The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. – Benjamin Franklin
“When a country embarks on deficit financing and inflationism you wipe out the middle class and wealth is transferred from the middle class and the poor to the rich.”
– Ron Paul
Obama has tripled the budget deficit. Now you know who Obama is working for!
This elite puppet President is running America into the ground.
Bush was extremely horrible. Obama will be even worse.
Added: November 06, 2009
– Quotes from the Great Depression
Any number of pundits claim that we have now passed the worst of the recession. Green shoots of recovery are supposedly popping up all around the country, and the economy is expected to resume growing soon at an annual rate of 3% to 4%. Many of these are the same people who insisted that the economy would continue growing last year, even while it was clear that we were already in the beginning stages of a recession.
A false recovery is under way. I am reminded of the outlook in 1930, when the experts were certain that the worst of the Depression was over and that recovery was just around the corner. The economy and stock market seemed to be recovering, and there was optimism that the recession, like many of those before it, would be over in a year or less. Instead, the interventionist policies of Hoover and Roosevelt caused the Depression to worsen, and the Dow Jones industrial average did not recover to 1929 levels until 1954. I fear that our stimulus and bailout programs have already done too much to prevent the economy from recovering in a natural manner and will result in yet another asset bubble.
Anytime the central bank intervenes to pump trillions of dollars into the financial system, a bubble is created that must eventually deflate. We have seen the results of Alan Greenspan’s excessively low interest rates: the housing bubble, the explosion of subprime loans and the subsequent collapse of the bubble, which took down numerous financial institutions. Rather than allow the market to correct itself and clear away the worst excesses of the boom period, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury colluded to put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars. Those banks and financial institutions that took on the largest risks and performed worst were rewarded with billions in taxpayer dollars, allowing them to survive and compete with their better-managed peers.
(Infinite Unknown) Before I get started, here is where some of the stimulus money went:
– Stimulus dollars going to accused contractors (Washington Post):
President Obama and members of Congress told federal agencies earlier this year to avoid awarding funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to contractors with troubled histories of work for the federal government.
But that isn’t happening at numerous agencies, a Washington Post analysis shows. So far, 33 federal departments and agencies have awarded more than $1.2 billion in stimulus contracts to at least 30 companies that are ranked by one watchdog group as among the most egregious offenders of state and federal laws.(!!!)
The taxpayer money went to criminals.
$160,000 Per Stimulus Job!?! That is called government efficiency!
These from taxpayer money ‘created jobs’ are only short term effects and remember that the stimulus money has to be paid back through higher taxes or to be financed through US Treasuries, which is nothing more than “a promise of a tax increase in the future,” because that debt has still to be paid back plus interest.
Once nobody trusts that the US will be able to pay back its debt the US is finished. And if the Fed monetizes the debt that means that foreign investors will have to get out of the US dollar, because their investment is losing value all of the time. Investors will have to sell their US Treasuries to get out of the dollar and the dollar will be toilet paper.
Keynesianism or deficit spending is outdated and ‘the’ dead wrong economic policy. In the long-term Obamanomics (and the Fed) will not only kill jobs but it will destroy the US dollar and turn the US into a Third World country.
Let’s see what Obama had to say about deficit spending or stimulus packages:
‘Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren,” Obama said in a 2006 floor speech that preceded a Senate vote to extend the debt limit. “America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.”
– Barack Obama
Here is what Obama did:
– US budget deficit tripled to a record $1.4 trillion in 2009
Obama tripled George W. Bush’s deficit!
Now the Obama administration is after UNLIMITED bailout power!!!:
“Section 1204 is unlimited in dollar amount and is a permanent grant of power to the executive branch. TARP contained some limits on executive compensation and an array of special oversight authorities. Section 1204 contains absolutely no limits on executive compensation and no special oversight.”
“When I asked Geithner whether he would accept a $1 trillion limit on the new bailout authority (if the executive branch wanted to spend more, it would have to come back to Congress), he rejected a $1 trillion limit, insisting that the executive branch be able to respond without coming back to Congress.”
Barack Hussein Obama is such a fraud and an insult to anybody understanding sound economics and politics, that is not bought and paid for by the elite criminals that ruin this (once) great country.
