I remember the day the wall came down, very clearly. My traveling companion and I were sitting in a French Bakery, drinking coffee and ‘taste testing’ various sweets, when someone shouted, and the next thing you know there was quite a crowd, standing around a small TV, watching.  My friend was born in Poland, and her Aunt was one of those who were tortured by the Germans during WWII….and her parents, in order to keep their jobs at the University in Poland, and their home, were forced to join the Nazi party. My friend was a child then, and has never forgotten how fearful that time was for her family… 

Where everyone was celebrating, she was afraid…and I mean ‘AFRAID’!!!!  "IF Germany was once again unified", she said, "then they might try to take over Europe again!"

One of my grandfathers was from the Black Forest part of Germany, and he fought in WWII.  I could not tell her about that, UNTIL I phoned my mother the next day…I had to know!  WHOSE side, did my grandfather fight for?   It turns out he fought in BOTH the US Army and the US Navy, during WWII…and like my Uncle, because he could speak German, were rather useful to the anti-Hitler movement….

My friend 20 years ago, is still my friend today….and this morning she remembered the day we were sitting in the bakery in France….and thank goodness, she is no longer ‘afraid’. 

YUP!  And SIDE Shows they are!  I watch C-Span…both House and Senate..I think they need to check the water those hawkers are drinking!  And I spend time in perusing the OpenSecrets website as well….to see WHO gets the money from Insurance lobbies.  And then yesterday, the Bachman ‘rally’ was an embarassment—not because it happened—-but becasue Boehner, for example, an elected official, seems to spend more time dying his hair and getting a suntan, than he does acqauainting himself with the Consitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Preamble……all things he should know about, as those are what he is SUPPOSED to protect!  Yet he doesn;t now the difference between on and the other!  HECK!  I have a copy of all those things on my desk!!!!!!  I look at them ALL THE TIME!  I was required to learn and memeorize parts when in the 6th Grade!!!!!! And again in Jr. High, and again in High School!!!!  

 

Those people in Congress should be REQUIRED to take a test, and pass it without cheating, on ALL THREE!!! BEFORE they are given the oath to take the office of ‘Legislator’…..let alone stand in front of a camera for the world to see what kind of idiots are elected to make the laws in this country!

You know…..I personally do not accept that this is Obama’s ‘fault’.  And if you would step away from Partisan Politics, you would ALSO know that this did not ‘begin’ with the Obama presidency.  When I first moved to where I am now, I called a man regarding a property he had for sale.  this man lived in the most expensive part of town, and coincidently, was one of the realtors that came to my home, when I was looking for a realtor to list my ‘paid for’ house, for sale.  He was shocked when he realized that I was the same person he bragged to, when I called him with interest in buying the property he had then…..

 Want to know what Government money he got for that property he was trying to sell?  FREE money, from the government, for the following:  Windows, getting attached to the Electrical grid, Water lines that went to the building, FREE roof, traffic study, electrical wiring INSIDE the building , grading of the land surrounding the building, and property tax money for two years while the work was being done.  Of course, he has accountants and lawyers who know where the loop-holes are—he is one of the town ‘big guys’ —lots and lots of money….he could have afforded all this himself..after all, he was selling the property for profit, as that is what a realtor does….but instead, used GOVERNMENT money to pay for it!

Government money—the between the lines perks that are set up for special people, cost this country a WHOLE lot MORE per person, than some on the right side of the aisle would care to admit….  

 

Obama was handed this crisis on a platter.  And anyone that cares to, can look at the charts, and read the data, from 1990 forward, to know that OBAMA was not the one who created this mess.  It took a long time, and a bunch of greedy people, who wrote their own ‘laws’, to do this.  Unfrotunately—-someone always needs someone to ‘blame’— especially when the obvious becomes obvious to the masses…..and ‘someone’ doesn;t want to take responsibility for their part…..At least Obama is taking responsibility—even if he did not create this mess!  

