"For me, its all about the money and how all of this spending will be accomplished by a brain-dead Federal Reserve creating the money out of thin air so that the government can borrow it, and how all of this money will drive the national debt up more..."
Christopher Ketcham, in his essay, "Trends for Downsizing the US: The Bright Side of the Panic of '08", notes former CIA consultant Chalmers Johnson addressing the "folly" of "military Keynesianism", which is defined as "devotion to militarism, weapons, and warfare as fiscal stimulus."
I bring this up not because I, as a gun-nut, gold-bug, paranoid lunatic have spent a fortune on weapons but yet am STILL outgunned by the local police and the U.S. military, all thanks to the government's capriciously arbitrary, unwritten "rule" that citizens cannot own nuclear weapons for "home defense", but because President Bush has unveiled his new budget, which is a whopping $3.1 trillion, has $400 billion of deficits from the get-go, and sports some big increases in its purchases of military ordnance.
Now, add in another $600 billion-or-so of additional federal "emergency appropriations" spending as we go through the coming year, and suddenly we are talking close to $4 trillion!
Agora Financial's 5-Minute Forecast notes that Bush, "is now responsible for the first $2 trillion (2002) and $3 trillion (2009) government budgets... which is nothing short of incredible. It took his predecessors 200 years to reach the first $1 trillion in 1987."
They then quote Paul O'Neill, former Treasury Secretary of the United States, saying in their movie, I.O.U.S.A., "These are not insignificant changes. These are monumental changes."
Oddly, Mr. O'Neill says, "When you're no longer able to service your debt, you're finished." Well, this is true for mere mortals like you and me, but for a government that embraces a fiat currency and a central bank that will multiply money at will, this is not a problem, and it never will be; they can get all the money the need, and all the money they want, anytime they want! Hell, they could pay off the national debt in one day if they wanted to! Hahaha!
For me, it's all about the money and how all of this spending will be accomplished by a brain-dead Federal Reserve creating the money out of thin air so that the government can borrow it, and how all of this money will drive the national debt up more and devalue the dollar even more, which makes consumer prices go up, and then I have to spend a lot more of my Valuable Mogambo Time (VMT) answering the phone and listening to my brothers and sisters and mom and dad and aunts and uncles wanting to borrow some money from me because prices are so high that they cannot afford any food, and I tell them, "Well, sell some of your gold that I have been yelling at you to buy for years and years!" and they say that they didn't buy any, but they wish they had, and then I tell them, "Well, similarly I am not going to give you any money, but I will wish I had! How about that, moron?"
But the worse news is that this "military Keynesianism", which is "a policy embraced with equal fervor by both parties in Congress", will not even work. Instead, he figures that it "will speed the country to moral, fiscal and political bankruptcy. To grasp the horror of military Keynesianism, consider this statistic: By 1990, production for the Department of Defense amounted to 83 percent of the value of all manufacturing plants and equipment in the US. Only 17 percent of the US manufacturing base actually made products not meant to kill." Yikes! And that was 18 years ago, during which time it has gotten worse!
If there is one good thing that could come out of this recession, it is that violence could subside around the world. The way I see it, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and so constantly making a fuss these days means that the United States will come waltzing in and give everybody some money, armaments and pretty promises if everyone agrees to make nice, which they promise to do, which makes the USA look good and everybody struts around, and they are nice for about a week until the money and armaments start running low again, and then it will be time to escalate some violence so that the United States will come riding in to give them all some more money and armaments to make nice.
But with a recession, maybe the United States will finally be forced to say, "Screw that!", and maybe people would stop acting like such murderous, barbaric buttheads and get down to the business of education and creating a real economy...
...Like that is going to happen! Hahahaha! Ugh.
The Mogambo Sez: If you have not bought enough gold, silver and oil stocks yet (and in the larger sense, does anybody ever have enough of any of them?), then Fate has smiled upon you, as the recent downdrafts in their prices are a chance to "buy low", which means that you will get a chance to "sell high" that much sooner!
And if you don't think so, and you do not do so, then just stick around for a while. You are going to get a real education, and, as the saying goes, "With a whack to remember it by"!
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