Take a look at long-term unemployment for signs of recovery and weep:
(Click on image to enlarge.)
Related article:
– Stimulus Created/Saved 650000 Jobs? There’s No Way to Know for Sure (Wall Street Journal)
Watch: Fall Of The Republic – The Presidency Of Barack H. Obama (The Full Movie HQ)
Posting its results late this afternoon at Recovery.gov, the White House claimed 640,329 jobs have been created or saved because of the $159 billion in stimulus funds allocated as of Sept. 30.
Officials acknowledged the numbers were not exact, saying that states and localities that reported the numbers have made mistakes.
In recent days, the Recovery Act board has been reviewing all the numbers, with many inaccurate ones having been posted. California’s San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission received $5 million in stimulus funds to hire workers to build addition train track for the Union Pacific Railroad in an economically tarnished spot of the Golden State.
Brian Schmidt, director of planning and programming for the commission said that his staff originally reported to the Obama administration that the stimulus money saved 250 jobs. Then, realizing they had mistakenly double credited, they later changed that to 125 jobs. Tuesday, they updated it again to 74 jobs.
Ed DeSeve, senior advisor to the president for Recovery Act implementation, said he’d been “scrubbing” the job estimates so much since they came it at the beginning of the month that he now has “dishpan hands and my fingers are worn to the nub.”
White House officials heralded the unparalleled transparency in reporting job numbers to the public, but acknowledged there is no consistent standard across states or localities, or among federal agencies giving out stimulus funds, in differentiating between a “saved” job and a “created” job.
The White House argues that the actual job number is actually larger than 640,000 — closer to 1 million jobs when one factors in stimulus jobs added in October and, more importantly, jobs created indirectly, such as “the waitress who’s still on the job,” Vice President Biden said today.
So let’s see. Assuming their number is right — 160 billion divided by 1 million. Does that mean the stimulus costs taxpayers $160,000 per job?
Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to the vice president, called that “calculator abuse.”
He said the cost per job was actually $92,000 — but acknowledged that estimate is for the whole stimulus package as of the end of 2010.
Read more$160,000 Per Stimulus Job!?! The White House Calls That ‘Calculator Abuse’
The US dollar is worth only 5 cents compared to the US dollar in 1913.
Related information:
– Max Keiser on RT: ‘Dollar to be buried way before 2018?
– The demise of the US dollar
– Iran Replaces The US Dollar With The Euro
The US is broke, it will collapse and the dollar will be destroyed: ‘The Greatest Depression’
Glenn Beck explains how no longer trading oil in dollars will result in the collapse of the US dollar. He explains how foolish some Americans are to believe that the dollar will always reign supreme.
He explains how the Soviet Union collapsed, and some of the similarities that we are facing now, such as being tied down in a war in Afghanistan with no end in sight.
He also explains how there may come a time of great crisis when we will have to decide very quickly if we want to totally collapse, or if we want to fundamentally transform America instead.
Added: October 06, 2009
Hyperinflation Nation starring Peter Schiff, Ron Paul, Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, Tom Woods, Gerald Celente, and others.
Prepare now before the US dollar is worthless.
Part 1 :
Ron Paul predicted the current economical mess a long time ago.
What is happening now? “We are spending ourselves into oblivion.”
Source: YouTube
The stimulus bill will cause an even greater deficit, that has to be financed.
When the expenditures of a government (its purchases of goods and services, plus its transfers (grants) to individuals and corporations) are greater than its tax revenues, it creates a deficit in the government budget; such a deficit is known as deficit spending. (Source: Wikipedia)
“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”
– Alan Greenspan
So according to Alan Greenspan Obama’s stimulus bill is a confiscation of wealth, your wealth. Obama is looting taxpayers’:
“Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers.” – Congressman Ron Paul
This reckless spending will cause great problems in the very near future.
Former Assistent Secretary of Treasury:
Paul Craig Roberts: The U.S. economy is imploding; Budget deficit cannot be financed
The truth is that…
– Peter Schiff: Stimulus Bill Will Lead to “Unmitigated Disaster”
– Jim Rogers: If Obamanomics happens it’s all over
The ‘Greatest Depression’ is coming and it is getting worse by the minute, thanks to the government and the Fed.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., right, is joined by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, left, and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., during a Senate and House conference on the economic stimulus bill, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2009, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
WASHINGTON (AP) – Moving with lightning speed, the Democratic-controlled Congress and White House agreed Wednesday on a compromise $790 billion economic stimulus bill designed to create millions of jobs in a nation reeling from recession. President Barack Obama could sign the measure within days.
