Dominoes of Disaster

Jun 21st, 2010 | By David | Category: Politics | Print This Article
Never before in recorded history has there been such a high potential for numerous, global catastrophic events. Like dominoes lined up neatly on a rickety table, we seemed poised for disaster. Each domino represents a potential to begin a collapse of the entire chain.

One such domino is the skyrocketing debt being carried upon the shoulders of United States citizens. At the time of this writing, the spendthrifts in Washington D.C. have amassed a debt in excess of 13 trillion dollars. This debt represents more than $42,000 per person in the United States. At the current rate, the U.S. government is spending $1,400,000,000 more each year than tax payers are paying into the system.

Of course these figures don’t include the unfunded liabilities from Social Security and Medicare amounting to more than $50 trillion, which politicians have decided to keep off the books in Enron-style accounting.

It doesn’t take someone with a background in economics to understand that this is not only unsustainable, but is in fact creating the setting for an inescapable disaster.

Two prevailing schools of thought exist as to how Washington politicians may deal with the situation. The first option would be to radically slash spending and make drastic changes in the way the government does business. If the politicians behave as they have historically, this option is highly unlikely. The second, more probable scenario, involves a deliberate devaluation of American currency. Such an action would ripple through global economies and last for generations.

A second domino poised to fall is “king oil.â€