Few understand the real destructive impact of “BIG BUCKS” .
(EUGENE, Ore.) - One President multiplied the U.S. national debt during his regime by more than all others preceding him. You want to play “Guess WHO”?
It was Ronald Reagan, Hollywood luminary, lighting up the heavy role of President of the United States. His “administration” spent more than a third of the TEN TRILLION dollars on global confrontation with the Soviet Union in the closing stages of a Cold War that raged from 1945 till January 1989. (In U.S. dollar-value as of 1988.)
That massive militaristic expenditure added more to our national debt than all previous Presidential regimes back to Gen. George Washington, COMBINED.
Most historians now date the advent of such wildly adventuresome fiscal foolhardiness from that Reagan era, with its “supply-side” management concealing and concentrating damages via the concept of monetarism.
“Monetarism” is the heart and soul of conservative economic thought, controlling the flow of money and the actions of government vs inflation and unemployment. What monetarism does is create the essential conditions (very theoretically) for “free trade” itself.
That’s why “the Washington consensus”, --shaping the economic policies of agencies like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and others-- has clamped down “monetarism” on rescue and aid actions with developing nations around the world.
With “woefully distressing and damaging results”, according to many world-leading economists now. Most specializing, best-informed experts today agree that monetarism and offshoots of “supply-side” theory --well-known together as “Reaganomics”-- lie at the very root of worldwide economic crisis now engulfing the free-flow of credit, and threatening what’s left of distorted, perverted “free trade”, worldwide.
They point to the perhaps-irreversible rapid growth of globalization and its strong impacts on every nation, particularly the “third world” of now-developing nations, as irresistible proof of what’s occurring on this globe.
Plunder of natural resources by piratical corporate control of both credit and trade is one highly obvious source of overwhelming concern, complexifying all the rest of economic characteristics into a stupefying -- yes-- stew.
Most join in seeing the continuance of debt creation under Bush I and II as proof positive of cause and consequence for the crisis now engulfing the financial and credit-delivery systems worldwide.
The joint impacts of both inflation and deflation, as well as the continued fall-in-value of the American dollar --the “free trade” standard worldwide-- makes all calculations of consequences much more complex and confusing.
Even world-winner economists disagree on how to decipher the monstrous fiscal mysteries we are thus forced to face --while most of us simply do NOT understand what those REALLY BIG BUCKS numbers represent in realities.
For many, that explains the rapid reliance on such mysterious monstrous asset-bundles as those now seen at the heart of the extremely damaging mortgage collapse. Those derivatives-of-derivative assets are reportedly so complex that even those who created them are now at a loss (no pun !) both to understand them AND to profit from them.
Undoubtedly, irrevocably --AND UNNECESSARILY-- that situation has resulted from overemphasis on deregulation, allowing commercial and investment banks to commit the financial hari-kari from which wise and informed New Deal-era legislation protected the public.
What’s a TRILLION? It is One THOUSAND Million.
If you counted once-a-second, day and night, it would take you more than a week to reach a million. If you counted once-a-second, it would take you a lifetime to reach ONE BILLION.
If you counted once-a-second for 32,000 years -- longer than the human race is known to have inhabited Earth-- you could reach ONE TRILLION --if you COULD last that long!
HOW MUCH is TEN Trillion? Here it is:
$10,000,000,000,000
That’s twelve-zeros, if you can count them.
Using the l998 dollar-values (cited then by Carl Sagan in both PARADE Magazine and his COSMOS tvprogram): “With $10 trillion, you could buy EVERYTHING in the U.S. except the land. Everything--all the houses, airplanes, factories, highways, railroads, stores, hotels, food, clothing, medicine, furniture, toys, games, and baby bottles.
“At the beginning of the Cold War, the nation was, in all significant respects, untouchable by any foreign military force. Today, after expenditure of this immense national treasure, the United States is vulnerable to virtually instant annihilation.” (1998-dollars, remember!)
To put it in more-timely perspective: The Iraq War, begun “as preemptive attack on a nation that had not touched us by its own aggression”, has already cost us a total of THREE TRILLION DOLLARS.
That’s according to Nobel Laureate economist Dr. Joseph Stiglitz, who wrote a whole book documenting that brutal fact, widely acclaimed by economists worldwide.
That “wasting war”--one of TWO continuing-- now counts costs at the continually-growing rate of:
$4,681 per household.
$1,721 per person.
$341.4 million per day.
Its economic impacts on American life and our economy is so tremendous and paramount to all other considerations that many publications now print, daily, the rapidly-ascending sunk-costs totals, and most large cities have a public clock-display counting down the trillions of dollars-lost, remorselessly bleeding away.
What those compelling, insistent death-count and war-cost displays show, every day, updated by constant-stream, is so rapidly-growing that it is far outdated within a minute, so not-shown here.
Go to this link to be informed instantly --and very compellingly, too: nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home.
There is even a personal cost-of-war-to-you calculator, based on your income, easily figured for astounding economic impact on your own finances.
Nearly all of those sickening sunk-costs demand stupendous simultaneous borrowings from whatever sources can be tapped --including many other national pools of capital, some of surprising depth and origin.
That guarantees their addition to the overwhelming total now constituting the major legacy this generation already has in place for our children --AND THEIR children, too.
Inescapably, that huge burden of international interest payments will continue at least unto the third generation so cursed by near-criminal national-level incompetence, ineptness and impure political intent. It is no coincidence, naturally and inescapably a fact, that this Iraq War example originates in the public record of the Bush II “administration”.
It is no coincidence, either, that the preemptivewar decision --to attack Iraq --was made rapidly by that administration, from long-laid, publicly-stated prior planning.
That irrefutable fact is demonstrated in the Clinton Era “open letter” to the President seeking to set up rapid application of the Project for A New American Century.
Thus, for rational and responsible people in this nation, especially following a transformative Presidential election just completed, we now face that inevitable question for any democratic-mandating population: What is our demanded next-step to preserve, prolong, protect and project our original democratic republic?
How can there be any serious remaining question about that?
We have, presciently placed by our Founders in the famed American Constitution instituting freedom for all to seek equal opportunity under the law, precisely the tools we need to set our direction clear and remain constant to their principles.
We need to capture and confront those who perpetrated these damaging deeds, and make sure their fate writes a precedent to echo down the centuries, as does our American historical search for freedom.
Given all that has gone before in our national history, including those heavy current costs of “wasting wars” in youthful blood and national treasure, what other honorable choice do we still have?
Henry Clay Ruark is the one of, if not the most experienced, working reporter in the state of Oregon, and possibly the entire Northwest. Hank has been at it since the 1930's, working as a newspaper staff writer, reporter and photographer for organizations on the east coast like the Bangor Maine Daily News.Today he writes Op-Ed's for Salem-News.com with words that deliver his message with much consideration for the youngest, underprivileged and otherwise unrepresented people.
Op Ed: Trillions Of U.S. DebtSalem-News.com