In the words of one of your Republican buddies:  "YOU LIE!"  gheez….

http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/x2078850231/President-Obamas-speech-at-MIT

 

The above is Obama’s speech today, at MIT…..after you read it, pomder on this—-so far TWO manufacturing plants have been pened in my part of the world, foused on alternative energy production—-solar. 

Secondly—for the past 2-3 years, I have been investing in alternative energy stocks…a lot of what I read is not covered by mainstream news…in fact there is a LOT that mainstream news is negligent in covering, which is why I research any and all questions that pop into my head, rather than wait for someone to ‘tell me’ or ‘show me’….

"All" of the money in what you call ‘the pork money’, has not been delivered yet…for various reasons:  there was a timeline, and those dates have not yet occured; Several of the governors, ie Texas for example and Louisiana, DECLINED the money when it was politically advantageous to the Republicans, in making a point of stomping their feet in tantrum proportions—-but I have to share with you, that Jindal in LA., has since taken some money—yet it is not being reported in the news, is it?  Especially interesting, is that Fox News, who actually got the court permission to ‘lie’ under the protection of free speech a few months back…has no interest in reporting something if it is not advantageous to their stance, politically.

Even though I am in MI….we have the highest unemployment rate in the country, MY side of the State has been reported as doing better than the rest of the State, and better than some other States who are statically better off—-why?  Stim money—it has created employment here….

There are all sorts of colors in a  rainbow..and then there are  two colors, which are not—->Black, and White.  But when you put ALL the colors in one container, you get Black, or you get White.  Those other colors are still there—you just cannot see them any more.  

IF all you choose to focus on, is the money lost, then expand that look under the microscope at those who created the debacle, rather than the one who is assigned the task of cleaning up the mess.

 

China sells more cars that America—-and America was the ‘car-capital’ for many years.  WHO do you think ‘allowed’ that to happen?   Really, now….is it Obama’s ‘fault’?  Who moved all manufacturing out of this country?  Who manipulated the money creating 50+ loans using $1?! 

Do we ‘reward’ failure?  Just because it is Wall Street? and they are ‘powerful people who know things?’ even if they destroy the economies of the world?  Sorkins’ Book points out that there were only 10-20 people in control of the world economy when everything collapsed…the Wall Street Banks…..10-20 people in the whole friggin world, creted the TARP plan….and you expect ONE person to undo the mess in 9 months?

 

Taxpayers have already lost everything!!!!!  There comes a time when there is nothing left to lose—-the only solution is to ‘do something different’…  and the right side of the aisle that wants to keep things the way they ‘always have been’ is way more ‘political motivated’ than what you are accusing Obama of.  Obama is pulling no punches in trying to do what is wanted by ‘we the people’……as opposed to howmuch money he can put in his private bank account offshore.

 

 

Interesting that metal in the body can kill us—-and save us by killing cancer cells, too! hmmm

You hit a HUGE nail on the head!  as the cliche’ goes—-but for many, it is an invisible nail! haha

I can still recall when Fareed Zakaria asked ‘our friend’ Musharrif (sp) about the money.  He bristled up, and stated that they EARNED that money!  All that money sent to Pakistan BEFORE Obama was the President!  And where did it get us?  Well….Americas’ middle class was liquidated, lets’ see….that started in 2001…we stopped regulating the Banks et al, maybe no money available to pay the office workers? becasue we were sending it all somewhere else?   I am being kind, here….I won;t even mention that we shot the savings account going to war and paying out HUGE sums of money to people in Iraq—on a whim!      

I believe we, as Americans, have to ask ourselves why we—America—must be ‘the ones’ who are ‘responsible’ for protecting the world from terrorism? 

In the past, we have done all we could to stop other countries from attaining strength, militarily.  Now, when it takes a world to stop the terrorism of a few, we seem to have no allies who are strong enough to get in there and help clean up the mess!  We have created our own ‘prison’ on this was in Afghanistan, or is it Pakistan?, or is it……..?

