Please send cash

Empty the jails. We’re going to need a larger boat. The end is near.
Is that really a tsunami wave out in the distance or just a mirage?
A Ponzi scheme, as we must all know by now, is a mirage. It’s a manufactured appearance of a successful enterprise based on paying returns to early investors with the funds provided by later investors. The operator drains off funds to support an excessive lifestyle. For years observers have suggested that the US Social Security system is a Ponzi scheme because it is not possible to achieve enough new investors to maintain the payments to the growing recipient list.
TheFundamentals has been suggesting that the US Government has now entered the business of taking in monies from any and all sources to maintain an unsustainable spending and deficit building pyramid (see charts to the left.) In the distant past the US borrowing capacity was either underutilized or managed with some care as to keep its money raising capabilities intact. The government let the banks and other financial entities engage in the excesses and was able to maintain a protected sideline post always ready to jump in and issue press release from the US Attorney’s office or some other regulatory bureau. Mr. Bernanke is threatening that status and now he has Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton running around giving assurances to investors that their money is safe with us so keep it coming. His allies in this scheme include the beady eyed TGeithner, the failed academic LSummers and the inexplicable participation of PVolcker. Any day now expect to see the addition of ASoprano. Playing locally in your state and municipal governments are folks like RDaley and ASchwarzenegger and, frankly, most any member of the IL state legislature. Click on this link to read about the Ponzi scheme in Chicago, TX, CA and IL. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&refer=exclusive&sid=alwTE0Z5.1EA
The current edition of Newsweek actually suggests that we all had better start spending or the scheme/pyramid/mirage will collapse. This magazine is stretching the limits of the First Amendment, using words to run its own Ponzi scheme. Keep promising more, write more ridiculous articles and maybe a few new readers will pop up.
So, who’s buying this nonsense? That is the $64 question. A lot of Americans are not. Hopefully even more will curtail their spending, save more, pay down debt and return to the fundamentals. Good leadership would encourage such steps in these times. The US of A is lacking good leadership at all levels – government, business, unions, education, pension funds and medicine. All want the scheme to go on for another day, week, month, maybe even a year or two. All want to cash in before it collapses.
Just as there are frugal families and individuals who will make it through this mess (please refer to the fairy tale, “The Three Little Pigs” for a better understanding of who survives the arrival of the wolf) so there are cities and states that build brick houses. You ask, “Can we survive this mess?” Who knows? For now ask, “Is my house built of straw, sticks or brick?” In the meantime, China, please send cash.