House of cards

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House of cards
by Ted Rudow III, MA
Thursday Aug 4th, 2011 12:19 PM
President Barack Obama touted his debt ceiling deal Tuesday, saying, “We can’t balance the budget on the backs of the very people who have borne the biggest brunt of this recession.”
Yet that is what he and his coterie of Wall Street advisers have done.
The history of the U.S. national debt is inexorably tied to its many wars. What the U.S. wastes on military spending in one year could pay off almost all of that entire debt. Not only did a compliant Congress agree to fund President George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with emergency appropriations; it did so with borrowed money, raising the debt ceiling 10 times since 2001 without quibbling.
The total debt of the U.S. alone is 14 trillion dollars! It's hard to even conceive of how much money that really is. And yet they continue spending far more than they earn in taxes, getting more in debt every year. Have you ever seen a toy house built of cards, each one stacked precariously atop the others? Well, that is precisely how fragile and shaky the present dollar-based capitalistic system is: Like a house of cards!
Ted Rudow III, MA