HOW TO BECOME A TOTAL FAILURE

You can often guage the mood of the public by what the commedians are saying. John Stewart of the Daily Show doesn’t pull punches when it comes to politics, in fact he goes so far over the top at times, that even his faithful audience fans are surprised. Remember that Mr. Stewart leans so far to the left that I’m amazed he can sit in a chair without toppling, or keep from walking in ever leftward circles. Nonetheless I catch his show because he is funny. Funny trumps accuracy when it comes to entertainment.

Recently he aired a side-by-side clip of President Barak now saying almost word-for-word the same things President Bush was saying about the Iraq war. Now that Obama is in the White House the tune he’s whistling sounds eerily similar to the past administration’s. I was sure this was going to happen. I was hoping I was wrong. I wanted the new President to fundementally change things, but he won’t, or he can’t (Rule #6). 

Will it be business as usual in Washington until it all crumbles like the Soviet Union? Too negative? Maybe you are right, maybe I’m overreacting, or letting my anxieties run away with me. But did you ever stop to consider what would happen to this country, this economy, if others stopped loaning us money and insisted on payback? Where do you think the money is coming from to finance the bailouts, the social programs, the military? The national debt as of today is over $11.3 Trillion dollars (Rule #5) and is climbing at a rate of nearly $4 Billion dollars per day. The total amount of taxes collected by the Feds in 2007 was $2.406 Trillion dollars, or over $6 Billion daily. Now I’m not a mathemetician but even I can see that it would take over five years to pay off the debt if every single penny was applied to it, and if we didn’t borrow any more, and there wasn’t any interest. Since the debt is climbing $4 Billion dollars a day, and we are raising $6 Billion the good news is we could conceivably have a couple of billion a day to play with. If we applied that two billion difference exclusively to the debt, excluding interest, it would take some 15 1/2 years. Since interest is being paid at varying rates it would take a computer much bigger than mine to project the interest burden. Would added interest add another five, ten or twenty years to the payoff? Suffice it to say, we can’t, and won’t be able to pay off the debt in the foreseeable future.

Ex-President Clinton bragged about having a surplus. I wonder what his definition of surplus really was? Mine would be having more money in the bank than you need to payoff all that you owe. Is that the kind of surplus he was talking about–I don’t think so.

Back to my original question who really runs the country? To find that out you have to know who owns it. Since time began the owners are in charge. Who owns the United States of America? Maybe that’s all part of the breifings of a new president. They get to find out who calls the shots, but you can bet that they wont tell us (Rule #8).

Written by Bill Ruesch blog author of Talking Through My Hat, A Print Broker’s Ruminations www.billprintbroker.com