"Bankruptcy is Coming" – Does Anyone Care?
By Robert Maynard

Economist Bill Sayre has discussed the numbers associated with our national debt on True North Radio’s Friday edition several times. In a recent LTE to the Caledonia Record entitled "America is Broke", Frank Mazar observed: "America is bankrupt. Our debt is $12 Trillion (T), but total debt including social security and Medicare unfunded liability is $107T. That's seven times the size of our economy that generates $2.7T a year in federal taxes. Do the math ... we're broke!"

These numbers are not a secret to the political class in Washington DC, yet they continue to spend money like drunken soldiers. A similar situation exists here in Vermont, where Tom Licata and Vermonters for Economic Health has been sounding the fiscal alarm to no avail. John McClaughry and the Ethan Allen Institute has published a report called "Off the Rails" which details the fiscal crisis here in Vermont and Economist Art Woolf has been warning of a fiscal shipwreck here in Vermont for a while now as well.

There has been no shortage of modern day Paul Reveres shouting "Bankruptcy is Coming". Alas, the warning seems to be falling on deaf ears. I was at a meeting of fiscally concerned citizens a little over a week ago and was questioned about why a certain section of the political class seems totally oblivious to the fiscal cliff that we are rushing toward at an ever-increasing speed. My response was that they are not oblivious at all, but see the fiscal crisis as an opportunity to push forward their social engineering schemes. 

Those members of the political class in question adhere to a utopian vision where the perfect society can be "socially engineered" from the top down if we simply had the right people in charge of tweaking to social, political and economic environment. Only in this way can the "selfishness" associated with the traditional American view of individual liberty and free markets be overcome and justice established. They need a crisis to shake American’s confidence in our system rooted in individual liberty and secure their willingness to support the utopian vision of the would-be social engineers. 

When candidate Barrack Obama answered "Joe the Plumber’s" concern about high taxes with the assertion that "I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody", he was placing the goal of socially engineered wealth distribution above that of sound fiscal policy. There is White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s bold assertion that "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" in response to our current fiscal crisis. Later Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seconds Emanuel’s notion to a meeting of European Union leaders by saying: "Never waste a good crisis".

This is not a new idea for those on the political left. Consider the following quote regarding the "crisis" of Global Warming. "No matter if the science of global warming is all phony … climate change [provides] the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world" by Christine Stewart, then Canadian Minister of the Environment, before the editors and reporters of the Calgary Herald, 1998 and quoted by Terence Corcoran, "Global Warming: The Real Agenda", Financial Post, 26 December 1998 from the Calgary Herald.  Let’s not forget this: "Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialised civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?" -- Maurice Strong, head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and Executive Officer for Reform in the Office of the Secretary General of the United Nations. Or this: "A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation." -- Paul Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, "Population, Resources, Environment" (W.H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1970, 323).

If we are to change direction in time to avoid the coming fiscal train wreck, we must expose those who see an opportunity for enacting their utopian schemes in the current crisis.

Robert Maynard is the Editor of the True North website