National State Politics

Seems my newspaper column has some new GOP readers – who are upset about my tarring them with the same brush I used on Baldacci and Dugay last year. Sorry guys – similar problem, same brush. Our economy is perfect. It keeps rolling along – on debt. Red China supports the overspending of Red politicians.

On the personal level, how often are you told you are worthy of credit – at usurious rates in the area of 27.5 percent interest, or maybe higher? They promise no interest for several months, and a low rate – until you are late on, or miss, a payment – then the Congressional approved usury kicks

If you carry the debt on that initial purchase for three years, you’ve paid for it twice. The creditor actually makes more on the purchase than the seller. In 2005, following the Congressional model, Americans spent more than they received – our personal savings rate went negative for the first time since 1933. Adding insult to injury, debt was piled on for Xmas; ask a congressional bible thumper the Biblical, or even the New Testament, position of debt.

How many years of negative savings do you think any nation can sustain? How many years before the debtor becomes slave to the creditor? How many years before our foreign creditors realize Bush wasn’t kidding about US Treasuries being worthless IOU’s?

Our nation is thriving on waste – waste is an inescapable debt for which nature eventually demands payment – we see this in the growing evidence of climate change, as the planet adjusts and attempts to compensate for our over use of carbon based energy. Monetary waste reflects resource waste.

What’s the Feng Shui of our current economic reality? How much disharmony is being created by our failure to understand the words of “Poor Richard” – “A penny saved is a penny earned”?

As the nation retires, shock waves will propagate with the greatest affect being to those who live in major urban centers. There is a perversity that accompanies economic collapse; the rural poor are the least effected. As the song says, “When you aint got nothin’ you got noth’ to lose.”

The media now warns of predatory lenders, mortgage companies that promise to relieve your debit – all you need do is refinance your home to pay credit card debt; but ... BUT ... do the borrowers cut up their newly cleared credit cards? Of course not – they ring up record holiday spending.

Usury is as old as scripture. In 622 BCE, the end of usury accompanied the rise of Judean scripture. Today, we are cash strapped because we are a service economy, and the biggest service industry is the one built upon lending – not production. It is the flaw in our economic structure, and power.

Word is, many banks are jumping in with high risk mortgages. They are lending money they don’t have. There was a time when savings were lent and bank profit margins were a difference between interest paid, and interest collected. But we aren’t saving. What is the source of money to be lent?

We are reaching the point where we don’t even qualify as a third world nation – an economy based on agricultural production; we import our food, as well as our consumer goods. Our position as a “world power” is derived from our ability to kill on a global scale. Why? Why death over reason?

There is a perverse humor in the potential, possibly inevitable, economic devastation – we knew it was coming and knowingly elected those who made false claims of fiscal conservatism.
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