Friday, July 29, 2011 

Pardon me if I haven't been posting much lately—I've been too busy burying gold bars and non-perishable food items in my backyard.


Grocery shopping might be more interesting than usual next week...

Seriously, though, these are ugly times here in the imperial metropole. What's most frustrating of all, however, is how completely unnecessary this crisis is.

Watching the debates yesterday on C-Span, I found it comical how some Republicans were casting possible American default along the lines of economic defaults that have occurred recently in Greece and Portugal.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Greece and Portugal did not vote themselves into default. If the United States defaults, this will be a default by choice, with one party determinedly driving this country off of the economic rails.

What's happening, of course, is that the Republicans—only a couple of years removed from sending our country further into debt by overwhelmingly supporting the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—have suddenly discovered frugality.

The emergence of the deficit as a "crisis" issue—something that needs to be solved right away—is a total canard. Yes, the debt is a serious issue, just as it was in the 1980s when the Reagan administration managed to nearly triple the deficit. Under Reagan, the debt ceiling was raised seventeen times. Under W., during which time the debt was increased from $11 trillion to $14 trillion, the debt ceiling was raised seven times.

The debt only became a topic of interest to Republicans after a Democrat was elected president. The types of programs that most Republicans are interested in cutting—planned parenthood, Pell grants, welfare—already make up just a miserably small portion of the budget. The real interest fueling the debt talk is not the desire to be financially prudent—if that were the case, the Bush tax cuts would have been repealed and our defense budget would be cut by more than half—but rather a desire to cut social programs and, most importantly, regulatory agencies like the EPA that hassle the corporations whose contributions keep our elected officials—both Democrat and Republican—in office.



Typically for the Obama years, we're being presented with two scenarios: a 'good' option that involves the further slashing of social programs and government regulatory agencies, and a nightmare scenario that involves people fighting over canned food in looted supermarkets.

Does any of this remind you of TARP, by the way?

As for me, I've gotten so desperate I think I'm going to put my savings into Turkish Liras....