I was watching Larry King Live the other day when his guests were Michael Reagan (Republican), Jesse Ventura (independent), and Katrina Vanden Heuvel, an Obama Supporter and Democrat. After listening to them for a while I said "what are they talking about?" After watching programs like this and really paying attention to the discourse, it's apparent to me that the news media in all its great wonder, power and splendor is either deliberately ignoring the fundamental issues or they are scared to even think about the real fundamental issues that plague this nation. If you are wondering what are these issues, let me enumerate some of them for you:
The American economy and subsequently the dollar is suffering largely because of 3 things:The Iraq War
The policies of the Federal Reserve (which is not government owned)
The real estate industry including but not limited to the banking system, the National Association of Realtors (NAR), property appraisers, and mortgage brokers
The electric car
The air car These are just a few of some very important issues that have affected the US economy and how other nations view the US. Since I am not writing a book, I will just briefly delve into these different issues. I strongly recommend that you do your own research. Truth is exposed when you look at all the facts from many sources.
The Economy's Woes
One of the most obvious reasons why this economy is just less than spectacular is because of all the money that is being spent in Iraq. No one ever talks about how this war affects the average American citizen. No one ever explains that the US citizen is the US economy. If we don't have money to spend or are unwilling to spend the money that we do have, the economy either slows down and/or comes to a halt. So it's very easy to see that as we go so goes the economy. To make matters worse, every dollar that is printed and put into circulation has debt calculated into its value. What this means is that each dollar is borrowed money. The money is borrowed by the US government from the Federal Reserve. But how does the government pay this debt? Taxes. So we the people pay taxes in part to pay off the government's debt to the Fed. But the only currency that we can pay taxes with is the dollar itself, which creates an infinite loop. To take it a step further, the interest is compounded.
Prior to the Iraq invasion, the Bush administration took the US into debt when there was a major surplus. So the money that was needed to initiate the invasion didn't even exist. Well it didn't exist for No Child Left Behind. So Bush got Congress to authorize borrowing more money from the Fed. As the fed authorized the government to print more money, the dollar weakened which means that the interest owed per dollar increased because it takes more money to pay the same amount of interest. Again, the debt will be paid by the people. As I stated earlier, the people are the economy. One thing that people don't think about is that the dollar has no "real" value. The dollar is not backed by any precious metals, resources, real estate, technology, intellectual property, or anything that any person or country can appraise. The dollar is not real money. It's fiat money that is backed by nothing. If a country wants to cripple the US, they only need to reevaluate the dollar. The problem with that is this would cripple the global economy as well. So the US, as well as other countries, are in a precarious position. The only countries that are on solid ground, sort of solid ground, are the oil countries and countries rich in natural resources. If there is a worldwide economic collapse, they can always barter. The countries that don't have a lot of natural resources may have to sell/trade away their land if it is of strategic benefit to a resource-rich country. But of course, resource-poor countries will be swindled out of their land because they're desperate.
"REAL" Estate
Land will continue to be one of the most prized possessions on this planet. Unfortunately, most people don't think about it in a meaningful way. The real estate market is experiencing the bubble burst phenomenon. I believe that the real estate industry as a whole is partially responsible, especially the executives and CEO's sitting at the helm of this industry. Many of these men and women are not dumb bunnies. There are many college graduates and MBA's that fill these ranks. There is also years upon years of experience that fill their collective brain trust. I find it ludicrous to believe that they did not see this coming. Alan Greenspan referred to the activities of investors as irrational exuberance when referring to the stock market circa 1996. Many of those financial guys/gals, stock brokers, financial analysts, and pundits alike didn't like Greenspan's real assessment of the financial climate. As far as these financial guys were concerned the market needed to keep going up so long as they continued to sell financial products. About 4 years later the market gave back a lot of its winnings. 401(K)s, TSAs, mutual funds, stocks and other financial instruments lost around 50% of their market value (give or take a few points).
So if you look at the real estate market, you don't have to be Greenspan to realize that prices shot up too fast, too high, and in too short a time. But too many average Joes and Janes were giddy with the prices their homes were now worth. To dig an even deeper ditch, a lot of homeowners sold their current homes for a higher priced newer home with their newfound equity only to learn that the property taxes you pay for higher priced homes is really high for the average Joe and Jane. Combine that with excessive subprime lending and you have a major problem. A lot of people don't realize that subprime lenders were allowed to give loans based on relaxed lending criteria. By who? Know one ever talks about that.
