I agree and would love to see Ron Paul get a win or at least get to voice his views in a more main stream forum.
On the other hand, I have to wonder if even if he could win, somehow get past the road blocks of Congress and bring sanity back to the economy, if the system could survive a shock of that magnitude. While long term it would help to ensure our survival, the short term pain involved would likely be too great for most to take.
Our system has evolved into a house of cards and to tear it down in order to build a concrete lasting house instead, system would likely erupt into chaos for a short period.
In the old days, debt was used to get more return than the original amount loaned. Now it takes nearly 8 times debt to get one dollar of return.
Cutbacks in defense would kill the California Valley and many other areas that rely on defense spending. In the 90s when they cut back the B-2 program, home values collapsed in Palmdale. Right now, they are seeing a new boom in sales based on Edwards AFB switching to civilians and the ramp up in the F-22 and Joint Strike Fighter program. If these were scaled back or canceled, the homes that are selling for 400K would likely be unable to be given away at any price. Look at the stock prices in BA, UTX, etc and cuts in defense would decimate them and thier surrounding areas as well.
Worse yet, a return to sanity for the toilet paper we call US Dollars and a reduction in the printing presses stamping out what ever wall street demands would kill the rest of the economy. Imagine daddy taking the helicopter keys away from Bernanke and how the economy would react. Japan just draining a few million hit the world hard and they don't print near as much as we do.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to see Ron Paul get his way as I think our long term survival could depend on it but I just wanted to point out how hard it would be short term. That is why I think the status quo has been maintained as long as it has. I bet a lot of politicians want to do the right thing until they realize how far down the rabbit hole we have gone and that the pain would be so great that it would be political suicide to do the right thing. Thus they just keep doing the irresponsible thing and hope it doesn't blow apart on their watch.
Good Luck,
Lee |
