The Coming Tidal Wave of Economic Disaster

I have slowed down in my blogging because this is the year end. And since it is the end of the old and the beginning of the new we need to look forward to the potential new tidal wave of woes facing us the next two years. We know that President Obama might to slip in a lot of “executive orders” bypassing congress. Some of them we liberals may like. Others, if they restrict our potential for domestic energy output, I might not be so happy about. We know various republicans have put out “executive orders” giving the president new emergency powers in the time of a “crisis”. We could see marshal law a lot sooner than we think. The President has the power. We are pretty much a slave to what our overlords decree concerning food regulation or security to banning individual rights many thought were untouchable. We don’t know how far this “politically correct” speech” thing may go. Is, for instance the use of such words as Nigger, or Faggot, or Queer or Dyke- - going to be made a felony? But there is a more immediate problem that was brought to my attention recently and this has to do with the soundness of the US Dollar. Maybe it just went in one ear and out the other but you know that almost all international trade is conducted in US dollars, even oil. What this means is that a nation like Germany, if they want to import a lot of goods, has to keep the value of their currency high so that they don’t pay more for imported goods and lower the standard of living of the German people. But the US gets a free ride. It doesn’t matter how much our currency is devalued because the dollar is thee standard of exchange. So this is why we run these astronomical trade deficits year after year and never have to pay the piper. In any Adam Smith based economy the US would simply cut the value of the US dollar or other nations would cut it for us. Nixon back in 1971 when gold was selling for a meager $43.00 should have cut the value of the US dollar to match this new gold price so that thirty-five old dollars bought you forty-three new, revalued dollars, that were worth less. With these new dollars we could export more but import less and this would restore our trade balance to it’s proper equilibrium. But that didn’t happen. Now all these nations are holding US dollars and there are roomers of a revolt and nations refusing to accept the dollar as legal trade tender. England has already tried a lot of economic experimentation, with mainly disasterous results. They used to talk about the pound sterling as the International Standard. But that was before World War II, which should make Nazi lovers like Pat Buchannon happy. Many suspect that the nation now will resort to Nixonian economic funny business, and plans may already be in the works to freeze wages and prices, even before the inflation tidal wave hits. If the dollar is no longer accepted as legal international tender, inflation will surely happen because if we had to pay out in dollars what our dollar was really worth, imports, which we live on almost entirely now, would skyrocket and inflation would be here, and suddenly. We aren’t even talking about the US being the world’s leading debtor nation. So far China is happy bankrolling our foolishness. But there is no way of saying how long this will continue. When John Kennedy died in 1963, who would have guessed that the 1964 half dollar would be the only half dollar that was all silver? I said back in the summer of 2007 that “these are the good old days”, with a picture of a house. Well, these may be the “good old days” of carefree international trade. How soon before we pay the piper?

The worst disaster of the year 2010 was the Obama Health Care monstrocity I just wanted to comment on the Death Pannel thing. Apparently there is some fresh memo saying Obama still wants death pannels. I agree if there is any chance at all of "Death Panels" we need to repeal Obama's health care plan. We need to repeal it for financial reasons - we can't afford it, and also it's a giveaway to insurance companies. I never liked that aspect. I also don't like the part about unfunded mandates and regulations everybody has to buy health insurance. That makes a criminal out of healthy people who don't care to buy insurance. As you know last March on that sayings page I said "Half a loaf is not better than no loaf at all, if you're selling shit". I had in mind specifically the Health Care bill when I wrote this. Any positive potential for this bill was long since legislated out of existance. There is no attempt to "bend the cost curve" that everyone talks about. Again, this congress needs to watch Obama's "executive orders" where he could ban domestic energy sources or whatever. Also cap and trade may be dead but we need to make sure of it. We can't afford any carbon tax or energy tax no matter how it's sugar coated under the guise of free trade, which almost makes it seem like something conservatives would welcome. Well I don't. This whole idea of the economic "selling of indulgences" is really a concept Rod Serling would have come up with. The economy can't take this "chemotherapy" because it's just too unhealthy to begin with. (Selah)