What terrifies Samantha, my niece, is the Porter Stansbury report the selling off of America. She’s worried about what happens if the USA sells all its assets to people overseas. My response was not direct, it was this:
But this is my newer post, and since you are terrified about the USA being sold off in order to protect that last few months of solvency before going completely bankrupt,geesh Samantha,we’re cooked already on that note. Our $17 Trillion debt will rise geometrically since our debt problem is out of control now. We can’t even afford to pay the INTEREST on our debt. UNC-Duke economists club estimate that 26% of the money we borrow we borrow in order to PAY THE INTEREST on money we owe. It’s flat out absurd.
It started between 1980 and 1988 when, in order to avert financial problems, Ronald Reagan and the federal reserve combined to TRIPLE the national debt. YES TRIPLE IT,in 8 short years,from $1 trillion to $3 trillion dollars. A LOT of this happened due to defense spending and wars. But the defense spending boondoggle and wars have continued unabated. Once 1989 happened,and the Berlin Wall came down, and the big huge Iron Curtain was no longer a viable threat, the USA went into the business of creating the “enemy of the week.” none more confusing than William Jefferson Clinton, who made five decisions that put the democrats squarely into the republicans mindset.
1) NAFTA: This trade agreement, as even Ross Perot knew,cause millions of American jobs to move to cheaper labor in mexico while doing nothing to replace those jobs with jobs that paid the same amount. We were told the manufacturing jobs would be made up for by the service industry. Problem: The Service industry looks for people with at least a bachelor’s degree,and the USA only has 25% of its population holding a bachelor’s degree. Reagan and Bush I had already stripped a ton of vocational school money,so when the jobs left that paid $20 an hour,folks scrambled ot make $8.00.
2)After shipping many jobs to Mexico,the problem got worse via GATT 2. GATT 2, which created the World Trade Organization and put trade concerns OVER all sovereign laws of ANY country, then paved the way for American jobs to be moved to China, Vietnam, Argentina (The FTAA came later), Indonesia, The Philippines,k etc. All manufacturing companies were given INCENTIVES to move jobs overseas via TAX CUTS for those who abandoned American workers.
3) After shafting the workers (is this a Democratic party?) Clinton then pushed through the Welfare Reform Act of 1995, thus beginning the cutting of aid to families with dependent children. This terrible 1-2-3- punch left many scrambling for jobs and working two or three jobs to be able to live in decent neighborhoods. Of course,indecent neighborhoods were growing rapidly, as was the jail population which DOUBLED from 1 to 2 million under Clinton.
4) The Banking Reform Act of 1995. This whopper of a Boo-Boo allowed banks to lend out $30 for every $1 they had in deposit. The previous law allowed $12 to be lent out for every $1 in deposit. OH #$12 was TOO MUCH believe me. but 30!? By Golly with such lending freedom there were NO LONGER viable candidates to lend money to,so the bankers invented Sub Prime Loans,and bundled those loans into the billions of dollars worth and sold the bad loans to each other round and round like a game of musical bankruptcy chairs until WHAM, J P Morgan, Lehman Brothers, CitiBank and famously AIG all ended up holding the “bag” while Goldman Sachs,who was also in neck-deep got bailed out FIRST because Hank Paulson was the Treasury Secretary then, DONTCHA KNOW!! His friends got bailed out and his enemies (Lehman Brothers qualified as such) sunk. AIG had done for Europe what Europe would not do for itself. When European banker whined that US banks got to lend so much and they were stuck with rules that said $10 for ever $1 was the limit, the EURO-CHIEFS said, OK if you can find someone to insure those extra loans above $10 for every $1 you have, we will let you do it. Enter AIG,exit common sense. SO the Trillion or so tax dollars that bailed out AIG was sent (via Goldman Sach,surprised?) to EUROPE to COVER its meltdown, as AIG promised it would. YUP US taxpayers bailed out the richest European bankers VIA AIG. The ensuing enlargement of American debt may have occurred under Obama due to this, but it started under Clinton and was exacerbated by George W. Bush, whose penchant for WAR kept the US debt growing at a 100s-of-millions-of-dollars per day clip, on war funding alone,forget trying to service the interest on our loans.
5) Clinton himself,though never held accountable,continued the sanctions on Iraq, bombed Iraq, and spent money bombing Belgrade too. Nearly 35,000 people died when we bombed Belgrade in order to get Milsovic to stop. Hmmmm. Clinton was Bombing innocent Islamic folks in Iraq, while also stopping the genocide of Islamic folks in the Former Yugoslav republics. This added up to eve less of a safety net for American workers who were starting to lose jobs,and who now have witnessed 10s of millions of jobs shipped overseas… including SERVICE jobs to India. This gives corporations added profits on one hand, but not ENOUGH profits to make up for the rapidly declining dollar on the other.
Add to that global environmental destruction,70% bee population decline, J.P Morgan controlling the price of oil though not an oil company and a whole laundry list of other problems created by the fascists at the top, and WOW, we could be in for a massive downturn, wouldn’t you say Samantha? The best way to combat this is to prepare to grow your own food, live in a town where people still understand the value of community sharing and coming together to help those in need,and being lucky enough to be able to prepare and do all this buy purchasing the land you will need NOW before the dollar loses more value. If you worried about all the labor required to run a farm, fear not. If there is an economic meltdown,LOTS of people will be willing to work in trade for food and shelter. Sincerely, Doug
Dougstuber's Blog 