 

Human nature, competition, whatever you choose to call it, reacts  ALWAYS, to squash the power of the one at the top.  Thank GOD for Obama, who understands that co-operation accomplishes the best of the best, on a world wide scale…..but are we getting it from other countries?

On a personal level, I am against war.  I don’t want the US to be THE policing country for the rest of the world….Yes, I understand the dangers mentioned by previous posters, should we not continue…that is what makes this such a difficult moral decision.

But who is going to guarantee, that by continuing to waste resources—-men, women, time that could be devoted to something else needed, money that could be used to feed humans…all of those things—who is to say that will allow any sort of step forward?

I hate war! 

Callie, How do you define ‘Patriotism’?

Good one!

hahaha…That expalins it!  NOW I know WHY Obama was given the NOBEL PEACE PRIZE!  the rest of the world confirmed he was not a corporate Crook!!!!!!!  Thanks for helping me figure that out!  Instead of the Shennanigans of the ‘how things were done before and we still got away with it’ robots,  Obama is smart enough, according to the rest of the world, to think things through FIRST, and ALLOWS input from others, BEFORE he makes a decision!!!!!

In the old days, deber, in my grandparents generation——that’s how they did things too—-think first, act last.  They were problem solvers, critical thinkers, who were smart enough to know, that what they ended up doing HAD to work out for everyone—if it did not—they would never get paid and never get any other work………today obviously—in your opinion, does not require ‘thought’ before ‘action’?     

Very few on the right side of the aisle, who participated in the demise of the economy as a Bush parrot, have FAILED to step up to the plate and offer solutions to correct, either.  Instead, the political modus-operandi has been to criticize, demean, lie, change the subject with some insane distraction, and to practice having the memory of a gold-fish by repeating that the ‘problem’ is Obama…… when in fact….the problem is that Obama has been given somone else’s dirty laundry, AND is being blamed for it being dirty!!!!!!!  A little nuance her, a slight slur there……..

What would be exciting to me, is if those that criticize, admit there is a problem that started before Obama, then participate in finding solutions…..so far, the ‘plan’ is to criticize Obama and blame HIM, at the same time, trying to UNDO whatever he and his team are suggesting.  Instead of being part of the solution, the right side seems to insist on being a permanent part of the problem! 

Your question regarding the 9 months, suggests to me, that perhaps you have never worked in a major corporation, in a decision-making capacity…..even for Corporations it takes a year, sometimes two, to settle on one course of action……unless like Bush and the gang,  when they planned the invasion of Iraq.  They had the PNAC written—-the ‘plan’, 4 years before Bush took office!!!!! How do YOU think Bush/Rove/Rummy/Wolfie/Cheney KNEW they were going to hold posisions in the White House 4 years later to carry out the plan?

As for the spending you mention:  I own a house….last spring my hot water heater busted….and I did not have the cash to pay for a new one….so should I—-as you suggest for Obama—-NOT spend the money to replace it?  And just go with cold water for a while?   When there is a hole in the roof—-should we just let it be a hole in the roof?  Even when it snows?  Or should we spend the money to fix it, so that it doesn’t ALSO destroy the rafters, and the ceilings in the house, and become a haven for mold spores in the attic? which makes the house a ‘sick house’ and sends children to the hospitals?

Every single day, people like you and me, have to make decisions just like that.  Do I fix it, and put it on the credit card?  Or do I let it go, KNOWING that if I do, it could get much worse…BUT, I do not have the money to fix it?  If you cannot pick the correct answer—-it is a good thing that all the naysayers against the efforts of Obama, are not in any position of power or the Presidency!  Instead of making the tough choices—-with common sense and thought-filled reason—-you find it easier to just ‘do nothing’? and let it all fall apart?

