Reply #11: Few things are as costly as free money.

[Demeter]

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/stocks-rally-while-big-companies-fail/


When the Spanish Galleons came back from the New World with cargoes of gold and silver coins, the Spaniards thought they'd hit the jackpot. All of a sudden, Iberia had plenty of money. Historians report that the Spanish neglected their fields and their manufactures; now they had easy money to spend. Prices rose quickly. Then, when the treasure ships stopped coming, the Spanish were broke. Spain - and Portugal too - went into a decline that lasted four centuries.

In the late 1990s, America got in the habit of getting shiploads of stuff from Asia - and paying for it only with pieces of green paper. Pretty soon, Americans too neglected their own factories - though not their fields. Let the Asians sweat, they said. We'll think!

Not much serious thinking has taken place in the United States of America for the last 20 years. Instead, people preferred comforting illusions and conceited claptrap. We have the 'strongest, most dynamic economy the world had ever seen,' they congratulated themselves.

Of course, you don't need to think - not when you ship is coming in. But now that the ship is sinking you'd expect people would put on their life jackets and their thinking caps. Nope. Now they look to the government for the free money. Yesterday's news told us that Congress is now spending away $1 billion per hour.