Américains crédules
From a personal point of view I believe the most important event to take place in August will be another anniversary in my long-running marriage, but I know it will be pretty minor when stacked up against the financial and political events that are breaking all over the globe.
My lady and I were married the year Israel was declared a state. Disruption has occurred there with tiresome regularity and conflicting religious factions will see to it there will never be such a thing as a "permanent peace." But Americans are a gullible lot and, being rich, they believe they can exercise enough political muscle and fork over enough money to placate warring forces and cause animosity to simmer down. Americans don't realize the federal government cupboard is bare and the bills are being paid by borrowing from posterity. (When posterity comes into power and sees what we have done it will be very angry.)
The gullibility of Americans make them easy marks. Consider the number of hoax e-mails they routinely send across the Internet. They accept misstatements on television and radio, or in print, as truth. A recent survey reports that one-third of Americans believe the jet planes that flew into the World Trade Center skyscrapers on September 11, 2001, did not topple the structures. They believe the U.S. government had planted bombs in the buildings and set them off! Moreover, they swear a plane did not crash into the Pentagon on that date. "The hole is too small!" They prefer to believe the U.S. government fired a missile into the building.
Many of the people who swear this is true are not grammar school dropouts. Which is to say very bright people can be extremely gullible. This accounts, I believe, for the huge success of the advertising industry which has done a great job of selling people things they do not need.
Americans are particularly gullible when it comes to money. They have enormous faith in their Congress-folk to keep dishing out the money to keep the economy in full bloom, and they will laugh in your face if you mention the irritating habit of money inflation to always end painfully. They consider inflation a permanent fixture and believe an economic depression will never occur again. "They put a stop to it after that awful mess in the 1930s, didn't they?"
However, gossips in Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world know very well what's happening to the U.S. dollar even if we do not. Only this week a European newspaper remarked, "...when a national currency is also the international currency, as is the case with the U.S. dollar, the government knows that the costs of excessive printing of money - and excessive fiscal deficits and current account deficits - will spill over onto others, such as countries that hold its currency in their reserves." This is a slap on the wrist for our long-running habit of exporting a great deal of our inflation. Obviously, the foreigners are on to us and they are muttering about doing something about it.
It would be a pity to let a great nation like the United States of America tumble because we wouldn't brace up and face the problems at hand. We shouldn't keep handing our problems off to our grandchildren and the unborn. The belts to be tightened are the ones around our waists, and one major step could take place in November by sending replacements to Congress. Think about it! Why do we keep sending the same old politicos back to Washington only to see them constantly vote to run huge budget deficits? They spend big bucks to advertise how wonderful they are, but advertising spin doesn't change the reality that the United States Congress has guaranteed that our posterity will live at a much lower economic standard than we have enjoyed.
Turn Congress upside down in November, 2006. That can lead to a significant change in the political dynamics of the election of 2008. If you can see a way out of the present dilemma without strong action by the people please write and tell me what it is.
John Wrisley, August 4, 2006
Great Depression, Part 2
Scuttled; The Ship of State