The run-away government keeps pontificating, posturing and pandering with each day bringing a new massive give-away program of tax dollars accompanied by a sequence of disclosures of legislative incompetence followed by a televised exercise in blame shifting. It's great theater but only tragedy. There's not a lick of comedy except for the darkest kind.
Yesterday brought the news of the Federal Reserve leaping further into the fray. They've run out of gas for their usual monetarist policy tools, the manipulation of interest rates. Unlike our "progressive" federal tax structure in which you can give someone who pays zero tax a tax rebate, when it comes to interest rates it isn't reasonable to lower them below zero. Paying people to take money is still not within the acceptable range of policy. Maybe next year.
Here's a piece at the Atlantic:
Channeling Everett Dirksen
It was the mid-Sixties when Sen. Dirksen, that velvet-voiced senior statesman from Illinois, intoned, "a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money."
The line drew attention because in those days a billion was a meaningful number. Now, we don't even take notice until we are discussing hundreds of billions and the previously rare word, trillion, has become part of the daily lexicon.
The Fed's action yesterday is the firing up of the virtual money presses. As noted in the Atlantic, today "money" isn't always greenbacks. More often it is ledger book entries of fund transfers and debt movements. Think about your personal life. Do you carry cash or credit cards more often? Is remembering your debit PIN more common than counting your change?
If we start printing money, which isn't really anything but a promise, don't we quickly leap to the top of that slippery ski-jump of inflation? Aren't we standing in the gate of a wild excursion in which we see a leap-frogging of costs rising, wages countering, savings deteriorating and debts becoming meaningless because they will be paid in tomorrow's money which is worth much less than today's
If you went to school in the '50s, '60s or '70s you may still have a world history textbook in your basement that tells the story of the Weimar Republic in Germany. It was the period between WW I and WW II, leading to the rise of Hitler. The section in my book was illustrated by a photo of an old German woman pushing a wheelbarrow down the street filled with currency. She was taking bushels of Reichmarks to the bakerei to buy the loaf of daily bread. Tomorrow's loaf would cost appreciably more.
Failure to learn the lessons of history dooms us to repeat them. Then came Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Stalin. Could that sort of life be in our future under current trends? Demagogues leading governments?
What do you think?
1 comment:
Hi Ed. I stumbled upon your blog while searching for an excerpt from your book "When Thunder Rolled". I was telling a friend about the "business cards" you had made, and I was trying to remember some of the titles you had on them. Unfortunately, my copy of your book is in storage at the moment.
Anyway, my Dad was a Thud driver too. As much as I loved everything aviation related, I never picked his brain for his experiences in SEA. I always assumed I'd have plenty of time to grow up, sip beers, and listen to his stories.
Unfortunately, he passed away when I was 18, and I know very, very little about his time in the -105.
I do know he was stationed at McConnell AFB at one time or another. And he always had a yellow patch with a black knight's helmet with a vertical sword through it. He talked of the 561st, but I don't know if that was a TFW, TFS, or what.
Anyway, I don't mean to ramble but I just wanted to say "Hi", and to thank you for providing me with some idea of what it is my father experienced over SEA.
As for the political stuff, you're preaching to the choir. I'm stunned that so many people are so blase when it comes to the damage that is being done to our country.
It seems the current philosophy is to run the money printing presses at full speed, while bowing to foreign leaders, apologizing to the world for being American, and by the way, lets gut the defense budget in favor of expanding social handouts to those who contribute nothing to society.
Keep fighting the good fight, Ed.
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