Sep 22, 2012

Only One Remotely Feasible Remedy For U.S. Debt

Common Sense Commentary: Our country is on the cusp of an immense problem. We are caught in a trap of our own design. Greed and gullibility delivered us here by the hand of equally greedy and gullible politicians.  We are locked in the vice like grip of unrelenting debt.  We can't go forward and we can't go back.  We are in a state of national paralysis in the face of undeclared, unaudited, bankruptcy.

The national debt, of actually borrowed money, is $16 Trillion and increasing at another trillion dollars every year.  Obama and Congress and past presidents and Congresses have so busted the orderliness of any possible budget, that to present one is an exercise in futility and deception. A private enterprise, constitutional government cannot function, in harness with a Socialistic welfare state.  It's an illusion which is fetus to  full blown delusion.

In addition, our national, contractual and committed obligations, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, federal retirement programs, and an assortment of other legal obligations, is estimated at between $75 trillion and $200 trillion dollars. They have to "estimate" it because it too big to even comprehend.

These debts and obligations cannot ever be paid off in any legitimate manner.  It couldn't be paid off if every one was taxed 100% of all income.  Therefore, increasing taxes by any lesser percentage, would not make a dent in our debts.

Ceasing all federal spending on all present government expenditures would not solve the problem either.  It's bigger even than that.  It's not "too big to fail", it's too big to succeed.

Our government has only three options: (1) Default!  Declare bankruptcy and disavow all debts. (2) Print enough paper currency to pay off all our debts with worthless dollars.  This would destroy the buying power of your dollars to near zero, and totally wipe out U.S. credibility.... what there is left of it. (3) Peg the U.S. dollar to gold and silver similar to the "Gold" and "Silver" Standards which carried this country from it's beginnings to the  most successful nation on earth.    It wasn't free Enterprise or capitalism which undermined the dollar, but Socialism.The Gold Standard  was the limiting factor on our Congresses and Presidents which kept them from printing currency beyond the amount of Gold we had in reserve.  To print more money, they had to find more gold to put in reserve.

At the last audit/inventory of U.S. Gold reserves in Fort Knox, West Point, and New York City, in Eisenhower's administration, subtracting what has been spent since then, we should have 8000 tons of gold in reserve, if it has not been surreptitiously leased, lost or spent.  If we divided that 8000 tons of gold by the total amount of all our debts, and valued each dollar by it's proportionate share of that gold, each dollar would have a tiny fraction of an ounce of gold backing it and the U.S. dollar would suddenly  regain  a measure of it's lost respect, world-wide.  As it now stands, the dollar has nothing, zero, backing it except a hollow government promise, which nobody believes anymore because they don't trust us, and nations around the world are trying to get rid of dollars from their own reserves.  China is buying every commodity in sight to spend down their trillion U.S. dollars.

I think the latter, some kind of restructured gold/silver/commodity standard will eventually be recognized as the force majeure of our government and followed by other governments who have large reserves of gold, silver, precious metals or commodities.

A final note.  This economic remedy would drive the price of gold and silver to astronomical values.  It will be a rough ride but it's direction, in the long term, will be up.  Beware of anything that is a paper promise except it be Holy Writ by the hand of God which, only, is trustworthy.  RB

Read this New York Sun article, just out, related to my own summation above.RB

http://www.nysun.com/editorials/germany-eyes-gold-standard/87997/

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