15 million people unemployed and millions more underemployed or not counted because their unemployment benefits ran out. Freddie and Fannie holding 4.4 million home foreclosures and many more to come. You and each American owes $44,000 to U.S. bond holders, while your dollar is sinking and the value of your savings is falling. Government and trade deficits are at nightmare levels and all on your credit card.
Desperate, the Fed just began a $600 billion stimulus. But because America is already so deeply in debt. it is printing the money out of thin air, which is alarming our trading partners and bond buyers. Will the Fed's approach work? In the last two years, it has issued $1.7 billion in stimulus, taken trillions of dollars in "toxic assets" and kept interest rates to savers at near zero so banks can restore their profits and corporations can borrow cheaply. Yet the economy remains on the edge of collapse.
But there is hope. Resolution begins with government leaders acknowledging the depth of our problems and then tackling them, not trying to borrow and spend our way out of them, for that will not work. It took us many years to get into such dire circumstance and it will take time and pain to resurrect our nation.
Here is what must be done: Immediately end the wars, for they are rapidly draining us financially and morally. Then start closing the 1,000 or so military bases all over the world and slash military weapons expenditures.
This is the prelude to the big move. Cap Federal spending at 10% below last year's budget. This per cent is in line with what some European nations are doing and we are in as dire straits as any of them. Everything is on the table, including Military, Education, Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare. We don't have the money!
The discussion of tax cuts is over, to be replaced by tax hikes, for we are in an emergency situation. As President Obama heard harshly at the recent G-20 economic summit, we are the only ones who don't know it. Our mentality is: nothing deemed important can be cut yet everything is important to someone. But you pay for it, not me and by the way, lower my taxes. Sorry but that works only in Fantasyland.
The sooner we do these things, the sooner we get out from under this massive mess we've created for ourselves and for the rest of the world. If we move fast, perhaps we can avoid a Depression. America was a great nation, a manufacturing powerhouse and it can be again. But we have to move now!
Dick
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