Sorry to keep harping on about the (dis)United States, it is either a sign of my worry or my paranoia. However, in a week in which the US deficit has reached $1.4 trillion, that is, more than the total national US debt for the last 200 years, one is entitled, I feel, to get out the worry beads. There might have been some cause for hope if the current US government was intent on cutting its spending, but on the contrary, it is printing and spending like Mugabe on acid! To put it in perspective, the previous year's deficit was $459 billion! It is the biggest deficit since WWII. According to forecasts, by 2019 the Federal government is likely to be paying 15% of its income just to meet the interest on its loans. But what will they be paying if interest rates world-wide begin to rise under the threat of inflation? Now, I have no desire to frighten the horses, so I will add this quote:
Some hold out hope that Congress and the administration will act before another crisis erupts. Robert Reischauer, a former head of CBO, said that in an optimum scenario, Congress will tackle the deficits next year. A package of tax increases and spending cuts could be phased in starting in 2013 and gradually grow over the next decade. The administration has pledged to include a deficit-reduction plan in its 2011 budget, which will go to Congress in February. [My emphasis]
And there, mes enfants, in that last simple sentence lies the crux of the matter. Will an increasingly unpopular president, currently facing agitation from groups to the Left of him, quite apart from the Right, and with Congressional elections approaching in November next year, really take the axe to spending programmes whilst simultaneously raising taxes on voters?
And I would add a further question - does this president, and the people who surround him, really want to avoid the train crash that is coming when the dollar collapses and inflation rips away? To a Marxist, this is an ideal scenario in which civil unrest can be used as an excuse for emergency powers. In my previous post on this subject I suggested that an assassination attempt on the president might provide the tipping point, but wide-spread civil unrest would be even better.
But, again, if you are a Marxist, the wet dream scenario would be for the mainly Republican States whose financial position is reasonably stable to attempt to secede from a bankrupt Union. Do the people of Texas really want to keep paying for the follies of California? There-in lies the seeds of destruction and self-immolation, as foreseen, apparently, by Ayn Rand in her philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged. According to Peter Morin the die is already cast as the train hurtles on under the control of Marxist ideologues and the only option for the brave of heart is to leap off.
Thanks again to Alan Sullivan for the links.
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