Happy Days Ain’t Here Again
On January 20 about noon EST, the Great & Good will breath a huge sigh of relief. The cancer will have been removed from the body politic. The evil emperor will have been exiled to the Isle of Mar-a-Lago. All will be well . . . NOT!
Joe Biden’s presidential campaign narrative can be summed up in one short sentence: I’m not Donald Trump. Since winning the election, his pre-administration can be summed up in a slightly longer sentence: I’m checking all the affirmative action boxes (looking like America). In the mean time, our problems continue to fester.
We face national security threats from China, Russia, DPRK and Iran. The only policy indicator I’ve seen is that we have resurrected John Kerry, the guy who made an agreement with the Iranian moderates (an oxymoron) to trade billions of dollars (plus Euros, Swiss Francs and Pounds sterling) for six hostages (most moderates take hostages) and promises that were never kept.
Our government debt, including the Muni market and the fictional Medicare and Social Security trust funds, exceeds 125% of GDP. That number is growing by the minute. The entire breath of the political spectrum is ignoring the problem, and Biden’s side of that spectrum is campaigning to make it worse. A national currency is nothing but paper (plus electronic entries acting as proxies for paper) and confidence. Once confidence is lost, the paper is worthless. There comes a day when producers of goods and services will not trade their wares for dollars. There comes a day when nobody except the Fed shows up for a Treasury auction. That’s when the paper loses value at an accelerating pace. We worried that Trump was a crypto Hitler, ready to topple the Weimar Republic. It wasn’t Hitler that tanked Weimar. It was inflation. Hitler simply stepped into the breach. Our binge of government borrowing is the equivalent of Thelma & Louise headed toward the cliff. Our politicians are stepping on the gas pedal.
The existential crisis is supposed to be climate change. There is no way to run a modern economy on solar panels and windmills, which are intermittent power sources in a constant power world. We aren’t even talking about the real solutions — nuclear power and carbon sequestration.
Most of the population of Central America wants to walk across our border to escape gang violence. The gangs are fighting over the spoils of the drug trade. We are the consumers of the drugs. We aren’t even talking about the addiction problem. Overdoses get talked about, but that is only one of the many symptoms of the problem. Our solution is to equip police with Naloxone, so the addict can go back to business as usual after overdosing. Biden’s only pledge is that he will stop work on the border wall, rendering the walk from Honduras a bit easier.
There are numerous other important issues hanging fire, but those listed above are sufficient to make the point. The cancer may soon be removed from the body politic, but the body suffers from numerous pre-existing conditions. Our political doctors (The Great & Good) weren’t getting the job done prior to the onset of cancer and I see no indication that they are ready to do so now. I hope I’m wrong.
