Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Mega-toasters

Do you remember when banks used to offer incentives (aka bribes) to potential customers in the form of little gifts? As in, “Open a checking or savings account with us and receive a free toaster!”? Nowadays it’s, “Open a credit card account with us and you can transfer you debt to our card and pay it off interest-free,” or “and get a round-trip airline ticket to any U.S. destination.”

Well, that’s what banks also do with big, BIG customers, such as national governments. Except it’s on a far bigger scale than toasters. Make sure, Mr. Senator and Madam Representative, to support a bill for the government to borrow $100 million from our bank this year, and if the bill passes, a million or so will go to your Swiss bank account.

Thus, the real problem our politicians face is the opposite of what they tell us. They’re always moaning about how to find enough money to cover expenses. Their real problem, though, is to find uses for all that money they borrow in our name. That’s why there’s so much pork in all the bills. That’s why there are items such as that bridge to nowhere Sarah Palin made infamous, and other idiotic programs. That’s why even politicians who lambast “big government” keep on voting for it. That’s why each cabinet minister here in Greece has on average a hundred paid advisors among his family and friends. Up to now, at least, they literally have borrowed more money than they knew what to do with (other than fight over how to divvy it up) and yet, no matter how much a government borrows and no matter how much it taxes, the money is never enough.

Does anybody remember Mr. Obama’s campaign promise to veto any bill that had any pork in it? Has he done that? Well, he can’t, because big money has to keep on being borrowed; therefore, there has to be pork to list on the expense accounts; expenses must in this way be exaggerated to “justify” the loan. And why must the big money keep on being borrowed? So the legislators can receive their “toasters”, so the banks can collect their interest, and eventually, so the whole house of cards can come tumbling down, as it has in various European countries, and a new international order can be imposed to “fix” the problem (preserving, all the while, the interests of the banks). You see how sweet all this is for what the Greek Prime Minister called, the “rich ruling class”? They make huge profits short-term, long-term, every way, all around.

In fiscal 2009, the U.S. deficit tripled from the year before.

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