"Fed" eral Policies
The Fed (Federal Reserve) tells banks what rules they can lend by. The fed also tells banks how much cash they must keep in reserves. The Fed dictates how much currency will be in circulation in our economy. The Fed is the bank behind all banks. There are really smart guys and gals that work over there at the Fed. It's naive to think that they did not see this one coming. It is naive to think that the good people over at the National Association of Realtors could not imagine that the real estate market was experiencing an episode of irrational exuberance. This phrase was coined only a few years earlier by a man who ran the Fed for many years. Unfortunately, property appraisers were rewarded by mortgage brokers for justifying higher appraisals. Mortgage brokers sent appraisers more business and the banks approved more loans. Round and round the carousel goes. Faster and faster the ride until people start flying off. All the while the Fed did nothing. This was only part of the problem.
The Invasion of Iraq
For most people, the invasion of Iraq seemed logical. We were afraid of the terrorists striking us again. We should attack! The only problem was that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The Bush administration saw to it that he scared up support for the invasion from the people and bluntly told the UN that we're going to invade Iraq even if the UN didn't agree. Dare I say that I am the great prognosticator, but I didn't buy it from the start. I actually believe that diplomacy does work. I watched Gen. Colin Powell addresses the UN on WMDs and I didn't see all of this so called evidence. He was a pawn. You see, prior to Bush winning the presidential election in 2000, there was talk that Gen. Colin Powell could be the first black president, as a Republican! The idea was that he would get the black vote which Republicans knew would guarantee a win. He was respected by Republicans and many people for planning Operation Desert Storm. But several years after his UN Security Council address, Powell does almost an about face and tells Tim Russert (R.I.P.) on Meet the press that he was misled and we should not have invaded Iraq. 5 years later we are effectively in a recession. George Bush calls it a "slow down," whatever that means. This is our president, a beacon of intellectual discourse and a stalwart of morals. I still don't think he won in 2000. The people were lied to. Check out the HBO movie Recount.
Big Oil, Big Profits, Little Social Responsibility
Back in the early 1900s, the idea of an all electric automobile was in the works. There was even an electric car called the Baker Electric (you can also google Owen Magnetic) back in 1909. Jay Leno has one (1909 Baker electric) in his garage that still works today! (google Jay Leno's Garage) Oil companies right now have the resources to produce this technology, but they don't want to. Some argue that the oil companies are sitting on patents right now. Instead they have decided to take in record profits while the economy comes to a "slow down." One hundred years has gone by and still no advancement with the electric car on a large scale. We've had such technologically advanced aircraft such as the Stealth bomber, and SR-71 Blackbird, and yet we couldn't create an electric car. Give me a break!
Thankfully there are private companies that are working on alternatives to the gas-driven internal combustion engine, but even fewer are working on totally electric vehicles (Google Tesla Motors). There's even an air car! You can find it on youtube. Clearly we can do better. I think it's not helpful to wait for a crisis before we move into action. We should always be on the look-out for a better, more efficient way of doing things. We should no longer endorse the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality. We would be better served if we adopted a "we can always make it better" mindset. This is fundamentally a policy issue, which means politics.
So I close with this. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have done the things that people need the most: better education. I only list education because everything else flows from education. If people were more educated about money, the average citizen would be more fiscally responsible. Education isn't just going to the school house and taking tests. Education is teaching students the significance and relationship of all things. A more educated populace would not tolerate the political games we are enthralled with today. A more educated populace would have a lot less crime, if any, than we do today. A more educated populace would have kept the focus on the evolution of humankind. We would be better off if we were better educated, but politicians of the ruling parties have done little to make things better for the American people.
REPUBLICANS 0.5, DEMOCRATS 0.6 Note: Good ideas have come to fruition because of both of these parties, but I think they feed the people scraps and sell them as hearty meals. Dem's only get 0.6 because they claim to be for we the people. Republicans get 0.5 because they claim to be for freedom of the individual (i.e. less government, lower taxes). Neither get a full point because they've both deceived the public. Nobody wins.