Going bankrupt: The US's greatest threat

[bemildred]

The military adventurers of the George W Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups of men thought that they were the "smartest guys in the room", the title of Alex Gibney's prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron. The neo-conservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.

As a result, going into 2008, the United States finds itself in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment. Its government no longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge standing armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars have destroyed or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer space against unknown adversaries.

Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future generations to pay - or repudiate. This utter fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through many manipulative financial schemes (such as causing poorer countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA24Ak04.html

[bdamomma]

1. the time of reckoning is fast approaching.

Damn this regime.

[bemildred]

3. More than anything I am annoyed but the utter predictability of it all.

Hyper-militarism always put you in the crapper.

[OneBlueSky]

2. um . . . don't look now, but this country is already bankrupt . . .

those in power are just hiding it by holding things together with financial baling wire and economic chewing gum . . .

[nancyr]

5. Agreed.

The criminals that did this belong behind bars.

[opihimoimoi]

4. Bwahahahaha...the MBA PREZ/NEOCONS/PNACERs Fucks it all up

Outsmarted themselves did they?..

Not really....they Gambled with OUR MONEY/BLOOD/NAME

They deserve to be EXILED to TUVA

[denverbill]

6. While I agree with the article,

the current Congress shares some of the blame.

They need to get the balls to force Bush to sign a bill paying for his war somehow, preferably by revoking his tax cuts for the wealthy, including the estate tax. And if he vetoes it, just keep sending it back until the veto gets overridden or he finally is forced to sign it to fund the war.

[bemildred]

9. Congress is more to blame than anyone.

Bush is just one man, and as Ms Pelosi said, he is not King. He has done what they have allowed him to do. The unwillingness of Congress to hold him accountable for seven years is what has allowed things to get this bad.

[kelligesq]

7. lgaws-look at the billions the Pentagon hid in State & Energy and still asking for more billions

worth reading the whole article.

eye opener

[Mnemosyne]

8. It's time to dig up that $2.3 TRILLION missing from the Pentagon

as of 9/10/2001.

Ask Rummy how much is in his pockets.

And we keep giving them billions more regularly why?

[Karenina]

14. XXXT in unaccounted for derivatives...

That's TRILLION with a $T$. I've seen 250-405 bandied about- and that is really a lot of bad paper.

[wilt the stilt]

10. it was a very small room

filled with dummies. Cheney is only moderately smart but mostly he is a bullshit artist. We don't need to even go to Bush- unquestionably our dumbest president ever

[katty]

11. so predictable - exactly what you expect fr bush fam & friends

bushco will walk away from 2 fradulent terms in office ready for even more R&R than he's already enjoyed in office.

[AwesomeFreak]

12. I think the article is an exaggeration

We are not going bankrupt. We are approaching a recession, which is far from bankruptcy.

[ixion]

16. we borrow 2bln a day just to cover finance charges

we owe far more than we can ever hope to repay. That is the very definition of bankrupt. Don't kid yourself.

[bronxiteforever]

13. K & R-Great Post!

[lanlady]

15. and this doesn't even include Intel expenses

The CIA's budget alone (which itself is classified) is guesstimated at $40 billion/yr, much of it spent on our bogus "war on terror."

Great article, thanks for sharing. I'm a fan of Chalmers Johnson.

[fasttense]

17. The true state of our hollow economy

"The fact that we did not modernize or replace our capital assets is one of the main reasons why, by the turn of the 21st century, our manufacturing base had all but evaporated."

"In November 1968, a five-year inventory disclosed (page 186) "that 64% of the metalworking machine tools used in US industry were 10 years old or older. The age of this industrial equipment (drills, lathes, etc.) marks the United States' machine tool stock as the oldest among all major industrial nations,".

In 1968 our manufacturing tools were seriously outdated, how much worse are they by now?