Washington's Quantitative Easing (QE) is like bailing out a row boat that has a thousand leaks in it ... with a sardine can; or crawling into a deep, dangerous hole with no exits.
When I was a boy of 13, my best friend, Robert Clark, and I spent Friday nights and Saturdays on and around Mountain Creek Lake near Grand Prairie, Texas. We had many an ill adventure our parents were completely in the dark about. Things like crawling into a large, house sized pile of North American Aircraft Plant trash, near our camp site. We crawled, like moles, into the center of this pile of boxes, pallets and cardboard trash without flashlights. When we smelled smoke, we knew that was a bad sign so we dug our retreat toward the outside and popped out right where two sailors were lighting that pile of trash. they cussed us out but it had no effect on stupidity. We already knew that language so what could they teach us? We knew it all. Did it help us become less stupid ? No! Robert and I call that rare ignorance... our Quantitative Easing #1. It was a lot of fire and smoke and cussin ... and a total loss. Did it help America? No!
Safely out of danger of being burned alive ... temporarily, we decided to go swim in a channel between the two parts of the lake. I was ahead of Robert in about the middle of the 50 yard wide channel .... when I got hung up on a trot line. The hook was in my left hand and Robert was trying to pull me off by my right hand. That left me no hands to dog paddle with and him with but one. That's one swimming hand between two dumb boys... near drowning. The hook finally tore lose and we survived a while longer without having learned anything yet. We call that our Quantitative Easing #2. Did it solve our ignoramus problem? Did we learn by our mistakes? No! Did QE #2 solve America's drowing ignoramus problem? No again. You would think adulthood and experience would teach politicians some little bit of wisdom ... but No, it appears not.
From the channel, we found an unoccupied, old wooden row boat and naturally assumed it was ours to enjoy. The sky was darkening and black in the southwest but we were obsessed with that boat and didn't mind getting wet; we had been wet before. And the lake was beckoning us to cross it with our new, old boat. We would sail out upon the deep and across to that power plant over there, about a mile, and then sail back before dark and home ... so heave ho and away we go. It was only about 5pm Saturday and our mothers didn't pay any attention to what we were up to. We took turns rowing with our one board and dipping our water with ye old sardine can. About half way across, a real storm hit us broad-side. Lightening, thunder and rain demonstrating, for our benefit, the perils of the sea. The sou-west wind was blowing us out... not back, so we rowed with the winds of fate to our destiny. Robert couldn't "bail out" the water fast enough to reduce the water level below our shoe tops. The waves were helping fill the ship and slowing our progress to safe haven on the far side of the the great waters. We were novice sailors, too big for our britches, rather like those steering our ship of state. Even if we survived, we would be on the wrong side of the mighty deep and a thousand miles from home ... six actually. Seaman Robert and I call that "bail out and row" storm to the far side of nowhere our Quantitative Easing #3. It worked even less well than QE#1 or QE#2, and left us cold, wet, hungry, in the dark and on a distant shore a million miles from where we should have been. Seems like it took decades to get back to even ... and home. Did we learn anything .... well yes ... finally. I learned not to go to sea, in a storm, in a leaky boat, without a proper paddle and an emergency, hi-tech plan to get back to sanity. Have our politicians learned anything? Obviously not. I see Quantitative Easing to infinity because there is NO way back. The winds of fate are against us. It's either default on our debt or print money. The storm I see coming will not blow away our debt no matter who is President or Congressmen, though it will certainly blow us to some unfamiliar, unpleasant, distant shore.
If you doubt my stories, call Robert Clark on Windsor Drive in Arlington, Texas. Maybe he will tell you about crashing a small plane in our back yard when he was 13.
You don't believe that either ? Call my older sister Betty Rychlik also living in Arlington. If I know you, I will give you her number if you will call me at 817-897-2116. It's true ... and he was soloing at 13 and 1/2. His dad convinced the small airport he was 16. That's Texas. RB
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