Related articles:
– Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan: Betsy McCaughey (Bloomberg)
– Obama’s $20 Billion Stirs Secrets-for-Sale Health Record Clash (Bloomberg)
“More than one-third of this bill is dedicated to providing tax relief for middle-class families, cutting taxes for 95 percent of American workers,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at a Capitol news conference where he was joined by moderates from both parties whose support is essential for the legislation’s final passage.
The taxpayer looting and unsustainable debt creating ‘Paulson-Bernanke-Brown’ virus spreads rapidly around the world. Even financially relatively sound countries are now affected. ‘Sound economics’ resistance is now at close to 100%.
Critic of UK’s ‘crass Keynesianism’ offers package of tax cuts and state spending
Angela Merkel will make her sharpest political U-turn since becoming German Chancellor this week when her government unveils a €50bn (£44bn) package of tax cuts and incentives to protect Europe’s biggest economy from deepening recession.
The “Pact for Germany” programme contains a battery of tax cuts, health insurance reductions and special government funds designed to stimulate an economy forecast to contract by 3 per cent this year.
The measures, expected to be agreed at a crisis cabinet meeting tomorrow, will be announced only weeks after Mrs Merkel’s grand coalition government heaped scorn on Britain for “tossing around billions” in its efforts to tackle the credit crunch.
Germany’s Finance Minister, Peer Steinbrück, went so far as to condemn Gordon Brown’s VAT cuts as “crass Keynesianism” and said that it would take Britain a “whole generation” to work off the debt. Mrs Merkel insisted that spending one’s way out of recession did not work. (Absolutely correct!)
Don’t Miss:
– Dennis Kucinich: Federal Reserve No More “Federal” Than Federal Express!
Yesterday, however, Mr Steinbrück announced plans to slash the basic tax rate from 15 to 12 per cent to persuade poorer families to keep spending.
Read moreMerkel makes £44bn U-turn to try to save sinking German economy
Added: 9. Januar 2009 Source: YouTube
Important to me is what Kucinich said about the Fed, because the Federal Reserve is not ‘FEDERAL’ and I want to add that there are also no ‘RESERVES’.
People have difficulties to realize that the Fed is just a group of private banksters that rule and plunder the people of their wealth.
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” – Henry Ford
“We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks, hereinafter called the FED. They are not government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers.” – Louis McFadden
There are people who tried to do something about it:
“The high office of the president has been used to foment a plot to destroy America’s freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the citizens of this plight.” – John F. Kennedy November 12, 1963
Date of Kennedy Assassination : NOV. 22, 1963
Obamanomics will be a disaster in the long term:
The government can’t revive the economy. It can create an ideal business environment and that’s it. Keynesianism is outdated and has been proven wrong a long time ago.
A government that is creating an unsustainable amount of debt and is printing money through the Fed – until there are no trees left – to finance that debt creates inflation, even hyperinflation.
This is indeed creating the worst case business environment one can think of and this is exactly what the government and the Fed are doing.
The government cannot burden the people with higher taxes to finance those stimulus packages and so the only alternative is printing money, which creates inflation, which is in reality a hidden tax by the government.
“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” – John Maynard Keynes
“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.” – Alan Greenspan
So now the Fed is buying Treasuries from the government with money that has been created out of thin air. This gives the government the money it needs for this ‘desperately’ needed stimulus package.
This is creating ‘pure’ inflation and they call it ‘quantitative easing.’
It should be called ‘people plundering tax’ instead.
