<Oil prices, which passed a record $50 a barrel yesterday and then retreated, have soared before, often causing RECESSIONS.>
Economic recessions and depressions are MAN MADE events. The financial mismanagement which brings them about can last for years or even decades. The time at which they happen cannot be forecast with precision. But what CAN be stated with clarity is the policies which will, in time and with certainty, lead to a real economic breakdown. On the other side, the economic and fiscal policies which do NOT lead to any such economic breakdown are KNOWN and have been known in outline for more than 200 years and with precision for a century. These policies deny any proclaimed efficacy of economic intervention by government. They deny any efficacy of inflating the quantity of money in use, or of expanding credit, or of "deficit spending". They deny any place to the welfare state, or to the claim that government regulation is superior to a freely functioning price system. They hold that such "policies" as direct or indirect government control over internal or foreign trade, government pensions as a "substitute" for private savings, the imposition of "public property" over private property, and the introduction of "legal tender" and fiat paper money are ALL destructive of the economic well being of anyone who has such "policies" forced upon them.
Sadly, too many Americans have let all these "policies" be imposed upon them while living for a decade in a land of economic delusion created by their government. The result is that debt has climbed to the point where it takes an ANNUAL inflow of $US ONE TRILLION to stave off instant collapse. |
