which ensures that dollars will continue to circulate on a massive scale whether the face value of the greenback goes up or down. (It is estimated that approximately $2.3 trillion are constantly circulated in oil transactions) It is the perfect confidence-game run by the hucksters at the Federal Reserve.
Most countries would prefer to purchase oil in their own currency (or in the more stable euro) rather than using the greenback which is buckling beneath $9 trillion of debt. Regrettably, any move to the euro is tantamount to a declaration of war against the United States and bound to invite “shock and awe-type” reprisals.
Washington will defend the “greenback-hegemony” with every weapon in its arsenal. That’s why Iran is in the crosshairs right now, because the threat of opening an oil exchange (that would trade in euros) would challenge the dollar’s dominance as the world’s reserve currency. The Bush administration will never let that happen. An Iran Bourse would allow the central banks around the world to ship boatloads of unwanted dollars back to America and put the greenback into a death-spiral.
America’s economic future requires that we continue to control this “global extortion-racket” while producing humongous trade deficits which are mortgaging our country to foreign lenders.
There’s only one problem with this scheme; the American consumer is broke. Wages have been flat since the 1970s (in fact they have gone down by 2.3% since Bush took office) personal savings are at 0%, and housing prices (which generated $600 billion in additional spending last year) have flattened out. The American consumer represents 70% of GDP and has also been the major engine for growth in the global economy. Unfortunately, he’s “tapped out”, overextended and penniless.
That explains why so many corporations are packing up and headed for more promising markets in Southeast Asia. Hell, the Bush administration has even created tax incentives for them to leave.
The corporate exodus from America is not simply about high-paying, high-tech jobs leaving the country. It is also about the massive flight of capital and the destruction of the manufacturing sector. Right now, the only thing that keeps the US on its precipice is the teetering housing market which is headed for the dumpster. When the bubble bursts, we’ll see why Bush devoted so much time to building his police-state apparatus.
Under Bush, we’ve seen a shocking acceleration of globalization. The major corporations have already loaded the boats, shifted the jobs, and drained every farthing from the public till. The Federal Reserve has cobbled together a dollar-system that allows them to print worthless script in exchange for the wealth and resources of foreign nations. It’s a plan that addresses the needs of America’s plutocrats and big-wigs, but leaves 99% of the people to fend for themselves while facing increasing scarcity and hardship.
This is why we fight; to defend this system of corporate larceny and extortion. This is the “noble cause” for which Casey Sheehan and thousands of others have given their lives.
Isn’t it time we pulled our heads out of the sand?
Mike is a freelance writer living in Washington state.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
In July I will be 85 if I live that long and never in my life have I felt more like Lewis Caroll’s Alice as she stepped into the mirror and entered Wonderland. It is not just that the corporations stole an election and gave us a mental defective for a president. It is a population that, pro or con, accepts the absurd idea that we are at war in Iraq. Even the bloody battles in Korea against Chinese and North Korean tanks was called a “police action”. The bloody attack shown to the world on television and proudly called “Shock and Awe” was done without any declaration of war. The present illegal occupation of Iraq is called a war and the moronic president is assuming all of the powers, and more, of a wartime president while Congress refuses his challenge to the Constitution. There have been other illegal incursions and undeclared wars, Vietnam for example; but at least they were fighting a well organized military organization.
Another example of Wonderland’s juggling of semantics is calling Iraqis who are resisting the occupation and punishing collaborators “insurgents”. When Boston and Philadelphia was occupied by British Redcoats and France was occupied by the Nazis we did not call those heroes who fought in the underground insurgents; we called them patriots. Everyone from the war lovers to the peaceniks preface their remarks with “Our brave troops” completely disregarding the reality that they are fighting civilians with AK-47s and no body armor with helicopter gunships and fighter planes. These are highly paid mercenaries promised college educations who do not have to dig slit trenches or do KP. When they come back in coffins or wheelchairs and with post traumatic stress syndrome even they are betrayed by this government run by our sociopath mad hatter president.
On the other side of the looking glass the country of the slithy sloves is nine trillion dollars in debt. Over half of our tax money goes to the military industrial complex and we have twelve aircraft carrier groups roaming the oceans when there is no possible adversary. Our kindly Jimmy Carter, (peace nobelist) has proudly helped launch another nuclear submarine called, what else?, The Jimmy Carter. The war on terror desperately needs these weapons because if they happen to run across a terrorist they have to nuke him or her. Like the westerner sentenced by Roy Bean to be hung: “This will sure be a lesson to me judge.”
When I was a teen-ager my father sarcastically said that “everyone else is crazy except you”. That was seventy years ago and I am even more convinced that is the case. After WWII I saw a psychiatrist for what is now called post traumatic stress syndrome. I quit him with the words: I don’t want to be adjusted to live in a world that is obviously crazier than I am. You do not have to look far to confirm my opinion. The headlines in this mornings paper should convince anyone.
FBI terror boss never read Moussaoui memo, Patent case poses broader question for Supreme Court, Abu Ghraib dog handler guilty of tormenting, Documents reveal Hussein tried in ‘90s to show WMDs gone, Bush says presence in Iraq will outlast his presidency, Conservatives get a turn at federal grants under Bush, False negatives seen in widely used genetic test for breast cancer risk, bottled water slaking thirst of world’s poor, court overturns conviction in stolen rock art case. Chemcal plants may decide own security, Iraqi official, paid by CIA raised questions on weapons program, the only reason I get the newspaper is for the New York Times crossword puzzle. I am suffering from information overload - all of it wacko.
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gramps (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 107 comments) on Saturday, Mar 25, 2006 at 7:16:47 PM
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