 

 

  

 

Oh you are welcome—-did you notice it was written in 2004?  as a criticism of the Bush policies?  My only intention for pointing that out, is to negate any and all accusations, that it is Obama who is making a mess of things…Obama inherited a mess—he did not create the mess that we are in…..  my perception is that many people tend to ignore that fact….on purpose.

I just spent a few hours researching some of the claims in this article.  Yesterday, and the day before, I did some in-depth research on the dollar, the IMF, the deficit under the Bush administration compared to prior, and comparing that to what the pencil pushers are suggesting it will be at the end of this year.  I came across research and articles that were written with the ‘What if Bush were the President this term?  Would there be any difference?’ 

 

Then I read the comments above.  I find it interesting that the charts done by Congress and Financial Gurus, are ignored, IF the sentiment is against Obama, for whatever reason.  I find it interesting, as well, that although there is a ‘convenient lapse of memory’ when it comes to becoming acquainted with ‘the whole truth’, as opposed to one-sided opinion, that either ignores the wholeness of the situation, or criticizes that which doesn’t ‘fit’ into some desperately fed ‘mantra’. 

If we continue to have the memory of a goldfish…..If we continue to choose sides, rather than synergize what is best for all….If we continue to make fun of, and deride the person that inherited this mess from GWB..then we have taken steps backward in intelligence.  It is the ones who many refer to as ignorant, are not ‘aware’, who name-call and criticize for the fun of it—-in order to feel better about the situation they helped create.  For the record….when there are laws against monopolies…it is for a reason….just because someone makes moeny doing something which is against the law, preventing new entry into the capitalist system….doesn’t mean they should continue to side-step the law.  We are a country of laws…….and the crooks on wall street, the oil companies, the banks that swindled the money away from the middle class, the Bush tax cuts that took money away from the States—ie Revenue Sharing and gave that money to the rich buds-of-W,  ALL did their dirty deeds under the wild-wild west of  Bush administration—and THAT is what got us into this mess…..

I have to ask myself as I read some of the comments…WHY people cannot ‘see’…then I remembered…it is because they want someone to blame, who does not appear to them, to be on THEIR side.

I read NO SOLUTIONS here today——only criticisms and derisions, slanted to one side of the aisle.  You know, humans have 2 sides of a brain intheir head—-why limit yourselves to using only one side, ie HALF a brain?  

Here is a piece of info I discovered this afternoon: 

From July, 2008—Huffpo..
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/28/bush-leaving-next-preside_n_115335.html

WASHINGTON — The government’s budget deficit will surge past a half-trillion dollars next year, according to gloomy new estimates, a record flood of red ink that promises to force the winner of the presidential race to dramatically alter his economic agenda.The deficit will hit $482 billion in the 2009 budget year that will be inherited by Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain, the White House estimated Monday. That figure is sure to rise after adding the tens of billions of dollars in additional Iraq war funding it doesn’t include, and the total could be higher yet if the economy fails to recover as the administration predicts.

The result: the biggest deficit ever in terms of dollars, though several were higher in the 1980s and early 1990s as a percentage of the overall economy…….

And a headline in 2004:  While Bush was the President:

