The Last Superpower is unable to defend its borders, protect its currency, win its wars or balance its budget - Buchanan

On Sat, 20 Sep 2008 17:30:16 -0700 (PDT), St Georges Day April 23rd
> wrote:

>The Party’s Over
>
>Buchanan Blog
>Patrick J. Buchanan
>
>September 19, 2008
>
>The Crash of 2008, which is now wiping out trillions of dollars of our
>people’s wealth, is, like the Crash of 1929, likely to mark the end of
>one era and the onset of another.
>
>The new era will see a more sober and much diminished America. The
>“Omnipower” and “Indispensable Nation” we heard about in all the
>hubris and braggadocio following our Cold War victory is history.
>
>Seizing on the crisis, the left says we are witnessing the failure of
>market economics, a failure of conservatism.
>
>This is nonsense. What we are witnessing is the collapse of Gordon
>Gecko (”Greed Is Good!”) capitalism. What we are witnessing is what
>happens to a prodigal nation that ignores history, and forgets and
>abandons the philosophy and principles that made it great.
>
>A true conservative cherishes prudence and believes in fiscal
>responsibility, balanced budgets and a self-reliant republic. He
>believes in saving for retirement and a rainy day, in deferred
>gratification, in not buying on credit what you cannot afford, in
>living within your means.
>
>Is that really what got Wall Street and us into this mess — that we
>followed too religiously the gospel of Robert Taft and Russell Kirk?
>
>“Government must save us!” cries the left, as ever. Yet, who got us
>into this mess if not the government — the Fed with its easy money,
>Bush with his profligate spending, and Congress and the SEC by
>liberating Wall Street and failing to step in and stop the drunken
>orgy?
>
>For years, we Americans have spent more than we earned. We save
>nothing. Credit card debt, consumer debt, auto debt, mortgage debt,
>corporate debt — all are at record levels. And with pensions and
>savings being wiped out, much of that debt will never be repaid.
>
>Our standard of living is inevitably going to fall. For foreigners
>will not forever buy our bonds or lend us more money if they rightly
>fear that they will be paid back, if at all, in cheaper dollars.
>
>We are going to have to learn to live again without our means.
>
>The party’s over
>
>Up through World War II, we followed the Hamiltonian idea that America
>must remain economically independent of the world in order to remain
>politically independent.
>
>But this generation decided that was yesterday’s bromide and we must
>march bravely forward into a Global Economy, where we all depend on
>one another. American companies morphed into “global companies” and
>moved plants and factories to Mexico, Asia, China and India, and we
>began buying more cheaply from abroad what we used to make at home:
>shoes, clothes, bikes, cars, radios, TVs, planes, computers.
>
>As the trade deficits began inexorably to rise to 6 percent of GDP, we
>began vast borrowing from abroad to continue buying from abroad.
>
>At home, propelled by tax cuts, war in Iraq and an explosion in social
>spending, surpluses vanished and deficits reappeared and began to
>rise. The dollar began to sink, and gold began to soar.
>
>Yet, still, the promises of the politicians come. Barack Obama will
>give us national health insurance and tax cuts for all but that 2
>percent of the nation that already carries 50 percent of the federal
>income tax load.
>
>John McCain is going to cut taxes, expand the military, move NATO into
>Georgia and Ukraine, confront Russia and force Iran to stop enriching
>uranium or “bomb, bomb, bomb,” with Joe Lieberman as wartime
>consigliere.
>
>Who are we kidding?
>
>What we are witnessing today is how empires end.
>
>The Last Superpower is unable to defend its borders, protect its
>currency, win its wars or balance its budget. Medicare and Social
>Security are headed for the cliff with unfunded liabilities in the
>tens of trillions of dollars.
>
>What we are witnessing today is nothing less than a Katrina-like
>failure of government, of our political class, and of democracy
>itself, casting a cloud over the viability and longevity of the
>system.
>
>Notice who is managing the crisis. Not our elected leaders. Nancy
>Pelosi says she had nothing to do with it. Congress is paralyzed and
>heading home. President Bush is nowhere to be seen.
>
>Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs and Ben Bernanke of the Fed chose to
>bail out Bear Sterns but let Lehman go under. They decided to
>nationalize Fannie and Freddie at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of
>billions, putting the U.S. government behind $5 trillion in mortgages.
>They decided to buy AIG with $85 billion rather than see the insurance
>giant sink beneath the waves.
>
>An unelected financial elite is now entrusted with the assignment of
>getting us out of a disaster into which an unelected financial elite
>plunged the nation. We are just spectators.
>
>What the Greatest Generation handed down to us — the richest, most
>powerful, most self-sufficient republic in history, with the highest
>standard of living any nation had ever achieved — the baby boomers,
>oblivious and self-indulgent to the end, have frittered away.
>
>http://buchanan.org/blog/2008/09/pjb-the-partys-over/

America needs a total rebuld. Call your folks in Congress Monday
and protest the bailout of criminal bankers.

ted

http://www.vdare.com/ V-Dare