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.” – Mayer Amschel Rothschild
“Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves.” – Andrew Jackson
“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson. History depicts Andrew Jackson as the last truly honorable and incorruptible American president.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover that check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money.” – Boston Federal Reserve Bank
“…, it is creating money” and thereby destroying the value of your money:
“When the President signs this act [Federal Reserve Act of 1913], the invisible government by the money power — proven to exist by the Monetary Trust Investigation — will be legalized. The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation. From now on, depressions will be scientifically created.” – Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.” – Woodrow Wilson
“I am myself persuaded, on the basis of extensive study of the historical evidence, that… the severity of each of the contractions – 1920-21, 1929-33, and 1937-38 – is directly attributable to acts of commission and omission by the Reserve authorities and would not have occurred under earlier monetary and banking arrangements.” – Milton Friedman
It was not accidental [the 1929 stock-market “crash”]. It was a carefully contrived occurrence. … The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all. – Louis McFadden
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.” – Abraham Lincoln
“The power to determine the quantity of money… is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power… Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes – excusable or not – can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic – this is the key political argument against an independent central bank.” – Milton Friedman
Capital must protect itself in every way… Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principle men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd. – J. P. Morgan
A few weeks ago when the Fed announced a strategy designed to bring down long-term interest and home mortgage rates through unlimited Treasury bond purchases, government debt staged a spectacular rally. To the unschooled market observer, the spike may be difficult to understand. After all, why would the value of Treasury bonds rise while their underlying credit quality is deteriorating faster than Bernie Madoff’s social schedule? The move is actually a perfect illustration of the tried and true Wall Street strategy of “buy the rumor and sell the fact”.
If it is well known that Fed will be a big purchaser of Treasuries, those buying now will be positioned to unload their holdings when the buying spree begins. If the Fed pays higher prices in the future, traders can earn riskless speculative profits. If the traders lever up their positions, as many are likely doing, even small profits can turn unto huge windfalls.
The downside of course, is that all of the demand for Treasuries is artificial. Treasuries are now in the hands of speculators looking to sell, not investors looking to hold. These players are analogous to the mid-decade condo-flippers who flocked to new developments for quick profits. They did not intend to occupy their properties, but rather flip them to future buyers. Once these properties came back on the market, condo prices collapsed, as developers were forced to compete for new sales with their former customers.
This is precisely what will happen with Treasuries. Just as the U.S. government issues mountains of new debt to finance the multi-trillion annual deficits planned by the Obama Administration, speculative holders of existing debt will be offering their bonds for sale as well. In order to prevent a complete collapse in the bond prices the Fed will be forced to significantly increase its buying.
However, since the only way the Fed can buy bonds is by printing money, the more bonds they buy the more inflation they will create. As inflation diminishes the investment value of low-yielding Treasuries, such a scenario will kick off a downward spiral. But the more active the Fed becomes in their quest to prop up bond prices, the bigger the incentive to hit the Fed’s bid. The result will be that all Treasuries sold will be purchased by the Fed. But with the resulting frenzy in the Treasury market, and with inflation kicking into high gear, we can expect that demand for other debt classes that the Fed is not backstopping, such as corporate, municipal and agency debt, to fall through the floor, pushing up interest rates across the board.
In order to “save” the economy from these high rates the Fed will then have to expand its purchases to include all forms of debt. If that happens, run-away inflation will quickly turn into hyper-inflation, and our currency will be worthless and our economy left in ruins.
Barack Obama’s policies will unleash a greater economic crisis than the world is now facing, believes US financial forecaster, Peter Schiff.
Added: 07 January 2009
Source: YouTube
Don’t miss:
– Beware the next bubble – bonds
– Peter Schiff: US Dollar is on the verge of collapse; This is hyperinflation; This is Zimbabwe (12/17/2008)
– Peter Schiff: Our economy is broken and there is nothing the government can do…
– Interview: Peter Schiff still grim on future
– Peter Schiff Was Right 2006 – 2007 (2nd Edition)
– Peter Schiff: The Economic Crisis Is Only Just Beginning (Nov. 24, 2008)
– Peter Schiff: The Truth About Bailouts
– CNN’s Glenn Beck and Peter Schiff: Inflation Nation and Martial Law
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
– Albert Einstein
Related articles:
– Obama to warn it may soon be too late to save economy (USA Today)
– Democrats Raise Doubts Over Obama’s Economic Plan (Wall Street Journal)
– US deficit set for postwar record (Financial Times)
– Obama to Warn of Costs of Inaction on the Economy (New York Times)
Added: 7. Januar 2009
Source: YouTube
President-Elect Says Budget Reform Is ‘Absolute Necessity’
Slowing tax revenues and a historic bailout of the U.S. financial system will send the budget deficit soaring toward $1 trillion this year, President-elect Barack Obama said yesterday, and the red ink stands to get substantially deeper if Obama wins approval of a massive economic stimulus plan.
