WEEKLY WARNING WORDS
July 21, 2004 - Week 44 - Our Economy (A Short History)
BY DR. BRUNO J. KEITH
It is not free. It is not democratic. It is not decent or human, regardless of the sweat & blood of our most productive workforce. Our inner urge to do our duty, to try to be the best we can be & excel as over-achievers in our ever-growing superior productivity, nothing has ever been rewarded by our commercial - industrial - military traitors to their people and laborers. Those slave-drivers keep side-tracking "general welfare" as demanded by their & our Constitution.
World War II destroyed all potential foreign competition. But, because our victorious semi-fascists were afraid of a greatly devastated Soviet Union, they quickly revived our natural enemies at great cost to all - America. By our super-efforts & huge monetary stipends, Germany & Japan were blessed by our militarists, our industrialists, merchants, politicians & their con-sorts to become instant Wirtschaftswunders, greatest manufacturers & top bankers.
Their own aberrant industrial genius took advantage of our playful children & their stupid parents to "zapp" US out of many billions in a hurry as a public show of their kind of gratitude for midwiving their relatively short-termed leadership in modern industrial machinery, computerism & ingathering of our riches.
Within a short revival period, German automotive quality & Japanese cheapness & practical gasoline-saving made their state-sponsored monopolies prosperous & 20 of their banks the foremost & wealthiest in the world. While we provided the nuclear umbrella for both economies at bankrupting expense, our Bank of America (once called Bank of Italy), Chase-Manhattan & City Bank, with only 1/10 of Japanese monetary assets, were left behind as poor cousins.
Our falling for lower-priced auto-mobility & violent computer games, had transplanted all our great values to Japan & Germany along with billions of U.S. dollars.
The easy & cheap-to-run-but-vulnerable car imports made us speed devils & highway killers, foremost among them our police in pursuit of robbery suspects or parole violators. Some considered this progress because the "zapp" of Japanese computer games had made our children only theoretical killers. The popular computer pictures demonstrated how the push & pull can control gangs of fellow-morons & innocent bystanders. When we took up the "White Man's Burden" instead of France, we imported & popularized "cheap" drugs from the "Golden Triangle". South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, & much later, China & India, profited from our new needs.
Our arms & ammunition industries kept our economy aloft. We just had to arm all our supposed friends & allies with high-tech weapons of mass destruction, so we could surround & bankrupt the Soviet empire. Our good Conservatives kept the fear of Communism alive in spite of our secret knowledge that the Reds could not dare to fire their atomic missiles first into our western allies of Europe. For the rotation of our Earth causes westwinds in the northern hemisphere which would drive back nuclear clouds from France & Germany to Poland & Soviet Russia. Our monthly air-raid exercices placed school kids under their desks & made them neurotic & self-destructive.
All our crazy efforts began to make us a debtor nation with ever higher interest payments to Asia & Europe & increasing oil prices by the barrel from our "best friends & allies" in Arabian deserts. President Ford fought inflation by recommending "fight inflation" buttons for our lapels. Under Carter, Chairman Volcker of the Federal Reserve System kept doubling the interest on bank loans & thereby caused a double-digit inflation. Some poor senior citizens made huge loans & bought long-term money-market certificates which got them above the poverty level which made some of these profiteers into neo-Republicans.
Reagan's tax relief for the haves didn't trickle down to those who would have spent it at once to revive a bit of our economy. But increasing our indebtedness to three trillion, forced him to abolish Republican balancing of the budget. Back to the "socialism" of Robert M. Keynes & huge deficit spending did the job of creating jobs while he had driven the Soviet Union into permanent bankruptcy.
The lie that reduction of taxes for those who can afford to pay them refuels a lousy economy made Bush I our President. When he was forced to eat his words of promise, he lost his job to a daring Republico-Democrat.
Clinton embraced worldtrade while our most eager & jealous friends of Asia & Europe couldn't handle their abundance of our dollars. Their economies earned ever less interest on their American investments while our wobbly economy made fortunes on wobbly disks & other computer - related gimmicks.
Without reserve, Prof. Greenspan's teams continued his ¼% interest reductions. So newly employed 12 million earners could invest in homes - construction or buying - new factory & household equipment & in pouches swelling fat foods. We never had it so good although too many were left behind while a hundred million lived it up.
Our prosperity ended on 9-11-01 in the year of the Armageddon. Bush II is working hard to increase our national (federal) debt to 7 trillion. Unless wise voters sent him home to Midland & Crawford, the next few generations will lose their freedom of enterprise, their security and the economic safety net. We have to take his religion at faith value. He sells hope instead of bread & butter, instead of a social conscience and a working democracy. Any other candidate would be more forthcoming, more reliable & a savior of living stature.
Week 45 - July 27, 2004 - Inflation