The U.S. government, in addition to the taxes it collects, exists only because other nations still buy our Treasury notes

How to Avoid a Fiscal Train Wreck

- Alan Caruba
Wednesday, April 13, 2011

In the wake of the agreement to avoid shutting down the government, both sides have claimed to be winners and, depending on whether you are a Democrat or Republican, both sides have generated the usual prose to support that contention.

In truth, all that occurred was a brief stop on the way to a fiscal train wreck.

There were no winners. There are only losers. They are the American taxpayers. The government of the United States of America has been mismanaging its financial affairs for decades, most notably dating back to the creation of a private central bank called, ironically, the Federal Reserve.

As the columnist, Jimmy Breslin, once observed, the last successful government program was World War Two.

Avoiding a shutdown and raising the debt ceiling ignore the fact that, sooner or later, the government will not be able to borrow enough, let alone tax enough. Raising taxes only represses the investment needed to start new businesses and expand existing ones. Without either, unemployment will remain high. Meanwhile, the cost of commodities is rising in a world where the U.S. has real competition for them.

The nation now owes $14 trillion in debt and that is equal to every dime and dollar earned by the sale of our products and services, the gross domestic product. The U.S. government, in addition to the taxes it collects, exists only because other nations still buy our Treasury notes.

While the shut down argument was over how many billions would be cut from spending, the nation at the same time was borrowing many times more billions. That is completely unsustainable.

What else is unsustainable?

[b][color=darkred]The two real wars in which we have been engaged for a nebulous “war on terrorâ€