What has happened was destined to happen. There was no way for it not to happen. The financial disaster came as no surprise to Wall Street. Nor did it come out of the blue. And it was not without a good reason for its happening that it finally happened. But the long-looming crisis seems worse than expected. Three of the five supporting pillars of Wall Street have tumbled down. The 150-year-old Lehman Brothers Bank survived the Civil War and the Great Depression to share the fate of other financial monsters in the whirl storm of 2008.
It is impossible to live indefinitely on borrowed money. But the aggregate debt of the federal and municipal governments, the banks and the business corporations topped threefold the gross domestic product of the United States of America when that country was entering the year 2007. That sounds worse than the Great Depression.
The public debt of the United States of America has skyrocketed from 5.5 trillion to 9.3 trillion dollars in the years of the Bush-Cheney Administration. The corporate debt has, in the meantime, grown twofold – to come close to an unimaginable 14 trillion dollars. The frenetic efforts by the nearly desperate Bush Administration cannot turn the tide.
Any sober-minded person cannot help wondering what kept the powers-that-be from looking in the right direction, why the United States has been driven to this financially catastrophic condition. With dark clouds gathering in the sky over the American economy, George W. Bush revealed to the masses last January what he was planning to do — not for a return to the normal state of affairs, mind you, but for the accelerated advance of the national economy! Far from down-to-earth, his plan for action highlighted nothing but his favorite idea of corporate tax reductions. Nine months into the year, that plan for action rests clean forgotten by George W. Bush and the Republican Party’s next-in-line John McCain.
But the Republican Administration seems to have no intention of discarding the political manifesto which caused the economic problems of today’s America. It is planning to allocate more than half a trillion dollars, i.e. 74 percent more than it did back in 2001, to the PentagonWorld War II has the military received such a big sum of money from the federal budget. The military spending of the United States tops the sum total of the military budgets of all other nations taken together. in its draft of next year’s federal budget. Not once since the end of
What the next President of the United States stands to inherit from the incumbent compares unfavorably with what George W. Bush inherited from his predecessor in January, 2001. It took the Bush Administration a year to squander the inherited surplus budget and run into debt. Budget deficit had been growing, year in and year out, before becoming critically big on the eve of the current financial tempest.
Bloated military budgets provide an explanation for the negative balance between budget revenues and budget spending. Military spending has grown 62 percent under the Bush Administration. Washington has resumed the arms race of the cold war period. And I have to point out that it resumed the arms race before the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington which would be played up under the banner of antiterrorist action but in the best interests of the military-industrial complex, whose intrinsic dangers were explained to the Americans by the great Dwight Eisenhower.
The hopelessly lost war in Iraq has, according to experts’ counts, will devour three trillion dollars. A Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz, says in his new book that the recklessly planned war in Iraq has definitely weakened the U.S. economy. It is impossible to spend three trillion dollars on a sure-to-be-lost war, Stiglitz says, and not to be called to account at home base.
What is happening to the American economy measures up to Stiglitz’s words about payment at home base. Neither American policy-makers nor participants in the presidential race are ready to say that out loud. But sooner or later, they will have to admit that their ambitious but short-sighted leaders have placed an unbearable burden on the shoulders of America.
Catching as it was, belief in the omnipotence of America has ended. Whatever losses it inflicts, the tempest will eventually calm down, but America will never again be what it used to be till September, 2008. Powerful as it is, that country is incapable of dominating the world.
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Personally, I think our problems have stemmed from the idea that we should be the "Policemen of the world." I have to agree with Martin Luther King Jr. on this one.
Whether we like it or not, we did not write the laws in other countries. We have not business dictating to other countries that they have to follow OUR laws. They have different cultures, all older than ours. They have different challenges than we have. They have different lifestyles than we have.
Last time I checked, I didn't see anywhere in the Bible where God came down and appointed America to force the world into conforming to Christianity at the threat of death. Jesus didn't say take up your sword and follow me. He said, "And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me." (Matthew 10:38) He also said, "Put your sword back in its place," Jesus said to him, "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword." (Matthew 26:52)
Our "Christian President" and his administration have made it their "appointed duty" to invade other countries and force them to conform to his way of life. Bush seems to feel that he was appointed by God to do so. So, who is this God that Bush is listening to? Perhaps we can get a clue from Sarah Palin. It seems that her God appointed her to build the Alaskan Pipeline.
It seems that she thinks this war in Iraq was for God.
So, just who is this God they worship? It's certainly not the same Jesus I read about in the Bible.
Now, I know that there are a lot of Mexicans who are named Jesus. Perhaps that's what confused Bush? Maybe one of them told Bush his name was Jesus and Bush thought he was listening to Christ? Maybe someone like Jesus Sylvia-Herzog?
It seems to me that this picture is representative of the God they're following:
Perhaps their God is a rich Texas oil man? Someone like T. Boone Pickens, Jr?
Love, Hope, Peace, & Christ Is With Us All,
Cal-el
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