Busting out the USA
A friend of mine sends me this letter. I submit it to your candid judgment, dear reader, to see if you can deduce a more reasonable explanation of the current and ongoing destruction of the once-great republic of the United States. He writes:
I’m not an economic expert by any means.
I’m just a guy who watches movies. But I noticed something from a couple of Mafia films that seems to explain our current predicament. It’s called ‘busting out.’
In GOODFELLAS, mobster Henry Hill and his pals get control of a restaurant. The owner owes them gambling debts he can’t pay. So instead, they become his silent partners. They then begin taking home cases of imported liquor, pans of steaks, mountains of fresh lobster, and so on. When t hey have all they can possibly want, they take more liquor and food and sell it, sometimes to competing restaurants, at absurd rock-bottom prices. They pay for it all with credit ‘6 the restaurant’s credit. And when, finally, no one will lend the restaurant one more dime, they torch the place for the insurance. They have squeezed the restaurant (really the owner’s good name, not so much the actual building) for every cent they could possibly get. They have ‘busted it out.’
On the SOPRANOS, Tony Soprano gets control of a sporting-goods store owner who owes him money. He and his buds order mass quantities of beer coolers and swimwear, which they give to kids to hawk at the beach for ten cents on the dollar. But it’s pure profit, as it’s all paid for on credit which they never intend to pay off. They come up with all the usual swindles to keep borrowing; using one credit line to pay another, ‘lost in the mail’, ‘gimme one more chance, I’ll have the money Tuesday,’ and so on. But finally, no one will lend the owner another cent, and bam! They torch the place.
Barack Obama and his complicit Congress have borrowed an utterly unsupportable amount of money already, to say nothing of the additional trillions they want to spend nationalizing our medical system. This can only end in hyperinflation, a default on our debts, or possibly both at the same time. The country afterward will be crippled by the near-dearth of credit in any form, because the government will have tapped out bonds, stocks, gold, credit cards, banks, every source of liquid wealth you can think of, they can think of, and will seize.
Why don’t they care? Well, Obama doesn’t care because like the Mafia, America is not his business. It’s something to leech off of. And as he obviously thinks that when he dies, the universe ends, he has a limited time to bleed America. Why not go for all he can, while he can? Why not bust u s out?
Not sure how the Congress feels. Do they really think if America is permanently crippled, they can walk away? Maybe some of the millionaires do. Of course, there won’t be anyplace safe in the entire world if America’s too weak to defend its citizens, but they don’t really think the world’s a dangerous place, most of ‘em. And some, though it’s hard for me to believe, may be so stupid they actually think we CAN borrow 2 trillion bucks a year and somehow skate when the bill comes due.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
