As we skip merrily down the path toward a third world currency and status, a moment to reflect on how we arrived here is in order.
While most of the world embraces market principles, we languish in a half-hearted attempt at both Marxist socialism and Reagan capitalism. Unfortunately, we are failing miserably at both. There is coming a time when the bond markets will refuse to finance our fence sitting and we will have to decide once and for all whether to be a European-style quasi-socialist state or an American-style capitalist state. Both have their merit, but our inability to determine which path we take is wearing on the folks who finance our indecision, as was reflected in Moody’s warning about the future ratings of our debt instruments.
For the record, America was not intended to be a place where the rights of the individual were infringed upon for the rights of the collective. Euro-style socialism will probably not work in a melting-pot society with such disparate ethnic values and our inherent disdain for excessive taxes and regulation.
Likewise, we need to clean up our capitalist act and start behaving in a manner befitting a modern society. The casino mentality that seems to have gripped Wall Street and to some degree all of us needs to give way to sound, job-creating economic policies that are sustainable going forward. Put simply, we need less money engineering and more real engineering.
Lastly, we need to voluntarily get our hearts in the right place so the government doesn’t have to legislate that we do so.
Michael H. Bond
Monroe
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