Published on Friday, October 22, 2004 by CommonDreams.org The Bush Budget Deficit Death Spiral by Robert Freeman   Lenders talk about a �debtor�s death spiral.� It occurs when borrowers get so far in over their heads they begin borrowing money just to cover the interest payments on past borrowings. The borrowers have to do this to keep the lending flowing but they can no longer plausibly pay down the principal. As new debt compounds on old, bankruptcy becomes imminent. Further lending is foolhardy. Foreclosure is only a matter of time. The U.S. is starting to look like it is entering just such a death spiral. It is foretold not simply by the large and growing deficits, nor by the fact that their carrying costs will rise quickly as interest rates rise. Rather, it is the fact that these trends are becoming irreversible, a structural part of the U.S. economy. When the ultimate collapse will occur, whether it comes with a bang or a whimper, how it will be triggered, and how severe it will be are as yet unknown. But as Herbert Stein, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Richard Nixon was fond of saying, �Things that can�t go on forever, don�t.� The first signs of impending trouble are the exploding budget deficits themselves. They began, of course, under the parlous economic stewardship of Ronald Reagan. Reagan cut the marginal tax rate on the wealthiest of Americans from 70% to 38%. He promised it would spur an orgy of investment and rocket the economy to new levels of production and prosperity. Instead, his �supply side economics� did the exact opposite. It produced the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Output fell 2.2% in 1982 while budget deficits soared. When Reagan took office in 1981, the national debt stood at $995 billion. Twelve years later, by the end of George H.W. Bush�s presidency, it had exploded to $4 trillion. Reagan was a �B� grade movie actor and a doddering, probably clinically senile president, but he was a sheer genius at rewarding his friends by saddling other people with debts. Bill Clinton reversed Reagan�s course, raising taxes on the wealthy, and lowering them for the working and middle classes. This produced the longest sustained economic expansion in American history. Importantly, it also produced budgetary surpluses allowing the government to begin paying down the crippling debt begun under Reagan. In 2000, Clinton�s last year, the surplus amounted to $236 billion. The forecast ten year surplus stood at $5.6 trillion. It was the last black ink America would see for decades, perhaps forever. George W. Bush immediately reversed Clinton�s policy in order to revive Reagan�s, once again showering an embarrassment of riches on the already most embarrassingly rich, his �base� as he calls them. He ladled out some $630 billion in tax cuts to the top 1% of income earners. In true Republican fashion, they returned the favor by investing over $200 million to ensure Bush�s re-election. Do the math. A $630 billion return on a $200 million investment: $3,160 for $1. I�ll give you $3,160. All I ask is that you give me $1 back so I can keep the goodness flowing. Do we have a deal? Republicans know return on investment. But the cost to the public has been a return to the exploding deficits of the Reagan years. Bush blew through Clinton�s surplus in his first year. The 2004 deficit reached $415 billion, a record. Still, its real size is masked by the fact that Bush has shifted $150 billion from the Social Security trust fund in order to make the shortfall look smaller. It�s like pretending you�re richer when you move money from one pocket to another. Both sums have to be repaid, so the real amount borrowed is the $415 billion �nominal� deficit plus the $150 billion from Social Security or $565 billion. This shell game with federal trust funds taints all official forecasts about Bush�s deficits going forward. For example, the Congressional Budget Office estimates Bush�s cumulative ten year deficit at $2.3 trillion, to be sure, a breathtaking shortfall from the $5.6 trillion surplus he inherited from Clinton. But as with the yearly number, this one ignores the trust fund sleight of hand, an omission of some $2.4 trillion. When this is added back in, Bush�s ten year deficit leaps to $4.7 trillion, $10.3 trillion short of Clinton�s number. But even that number is understated because the CBO forecasts are based on current law. Bush�s tax cuts have not yet been made permanent. If Bush is re-elected and the cuts are made permanent, that would add another $3.2 trillion to the shortfall. It was not too long ago that a $3.2 trillion increment to anything would have made sober people�s noses bleed but such figures are mere accounting details to the Big Thinkers in the White House, especially since it will not be their constituents who are paying it back. Add it all together�the �nominal� deficit, the stealth siphoning from Social Security, and the permanent effects of Bush�s tax cuts�and the 10 year deficit explodes to a