Strong Words

ninemm

New member
“If we succeed, the Country is ours. It is immense in extent and fertile in its soil and will amply reward all our toil. If we fail, death in the cause of liberty and humanity is not cause for shuddering. Our rifles are by our side, and choice guns they are, we know what awaits us, and we are prepared to meet it.”

Daniel Cloud
December 26, 1835
(En route to San Antonio)
 

badbob

Moderator
Where are the men like Daniel Cloud today? Most "men" are too busy watching tv and guzzling beer to even notice there is a problem, much less try to do something about it. Maybe the party will go on forever but, somehow, I doubt it. The "generations yet unborn" will have to fend for themselves, good thing our ancestors didn't feel that way. My 2¢

badbob
 

Eghad

New member
Where are the men like Daniel Cloud today? Most "men" are too busy watching tv and guzzling beer to even notice there is a problem, much less try to do something about it. Maybe the party will go on forever but, somehow, I doubt it. The "generations yet unborn" will have to fend for themselves, good thing our ancestors didn't feel that way. My 2¢

All around us but we tend to ignore them. They are the police, firefighters, workers in a soup kitchen, veterans, the military, community volunteers, Salvation Army, Red Cross volunteers, Big Brothers, foster parents, teachers, and a host of others.
 

badbob

Moderator
Eghad, those people you mentioned are definitely caring, dedicated people and they deserve our thanks and admiration. I was thinking more of wealth creation, since we are now a "global economy". Fuel for the economic furnace so to speak. Our manufacturing is all but gone, our small farmers have mostly given up and sold out to big corporations that have no loyalty to the US, and the timber and minerals are foreign owned and being shipped to foreign countries.
Wealth is created by (1)agricultural products sold to other countries, (2)timber and minerals turned into products and sold to other countries (manufacturing, i.e.value-added goods) and (3) selling raw materials (timber and mining) to other countries. Everything else is just overhead and creates no wealth of it's own.
We've been borrowing from the rest of the world with no way to repay it. The bill has got to come due sooner or later. What happens if you spend all your money and have no way to make more or make less than you need to pay the bills, and can't pay the bank loans? If you are like the US, you'll lose all your assets and still have no way to make money. A lot of us may be on the receiving end of the soup line. Hell of a mess to leave our kids. IMHO, of course.

badbob
 

Eghad

New member
So if the US goes broke and doesnt have any money to buy foreign imports or oil or to pay off treasury notes held by foreign countries what happens to the rest of the world?
 

badbob

Moderator
It will be hurt, maybe as bad or worse than us. It's a lose-lose for most of us and for no good reason that I can see. We've been sold out.

badbob
 

Eghad

New member
So If I was a foreign country holding US debt and was interested in investment capital from the United States I might want to ensure they stay healthy?
 

badbob

Moderator
Who has more US debt than China? Are they devalueing their currency to match ours? US money is going out much faster than it is coming in.

badbob
 

Eghad

New member
Not according to Paulson who is Bush's fair haired fellow at Treasury. :rolleyes: I find it ironic that the last White House house to flat out call the Chinese currency manipulators was Clinton's. Even more ironic is that it may take a Democratic Congress with the support of national business leaders to remedy the situation.
 

badbob

Moderator
Eghad, you may be right. Somebody has to straighten it out or we're sunk. Here is a quote by Thomas Jefferson worth noting.

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks...will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
President, Thomas Jefferson

badbob
 

JR47

Moderator
What it will take to remedy most of the ills we see, the real ones, not the "sky-is-falling" fantasies too many spout, is men and women in office who AREN'T Democrat or Republicans, but who are Americans.

The best and brightest are sacrificed at the altar of mediocrity by those who run the political parties. More effort is spent blaming one another than is ever put into solving the problems before they surface.

Break that, and the sky is the limit. The real answers aren't going to be put into effect for decades. We need to rebuild the idea of political parties from the ground up. You start by going in at the local level and seeing to it that the real workers aren't just brain-dead idiots looking to use the political race for a sexual hunting ground. After a while, a smart man or woman will become indispensable to the Party, and move up. Replacing those who move up with more of the same will result in a real grass-roots movement with the ability to weed out the party hacks. It will take years, but results would surface in ten years, or so. Small though they might be, they will snowball.

Countries go bankrupt all around the globe on a monthly basis. Many of them aren't really small, or poor. The IMF, and the World Bank, forgive debt daily. What makes you think that anyone, including the Chinese, could afford to have their largest market go broke? Forcing the issue usually leads to the nationalization of foreign assets by the debtor nation, as has happened repeatedly to US companies. It would cause an uproar if America did it, and all sorts of posturing. However, even the UN would find it difficult to muster enough votes amongst it's member nations to push even a paper resolution. Anything that they did would be cause for the United States to ask for money loaned to nations over the past century to be paid back, with interest. That would include Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Italy, and China. There are also a few hundred small nations that would be looking at healthy portions of their GNP heading to the U.S.

