Read What I See

     Yes, we have reached a level of economic insanity. We speak of trillions as if they were $1,000 bills.  There is no general consensus on grasping what one trillion dollars is.  One thousand $1,000 bills equal one million.  One million millions is one trillion ($1,000,000 x $1,000,000= $1,000,000,000,000).  Let’s look at it in a different perspective.  The Federal Government owns roughly 623,000,000 (623 million) acres of land.  If they were to sell all of it, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Mount Rainier, Washington DC, military bases, etc…  They would have to ask $100,000 per acre in order to be able to repay the $63 trillion debt.  So in reality the ability of our government to pay the debt and fulfill its obligations is about as realistic as to think that they can sell one acre of swamp in the Florida Everglades or a pile of sand in Death Valley for $100,000 much less all of it

Follow up:

     From the time our nation was founded the national debt grew to $1 trillion in the first 200 years.  Our congress just passed an unfunded stimulus bill that equals that of the accumulative debt in the first 200 years of our history.  We are pouring trillions to bailout financial institutions that are bankrupt as if our nation was not also bankrupt.  It is all about postponing for another week or month what is impending.

     Have no fear about your savings, our bankrupt government guarantees it and you will not lose a penny.  In case that you missed it, the FDIC which guarantees our savings is getting a $500 billion bailout from the Fed in anticipation of massive bank failures.  Of course, the Federal government is bankrupt, they just run the printing press for a couple of days and “Abracadabra” our savings are miraculously safe again.

     The 401Ks that are invested in a stock market that is quickly shrinking are also safe.  As soon as the economy recovers, and the stock market bounces back.  Give us a break! Wall Street is on a dead end one way street, there is no going back they are crashing against the wall at the end of the street.

     If you have a pension, don’t worry about it.  Pension funds are mostly invested on Wall Street so we can see where they are heading.  But Pensions are also guaranteed by our government, so obviously there is no reason to worry about it unless you believe that our government has become insolvent.

     Last but not least Social Security (or Insecurity) it is also funded by a bankrupt government.  Oh, wait it is not funded for the money is not there.  We have been paying for decades but they used the money for other things or gave it to those who never paid into it.  There is no vault that is holding the payments made into Social Security in the form of a gold reserve.  The Federal Government wrote IOUs to the fund and used the money to finance other programs.  Since our government is virtually bankrupt with over 60 trillion in debt and running a budget deficit of one trillion we could begin to wonder who is going to be writing our Social Security checks after an economic collapse.  One may notice that for the first time in recent history neither of the presidential candidates running in the 2008 election made Social Security an issue.

     It all makes perfect sense unless you want to play dumb, deaf and blind.  Our government which is bankrupt could not pay everything it guarantees for it does not have the money.  There is one option in which they could print about $100 trillion to pay everything the guarantee and everyone they owe including China but then that paper would not be worth the ink that is printed on it.  Our government could never tax us enough to pay off their debt for ten thousand years. It only has two choices:  1) They can print more worthless paper.  2) They can default on the debt.  They have been trying #1 for a while now and it is not working.  Can you guess what they will do next?

     Barack Obama stated clearly when he signed the stimulus bill and I am not sure if he understood what he was saying when he said, “This is the beginning of the end”.  Who is this guy, where did he come from and how did he get to where he is?  He should be on American Idol making his fans drool and not in the White House making decisions that affect my life and yours.  Does he have the knowledge to make important presidential decisions or does he just read the script that is handed to him?   When financial disaster finally hit the fan he and others will make excuses, point fingers and blame someone else.  Undoubtedly it is expected that those presently governing from both political parties will  try to absolve themselves but let’s stay focused and vote most of them out of office ASAP. 

     Undoubtedly our country will recover but not before going first thru the pain of an economic collapse.  Most of our citizens are still under the illusion that nothing will change and there is an imminent economic recovery in the near future.  It reminds me of scenes from the movie Titanic after hitting the iceberg.  People just walking around relaxed as if everything was fine.  Not until they saw water up to their ankles realized what was happening.  We are already in that stage as people get termination notices or look at their 401K balances and find that 50% of it has vanished.  It will not be long before we enter the panic stage in which what is happening will become clear and many will find themselves unprepared for the changes and challenges that will take place in our society.

     Again have no fear; it is of great comfort to know that we can count to be rescued by those who sunk our ship.  Not really, hopefully in 2012 we will elect a new breed of politicians that will help us restore our Constitution and the principles in which our country was founded.  We will overcome this crisis and reemerge as a great nation again for it is our people that make it so.  Hopefully our new leaders will not get in the way of a free market that will bring us prosperity again and at least for a long time stay clear of the injection of the Socialist policies that ruined our Capitalistic system.