mind-boggling $7.9 trillion. Within ten years, the government will owe more than $15 trillion. And this, at precisely the time the government needs fiscal solvency to begin paying the Baby Boomers their Social Security. This run-up in debt represents the most rapid, predatory looting of public wealth in the history of the world. The interest costs alone will consume the government and, soon, the entire economy. In fiscal 2004, interest costs came to $321 billion against a deficit of $415 billion. So three quarters of all the current year borrowing is spent paying interest on past borrowing. This is the most immediate symptom of the deficit death spiral. And the situation will only get worse when interest rates rise, as they must. The U.S. has enjoyed an unprecedented period of low rates, the lowest in 50 years. The only direction they can go is up. And they will rise quickly once foreigners, who are more and more the buyers of U.S. debt, become saturated with dollars and begin to eschew additional lending. This is effectively what happened in the early 1970s when the Arab oil sheikdoms realized that Nixon had decoupled the dollar from gold redemption but was still paying for oil in dollars�essentially paper. The sheiks tripled the price of oil in 1973 and again in 1978. The OPEC �oil shocks� wrought havoc on the American economy, putting a death to the halcyon days of post-World War II economic growth. Today�s oil at $50 a barrel is the modern day enactment of the same implicit disdain for dollars. The Japanese did the same thing in 1987. For years they had funded Reagan�s massive supply side budget deficits but had been made fools as the dollar was losing 15% a year in value, more than wiping out the 5% return they were receiving on their treasuries. They wisely stopped buying in October 1987, precipitating the greatest one-day U.S. stock market collapse since the Great Depression. The �dollar overhang� problem caused by Bush�s record budget deficits is compounded by record U.S. trade deficits. Every month, the U.S. economy buys some $50 billion more from the world than it sells, in the act flooding the world with private dollars. These are on top of the public dollars from the budget deficits. The total trade deficit for 2004 will amount to some $680 billion. As recently as 1992, the amount was only $34 billion, a twenty fold increase in just over 10 years, another sign of the spiral. These �twin deficits��trade and budget�combine to well over $1 trillion a year of borrowing. Their effect is to bury the world�s economy in dollar debts, dollars that increasingly buy less and less. As mentioned above, no one knows when the world will say, �enough.� Japan holds a reported $1 trillion supply of dollars, China, more than half a trillion. Both have bought dollars�in effect loaning equivalent sums to the U.S.�in order to keep the value of their own currencies low and therefore make their own goods cheaper in American markets. The Bush administration claims that both countries will continue to buy dollars so that their own currencies will not rise. But the danger is that once one major player declares it doesn�t want any more dollars there will be a rush for the exits. Demand for dollars, and with it, the dollar�s price, will plummet. The last player holding dollars will be stuck with the bag, a multi-trillion dollar stash of dollar holdings that are worth only a fraction of what they were just a month before. In other words, there are structural incentives biasing the descent toward chaos rather than order. Already, the dollar is down 19% over the past year, an eerie harkening of the Japanese experience of the late eighties. Its decline is being cagily �managed� by the U.S. Treasury which has muscled foreign central banks into picking up the slack since private foreign buyers have begun to refuse further dollar purchases. Foreign central banks now hold some 40% of total U.S. government debt. The only way the U.S. government can prevent a stampede is to raise interest rates�the return for holding dollars. And Alan Greenspan has begun this process. But this, of course, increases the carrying costs of the national debt. As if a $7 trillion national debt funded at 4% isn�t bad enough, envision a $15 trillion debt at 10%. Instead of $300 billion a year in interest costs, think of $1.5 trillion. Instead of interest amounting to 3% of GDP, imagine the carnage as it approaches 10%. The higher rates will put a knife in the heart of an already tenuous recovery, undermining the only process by which payoff might ever be accomplished. It will suck all of the oxygen out of the economy. Economists call this the �crowding out effect� when lending to the government gets priority over private lending. After all, government has the power to tax in order to fulfill its obligations whereas private borrowers do not. But the market rations shortages by raising prices�interest rates�forcing private borrowers to pay ever more for scarce capital. In this way, markets for private debt mirror