Imagine asking Saudi Arabia to repay the American oil companies for the nationalization of Arabian oil supplies fifty years ago. Could be expensive. Could also tie up the World Courts for another century, or more.:)
 

Eghad

New member
The last fellow to share Jefferson's view was John F. Kennedy. I believe he even signed an Executive Order giving the government the authority to issue money backed by precious metals instead of a promise.

The other fellow to share that view was Abraham Lincoln who refused to borrow money from bankers to finance the Civil War. He had the government issue Greenbacks to finance the war.

Wonder what happened to those two?
 

badbob

Moderator
Exactly, Eghad. JR47 is right about us needing Americans in office instead of people loyal (obligated) to a party and not the Constitution. What can be done in the short term?

badbob
 

Slugthrower

New member
Let's see... A few quotes from one of our founders, Thomas Jefferson , will give food for thought.

"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves in all cases to which they think themselves competent (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved), or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824.

"Paper is poverty,... it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1788.

"It is a [disputed] question, whether the circulation of paper, rather than of specie, is a good or an evil... I believe it to be one of those cases where mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813.



"The incorporation of a bank and the powers assumed [by legislation doing so] have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States by the Constitution. They are not among the powers specially enumerated." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on Bank, 1791.

"If the debt which the banking companies owe be a blessing to anybody, it is to themselves alone, who are realizing a solid interest of eight or ten per cent on it. As to the public, these companies have banished all our gold and silver medium, which, before their institution, we had without interest, which never could have perished in our hands, and would have been our salvation now in the hour of war; instead of which they have given us two hundred million of froth and bubble, on which we are to pay them heavy interest, until it shall vanish into air... We are warranted, then, in affirming that this parody on the principle of 'a public debt being a public blessing,' and its mutation into the blessing of private instead of public debts, is as ridiculous as the original principle itself. In both cases, the truth is, that capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813.

One day , our just deserts will be rendered. Hope this cake we have is edible.

This banking path has been done once before. You would think that we would learn from history. Seems that the nation as a whole in general likes this game till we have to pay up. What happens when the world comes to claim on the debts? Other countries may be hurt by our economic collapse, but we shall fall into oblivion.

We are writing checks that our collective rear ends can't cash. This is going to be one helluva a new millennium. Hope our children are ready for the ride ahead. Global economy , world bank, to benefit whom? Yeah, Americans in office sounds nice. "Real Americans" are far and few, if any really exist anymore.


"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816.

"We acknowledge that our children are born free; that that freedom is the gift of nature, and not of him who begot them; that though under our care during infancy, and therefore of necessity under a duly tempered authority, that care is confided to us to be exercised for the preservation and good of the child only; and his labors during youth are given as a retribution for the charges of infancy. As he was never the property of his father, so when adult he is sui juris, entitled himself to the use of his own limbs and the fruits of his own exertions: so far we are advanced, without mind enough, it seems, to take the whole step." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813.
 

Eghad

New member
The problem with Jefferson as with any other politician is that when it came to "strict construction" he didnt always practice what he preached. :eek:
 

JR47

Moderator
Jefferson wasn't the only politician with that problem. Way too many of the early writers on the Constitution attributed meanings that they, themselves, weren't exactly noted for.:)
 

badbob

Moderator
Mr. Jefferson certainly had his faults, just like the rest of us. I don't think anyone ever called him "St. Thomas". Maybe he was, IMO, a great man because he recognized that he had faults and didn't want us to have to learn things the hard way. At least thats what I tell my son about myself when I give him advise.:) Anyway, America probably would not have been so good, for so long, without his help. I wish we had some T. Jeffersons today, warts and all.

badbob
 

Kowboy

New member
BadBob:

You should get out more:

"At the heart of the argument is a well-known paradox. In the mainstream view, America is now the world's biggest debtor. Thanks to its chronic trade deficits, it stood $2.5 trillion in the red at the end of 2004. And yet it still somehow manages to earn more on its foreign assets than it pays out to service its much bigger stock of debts: $36.2 billion more in 2004."

More here: http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5408129

Kowboy
 

badbob

Moderator
Kowboy I hope you're right. I do get out enough to get conflicting numbers, though.
Whole article here:http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=18564

Meanwhile, on December 15, while Paulson was in China, the Treasury issued the 2006 Financial Report of the United States as released by the U.S. Department of Treasury, which reported that the 2006 federal budget deficit was $4.6 trillion, not a previously reported $248.2 billion. The difference is that the typical Treasury Department report of the federal budget deficit is on a cash basis where all tax receipts are applied when received to current liabilities, whereas the Financial Report of the United States is calculated on a GAAP basis (“Generally Accepted Accounting Practices”) accruals are made for current year changes in the net present value of unfunded liabilities in social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare. The report also showed that the GAAP accounted negative net worth of the federal government has increased to $53.1 trillion, while the total federal obligations under GAAP accounting now total $54.6 trillion, taking into account the present value of future Social Security and Medicare liabilities. Put simply, the 2006 Financial Report of the United States shows that arguments that the U.S. government is bankrupt have increasing merit

badbob
 
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