print“[A] very successful entrepreneur now living abroad” wrote to John Derbyshire, in response to an article Derb wrote detailing what a “terrible country the US is” if you want “to start an imaginative new enterprise”:
“Capitalism is dead in the US . . . The US was not destroyed by the Russians, the Chinese or even the militant Islamists. They did it to themselves . . . The $104 trillion debt is beyond any possible means of repayment. The only way out will be to monetize the debt by hyperinflation . . . I’m now watching the final days from 8,000 miles away . . . In November 2008, half of the US electorate put a loaded ballot in their mouth and pulled the trigger . . .”
Derb: “There’s a 40-foot tsunami in plain sight on the horizon, and we’re playing beach volleyball. Can Petraeus turn Afghanistan around? How unpopular is the healthcare bill? Will the feds sue the state of Arizona? (What’s that distant rumbling sound?) Is Turkey a friend or an enemy? Should Rahm Emanuel go? Is Elena Kagan gay?” [Or should Bill Kristol resign … Pat Buchanan said something to the effect that Americans are a deeply silly people in serious times.]
Vox Day writes: “The car has already hit the tree and the bumper is already in the process of buckling inward, so there is no time to turn the wheel or fasten seat belts. It is too late to do anything but scream.”
Derb “favor[s] aerodynamic analogies over Vox Day’s merely automotive ones. So: Heads between knees, arms over heads, hold that position. Pray if you’re inclined to. Brace for impact!”
UPDATE (July 12): I’ve searched the Net high-and-low, news outlets, Reuters too, are not reporting what Bill O’Reilly has just announced. A member of BHO’s commission-to-investigate-and-approve-the-levels-of-debt-the-USA-is-carrying has said we are on the road to ruin. Isn’t it curious how left-liberal mainstream media doesn’t even break vital stories any longer? If Bill is right, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, the man is a former Clinton official.
Talker Juan Williams, a simple sort who has long championed Keynesian deficit spending, denying that huge debt is in any way economically deleterious, suddenly got religion on austerity. It is as I said in the post asking the Punditocracy to quit, truth comes into existence in America as soon as someone in the establishment pronounces it, usually a decade or so after we’ve been screaming it from the rooftops.
What FORM shall the tsunami take??? Choose:
(1) The Lehman-Brothers “disappearance” – $ 20 Trillion turns out to be just a computer over-counting and you wake up find that your bank accounts, etc. are really all zero or close-to-nothing type collapse. Did someone say BUBBLE?
(2) The Weimar-Zimbabwe “hyperinflation” – all your money is there but it now costs $ 532,000 for a cup of coffee.
(3) The Argentina-style “prolonged collapse” – a steady emphatic drift into 3rd World status as the entire country starts resembling Detroit: http://www.forgottendetroit.com/
(4) Something even more ghoulish and dreadful other than the first three!
One more prediction: the right wing will blame this debacle on “gay marriage” or “Space Alien Obama” but in truth, the underlying CANCER has been growing since limited government was completely abandoned in the 1930’s. It just took this long for the Socialist Insecurity Welfare-Warfare disease to show obvious symptoms and METASTICIZE into the lethal terminal phase.
I’d like to add to Derbyshire’s analogy: while you have your head between your knees, kiss your b-tt good bye.
Okay, as if more realities as needed, it must be my masochistic side, but Fox News this AM discussed a story of some entrepreneurs who had developed a new solar panel technology that was more efficient, less environmentally damaging, and a lower cost. They met with Governors,Representatives, and Senators, but were ignored. So, CHINA CONTACTED THEM, FLEW THEM THERE, AND A DEAL WAS CUT. So, there goes more production and jobs. Yah, if it takes a village to raise a child then it takes a country to raise a bunch of bureaucratic idiots AND WE HAVE SUCCEEDED AT THAT!
[Hyperlink, please.]
Getting into the swing of metaphor for the moment:
The overhead blast has already occurred; we await the shockwaves after which we’ll watch the rubble bounce for a while. The karmic lesson will have been lost on the population who will walk about like zombies, half blaming Bush, the other half Obama. Some few, those who’ve looked in the mirror and recognized the problem, will be the remnant. Good luck to them.
Their country’s ability to borrow is what has kept the American consumer’s purchasing power steady in the last decade. That will shortly stop, but I’m sure the global corporate elite is not worried. The ‘secret’ of globalization is not that it’s about exporting US jobs, it about outsourcing the US consumer. Who cares if the American middle-class is vanishing, if a rising (for example) Chinese one can take its place.
CORRECTION TO ABOVE NOTE: I must have been less than awake…sorry. Story was an ABC one – see AMERICAN COMPANY TAKES SOLAR TECHNOLOGY TO CHINA. Link is:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/solar-white-house-invite-china-deal/story?id=11043149&page=2
Also, see http://videosearch.comcast.net and search for “AMERICAN COMPANY TAKES…” video. Please note what Commerce people said vs what China DID. We’ve got the brainpower here, but are strangled by government’s limited thinking.
I’m not into the blame game over the economy. Both political parties got us into this mess. Of course, ultimately, we got ourselves into this mess & need to get ourselves out without career-corrupt politicians.
Our economy needs a war(s) to keep going or so D.C. thinks. I want the troops home & on the border. It keeps military families together & dollars in the U.S. I don’t think the politicians are listening to any of us.
I might suggest everyone just read that underground book out where a small town of Americans do stand up to our current federal tyranny & ends up starting the 2nd American Revolution. Hey, all the same reasons are there (foreign wars, debts, etc.). It’s so good cause it could be our hometown. I liked it.
http://www.booksbyoliver.com
As a “depressed optimist” I believe there has to be a pony in here sonmewhere! Still digging, no pony yet…
Derbyshire wrote, “It is obvious that our governments, at all levels, are spending far too much; yet there is little evidence of anyone being willing to do anything about it.” Why would he expect anyone be willing to do anything about it? Any serious spending cut must sharply decrease entitlement spending. Any decrease in entitlement spending would cause our mendicant electorate to kick the politicians who enacted it out of office. Given our mendicant electorate, no one willing to risk his political career for the good of the country could be elected in the first place. So government will keep spending like a drunken sailor until our money loses all value. I haven’t read Vox Day’s book, but the coming collapse will be much worse than the Great Depression.