Happy – Canadian – Thanksgiving… & Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Happy – Canadian – Thanksgiving… & Indigenous Peoples’ Day

 

• Economists generally believe that the rising U.S. public debt will eventually undermine growth, but there is disagreement as to exactly when or how. 
• As public debt rises, there is a risk that defense spending might eventually have a deleterious effect on growth, unlike during the Cold War, when public debt was lower. 
• The economic literature is not conclusive on how increasing taxes to maintain or increase defense spending would affect economic growth. 

 

-             How Does Defense Spending Effect Economic Growth?, Rand

 

By Gregg Wall (10-12-2024)

 

Am I okay?  

 

Pulse is strong, just got off my bike.  No fever, no headache… but what is this sensation flooding over me?  Could it be?  What is this?  Gratitude?  Rank sentimentality?  Thankfulness?  But what, why, how?  An appreciation for all that I am, my sixty years on the planet, friends and family over the years, all that I have received, being surrounded by mountains of books, my dual citizenship, health, general wellbeing?  Living next to the Canadian Rockies and the new perspectives that brings… to my writing?  Well, yes. 

 

And then it passes, and I’m reminded that America with full NATO support is at war with the world… and it could all end in seconds, carelessly, needlessly, thoughtlessly.  Biden started out auspiciously enough, by ending the war in Afghanistan and bringing the troops home, and then it all went terribly wrong.  Direct confrontation, via our proxy in the Ukraine, with a nuclear power.  Insanity surrounding how far Zelensky can lob American and European missiles into Russia with no dialogue on peace, as tiny Ukraine and its citizens are pitted against the Russian war machine and ground to a pulp (as a buffer for the EU).  Any American who has given it much thought always knew our NATO allies were cruel & selfish, but here’s even greater evidence.   

 

Then, there’s Biden’s new Cold War and saber rattling with China, which America is dependent upon for any number of items, including rare earth elements, chips, chemicals and pharmaceuticals (including antibiotics).  Why is America shaking its fist at China again, except out of fear and the realization of failure (?)… the failure surrounding 44 years of free trade, globalization, laissez-faire, and neoliberalism have been an embarrassment for the United States and an abject disaster.  With China all set to eclipse the United States as an economic juggernaut, hmmm, already has.  It gives me no pleasure to write that, but any nation who blows $40 trillion after the fall of the Berlin Wall… well, it’s got problems.  Doesn’t it?  Hence, the need for half a decade of greedlflation, as a matter of economic & public policy… in the hopes of inflating away some of that debt, and so that GDP has the appearance of growing?  Catastrophic debt and the endless wartime economy?  Yes?  This is what America has been reduced to?  Yes.  It’s a doomed atavistic race to the bottom.  Many nations have tried this before, inflating away debts and obligations.  The dollar multiplier on war is a disaster, vis-à-vis nation building at home and public works.   

 

Then there’s Bibi… Biden’s pit-bull in the Middle East… bombing what: Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, & Yemen.  An American State Department that lies as a matter of doing business, with a team of ghouls acting as spokespersons.  ‘Tis the Season.  Wholesale slaughter of women and children in Gaza & Lebanon.  What did the Germans call it, Lebensraum, and in America, Manifest Destiny?  Evil fascist powers think alike.  I guess there’s only so far one can go with White Supremacy.  It always ends so very badly.  And yet, there’s Biden/Harris, the so-called moderates, the ‘liberals’ running a genocide out of Israel.  The invasion of Lebanon: all so Bibi has an excuse to stay out of jail.  

 

Biden playing the usual game, shrugs, so sorry if this livestreamed slaughter offends, there’s nothing the president can do… except cutoff Bibi’s supply of weapons and insist NATO do same.  And still no AUMF from the cowards in congress.  America is bombing the world, and congress doesn’t even have the cojones or ovaries to authorize it.  They should all be prosecuted. 

 

And let’s not forget the big oil & gas component to these wars, with the Russians and in the Middle East… always and seemingly forever like a death shroud hanging over the planet.  Our inability to escape fossil fuels and the fact, these wars serve inevitably to remove supply offline, jack up prices at the pump, and ensure obscene profits and endless speculation for the privileged few.  As the entire planet recoils in man-made shock. 

 

This, despite Florida getting blown off the map by Helene and Milton.  Seems that nobody in America, especially Kamala and Trump, wants to talk about the inescapable need to ditch fossil fuels… always for fear, allegedly, of offending the workers.  But fossil fuels have been phasing out its workforce for a long, long time.  Just think about how much easier it would be, if instead of spending $7 trillion per annum on fossil fuels subsidies (to pad obscene industry profits) … the U.S. took those subsidies and guaranteed oil & gas workers a UBI or better or identical wages as they transitioned over to Green Energy (all paid for by nationalization of the O&G industry, of course).  Instead, we get endemic lying, misinformation, and misdirection from Team Trump, and record O&G production, and silence from Biden and Harris.  How evil a fuel source that spawns its own wars, endless Middle East crises, cancer alleys and death throughout the world, ultra-corrupt governments, and worst of all, a dying planet?  

 

And behind all of it, the steady erosion and exhaustion of exorbitant privilege, as the national debt now exceeds $40 trillion. 

 

Tick tock, tick tock… tick.  Oh, that’s right Trump is going to run up the national debt higher still, pumping up crypto, so he can retire the debt?  Where’s Trump going to get the money for that?   Rob pensions and 401Ks… dump the last remaining shreds of exorbitant privilege into Bitcoin - in one last glorious U.S. dollar Supernova?  Liquidate Social Security and Medicare?  Derivatives, synthetic derivatives sure, that worked out so well in ’08.  What isn’t beyond Trump and the demons that march through this man’s head?  And then, there’s his billionaire donors.  Trump, instead of fighting for the people, is but a mirror image, a mouthpiece for the kleptocracy that funds him?  (The Dems really did a number on Trump & the American people over the last four years, running him through the legal wringer, i.e. lawfare, leaving him in debt and entirely exploitable; but failing to prosecute him for the one thing that would eliminate Trump from a second term, insurrection.  How fatuous are these people?)  And what’s to keep crypto owners from cashing out along the way?  Pump and dump, baby.  Drill baby, drill!  Tick tock.

 

If I had one wish, it would be for my fellow Americans to spend five years abroad so that they could gain fresh perspectives on how the world views Americans and the United States.  I think many Americans would learn a great deal, but how would the world fare with 330 million Americans visiting?  Half the U.S. population would handle it quite well, I imagine, and the other half… Ugly American time?

 

And in the end, the world is such a beautiful place, grossly overpopulated of course, but there’s no reason why we can’t live in harmony, rationally, w/out all the insipid megalomania, the insanity that infects the global leadership ranks, the Peter Principle seen throughout Western leadership… leadership that is either entirely compromised, or too corrupt to express anything original, or hired for that very reason: flat, lifeless, thoughtless, emotionally and spiritually dead. 

 

Or perhaps in need of a strong tab of pharmaceutical LSD or Ayahuasca?  Trump on MDMA could be a really good thing or very, very bad.

 

And so, the war machine grinds forward, the earth burns, floods, and shudders, and our leadership pathologically fails humanity and themselves.  War, debt, and pumping poison out of the ground, it’s the American way. 

 

Joyeux Jour de l'Action de grâce.

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2024