Topic: Barack Obama
Obama's standing at a fork in the road; he needs to choose wisely

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Mr Obama stands at an historic fork in the road. He must choose between Hubris and Nemesis.

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by Andrew Hughes
(libertarian)
Tuesday, December 9, 2008

The New York Times reports that Mr Obama has brewed up a plan to reverse the downward plunge of the U.S. economy. Public works, on a scale not seen since the construction of the Highway system under Dwight Eisenhower, will form the regenerative backbone of recovery. Hundreds of thousands of newly employed citizens will try to outdo each other in the race to replace the dreaded tungsten filament across the nation. Broadband Internet access will cover the U.S. like an angel's wings as every child, (yes none left behind), will experience an education in a newly refurbished, modern building that will be the envy of the current student population. Public buildings will have their heating systems redesigned for energy efficiency. Hospitals will become the new DARPA with high speed internet connections to share data and avoid duplication and resource wastage.

This actually sounds like a good plan. By attacking the traditional energy "devil may care" attitude, the nation would become less dependent on foreign oil as it would by developing new "Green" cars. A well educated, employed population working in an efficient manufacturing infrastructure would increase production and boost exports. But, the question needs to be asked. Where is he going to get the money ?

If the U.S. already owes $63,600,000,000,000 in debt, ($10,600,000,000,000 in National debt and $53,000,000,000,000 in pledges to Social security and other programs) that it has no way of ever paying off, where is it going to get another few Trillion to basically employ itself in to economic prosperity ? The latter, for it to become reality, needs the trust of foreigners to finance yet more profligate spending with no hope of ever receiving the cheque in the mail. China' s patience is wearing thin and absolute panic is starting to set in as witnessed by Jiwei Lou, the chairman of China's largest sovereign wealth fund saying he "does not have the courage" to plow money into Wall Street financials. The latter statement leads on to the logical sequitur that if the U.S. financial sector is two thirds the way out of the window, the U.S. government's financial creditworthiness can't be far behind. Foreign Central Banks have dumped $120 Billion in U.S. agency debt in the last 5 months, 10 year Treasury Bonds are yielding 2.73%, 3 month bonds at .01%. Who's interested in rates like these when, even in the current deflationary phase, we are looking at 2.7% inflation that will inevitably rise as Greenbacks, backed by zip, nada, flood the country like manna from Heaven.

To pay off the National Debt along with all the unfunded social security funds each American Household would have to pony up in the region of $500,000. Does Mr Obama realize this or not ? Surely his "Economic advisers" would have given him the bad news already ? If he had to be told this in the first place, then there would be real reasons to worry about his leadership skills. It would seem that the only plans coming out of Washington these days, regardless of old or new administration, are formulated to address only one thing; keeping the voters thinking that there is a solution that only demands a little pain and continually throwing the same voters' money at the problem will fix it. The recipients amongst the Banking and Auto community know it for what it really is; free handouts from the poor and middle class to the Rich. The truth of the matter is that, in order to rebuild the house, the existing monstrosity needs to be demolished and new foundations laid..this time not just of sand.

Now is the time that the U.S. must start SAVING money instead of spending even more of what it does not have. By sending another 20,000 troops to an already destroyed Afghanistan to pound it even more, maintain the troop presence in Iraq and continue to head towards a confrontation with Iran, Russia, China and Pakistan, he will be wasting hundreds of billions of dollars that could be better spent at home on the people who really need it. Refusing to take this particular fork in the road would be one way of funding his Economic recovery along with abolishing the tax cuts for the rich,( which he promised to do and is now extending them to 2012), closing foreign military bases across the world, bring the troops back home, stop spending billions in blackbag operations trying to subvert democracy across the world and bankrolling Tin Pot dictators from Haiti to Pakistan.

Mr Obama has arrived at the fork in the road and needs to choose wisely. He is staring at a chance, probably the last, to save his country.One path leads to rebuilding her using a realistic economic plan and forming pragmatic geopolitical relationships around the globe. The other continues the course that has been set for him which will bring America to it's knees as inevitably as Rome was brought to hers.

©2008 Andrew Hughes, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Last modified: Tuesday, December 9, 2008

The views expressed in this article are those of Andrew Hughes only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Andrew Hughes is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

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