Even if the package of spending and tax cuts helps restore the nation’s immediate economic health, Obama said, the government is likely to be left with “trillion-dollar deficits for years to come” unless policymakers “make a change in the way that Washington does business.”
“We’re going to have to stop talking about budget reform. We’re going to have to totally embrace it. It’s an absolute necessity,” the president-elect told reporters a day before the Congressional Budget Office is set to release its outlook for the coming year.
Legendary investor Jim Rogers on Obama: “What a ‘genius’!”
Jim Rogers: If Obamanomics happens it’s all over
Besides, Keynesianism is so outdated and wrong.
The American economy will be Barack Obama’s primary challenge Photo: EPA
His comments came before a meeting with Congressional leaders in an attempt to get them to back the $300 billion measures aimed at people on lower and middle income, assuring opposition Republicans their views would be considered.
“The economy is very sick,” he said before meeting with Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid. “The situation is getting worse. … We have to act and act now to break the momentum of this recession.”
He said he expected that the latest US unemployment figures, due out later this week, would be sobering.
The complete recovery package would cost between $750 billion and $1 trillion [£630 billion] and include tax cuts for lower and middle income groups and relief for businesses over two years.
– Obama: Trillion-Dollar Deficits ‘for Years to Come’ (The Washington Post)
– Donor to Richardson Also Gave To Obama (The Washington Post)
– Obama Faces Heavy Fire Over Panetta Selection (The Washington Post)
If passed, it would more than double the savings tax payers received in George W Bush’s tax reforms of 2001 and 2003. In real terms the cost would exceed that of the Vietnam War, which drained the treasury of $682 billion in current dollars, according to the Congressional Research Service
Americans must prepare themselves for a massive collapse in the dollar as investors around the world dump their US assets, a former Bank of England policymaker has warned.
MPC founder member Willem Buiter. Photo: CHRISTOPHER COX
The long-held assumption that US assets – particularly government bonds – are a safe haven will soon be overturned as investors lose their patience with the world’s biggest economy, according to Willem Buiter.
Professor Buiter, a former Monetary Policy Committee member who is now at the London School of Economics, said this increasing disenchantment would result in an exodus of foreign cash from the US.
The warning comes despite the dollar having strengthened significantly against other major currencies, including sterling and the euro, after hitting historic lows last year. It will reignite fears about the currency’s prospects, as well as sparking fears about the sustainability of President-Elect Barack Obama’s mooted plans for a Keynesian-style increase in public spending to pull the US out of recession.
Writing on his blog , Prof Buiter said: “There will, before long (my best guess is between two and five years from now) be a global dumping of US dollar assets, including US government assets. Old habits die hard. The US dollar and US Treasury bills and bonds are still viewed as a safe haven by many. But learning takes place.”
As recession fears cause the nation to embrace greater state control of the economy and unimaginable federal deficits, one searches in vain for debate worthy of the moment. Where there should be an historic clash of ideas, there is only blind resignation and an amorphous queasiness that we are simply sweeping the slouching beast under the rug.
With faith in the free markets now taking a back seat to fear and expediency, nearly the entire political spectrum agrees that the federal government must spend whatever amount is necessary to stabilize the housing market, bail out financial firms, liquefy the credit markets, create jobs and make the recession as shallow and brief as possible. The few who maintain free-market views have been largely marginalized.
Taking the theories of economist John Maynard Keynes as gospel, our most highly respected contemporary economists imagine a complex world in which economics at the personal, corporate and municipal levels are governed by laws far different from those in effect at the national level.
Read morePeter Schiff: Our economy is broken and there is nothing the government can do to fix it
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.
Global confidence in the US economy has reached zero, as was proved by last month’s stock market meltdown. But there is an enormous anomaly in the US economy above and beyond the subprime mortgage crisis, the housing bubble and the prospect of recession: 60 years of misallocation of resources, and borrowings, to the establishment and maintenance of a military-industrial complex as the basis of the nation’s economic life