markets for public debt. Investment, the foundation of future growth, will be savaged. New roads, hospitals, factories, schools and research will be sacrificed to escalating interest rates borne of stratospheric debt. This occurred during the deficit-burdened 1980�s when investment grew at an annual rate of only 2.5% versus 6.9% in the surplus-graced 1990�s. And not surprisingly, productivity suffered as well. It grew at a meager 1.4% per year during the 1980�s but almost 50% faster, 2.0%, during the 1990�s. This is the perverse, inescapable cycle�the death spiral�that comes part and parcel with too much debt. Its relentlessly rising carrying costs steadily erode the possibility of getting out from underneath it. Higher debt loads lead to higher interest rates, which lead to lower investment which leads to slower growth and, ultimately, diminished prosperity. And it develops a runaway, recycling dynamic all its own. Finally, it is not only the high absolute levels of debt, nor their rapid expansion, nor even the imminence of much higher interest rates that consign the U.S. to the certain oblivion of a deficit death spiral. It is that this toxic combination of circumstances has become structural, irreversible, locked into the very nature of government economic policy. It is like a driver hurtling down a cul de sac and gluing his foot to the accelerator. The very purpose of the Reagan supply side tax cuts was to funnel more of the nation�s wealth to those already wealthy. This is what David Stockman, Reagan�s Budget Director, meant when he called them a �Trojan Horse.� And they did their job wonderfully. In 1980, the top 20% of income earners captured 43.7% of all national income. By 1992, at the end of the first Bush administration, their share had risen to 46.9%. Today it is over 49%. Meanwhile, the lowest four fifths of all income earners have seen their share of national income decline. The lowest quintile�s share has shrunk from 4.2% to 3.5%. The second lowest quintile has fallen from 10.2% to 8.8%. The middle quintile has seen its share fall from 16.8% to 14.8%. And the second highest quintile has suffered a decline from 25.0 to 23.3%. It is empirically the case that the rich are getting richer while everyone else is getting poorer. The problem this holds for national economic management is that the rich consume a much lower percentage of their income than do those who are not rich. How many cars can you drive at one time, anyway? The rich are also the most likely to spend what money they do on foreign luxury goods, take foreign vacations, make investments in foreign countries, or just let the money sit in the bank. The poor, working, and middle classes, on the other hand, spend virtually everything they earn. The car needs new tires, the kids need new shoes, the washing machine needs fixing, they�re two months behind on the rent and three months behind on the credit cards. In all of these ways, income shifted through the tax code to middle and lower quintile earners is quickly spent while income shifted to the wealthy is not. This is not class warfare. It is Economics 101. It is personal consumption�spending�that generates 67% of GDP. If more of the nation�s income goes to those who do not consume its output, while those who do consume it have less and less income, a structural shortfall emerges where there is simply not enough purchasing power to sustain GDP. GDP will ratchet steadily downward in mirror image to the rate at which national income is transferred upward. The only recourse is for the government to step in to pump up demand. This is the role the deficits play in sustaining GDP. This is why deficits exploded under Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II, all of whom cut taxes on the rich, but declined under Clinton who raised them. Rising public deficits are necessary�in fact, indispensable�to sustaining GDP because so much of the nation�s wealth has been transferred from those who, as a matter of necessity, spend it to those who, as a matter of taste, do not. Supply side economics (and that includes Bush�s ill-disguised variant) rests on the repeatedly disproved faith that investment and prosperity are caused by giving ever more of the nation�s wealth to the already wealthy. As long as this lunacy continues to drive tax policy, the government will keep expanding federal deficits. Eventually, possibly soon, this will cause a collapse of the dollar that can only be reversed by raising interest rates. But that will explode the carrying costs on the by-then mammoth debts, vitiating private sector investment. And that will kill all future prospects of meaningful growth. This is the essence of the Bush budget deficit death spiral. To be sure, the debts are an unequalled bonanza for those few who lend the money, for they get to do so at ever-higher rates of interest. But it is a death sentence for all the rest of the economy. Robert Freeman writes on economics, history and education. He can be reached at robertfreeman10@yahoo.com.