Bush's Economics and the Credit Crunch

In banana republics the financial meltdown usually doesn’t occur until the first family has left office and is safely ensconced in another country. Mexico’s peso crisis, for instance, didn’t materialize until after Carlos Salinas had passed off the palace keys to his successor and bought a one-way ticket to Ireland. So I’m inclined to believe that the current liquidity crisis, accompanied by a fairly precipitous drop in the Dow Jones, is only a momentary phenomenon. The current volatility should not force prudent investors to rethink their retirement portfolios. And it shouldn’t cause them to hoard canned foods, automatic weapons, and medical supplies in anticipation of global economic depression. No, any economic clouds Americans are likely to face are almost certainly days if not months away. After all, if the Bush Administration can avoid impeachment and avoid accountability for the disastrous war in Iraq, then it can certainly avoid any kind of financial reckoning until January of 2008.

There is, alas, little doubt that most Americans are poorer than they were when Bush/Cheney took office. After all, we’ve been borrowing money to pay for: tax cuts, the war in Iraq, and to repair our dilapidated bridges. Actually, we’ve been neglected investing in our bridges and roadways, which is one reason 25% of them are rated structurally deficient. That leads to the inescapable conclusion that our highways are more dangerous than the terrorists. But just as most Americans would rather buy a giant screen TV (for no money down) than fix a leaky roof, so the Bush/Cheney Administration would rather nuke Iran than fix America.

In a sane world we probably wouldn’t borrow money from China, so that we can but oil from Saudi Arabia, so that Saudi Arabia can afford to purchase our high-tech weapons, so that we can keep our military-industrial-political system going, which we need to defend us in a world awash in weapons but scarce in oil. But as the reader may have noticed for him or herself, this isn’t a sane world, not even remotely. Which is why the Bush Administration kind of makes sense, in a tragic Shakespearean kind of way, because we need someone more foolish than us to enact our foolishness for us so that we might recognize how foolish we are, before it is too late.

The Bush Administration has mortgaged America’s future by selling China promissory notes so it can pour resources into a money pit like Iraq. But Americans have long been living beyond their means and ignoring and denying the emerging energy crunch, the climate crisis, and our decrepit infrastructure. We’re on course to spend more than a trillion dollars on Iraq, with nothing to show for it. And we owe the Chinese $ 1.3 trillion for the money they lent us so we can buy their poisoned toothpaste, deadly dog food, and flat tires. One day we’ll wake up and find that we’re poor and stupid. If you don’t believe me, then I have a bridge (in either Baghdad or Brooklyn) to sell you.

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