Crash of 2008–The Party`s Over


The Crash of 2008, which is now
wiping out trillions of dollars of our people`s wealth,
is, like the

Crash of 1929
, likely to mark the end of one era and
the onset of another.

The new era will see a more sober
and much diminished America. The
"Omnipower"
and
"Indispensable Nation"
we heard about in all the
hubris and braggadocio following our Cold War victory is
history.

Seizing on the crisis, the left
says we are witnessing the failure of market economics,
a failure of conservatism.

This is nonsense. What we are
witnessing is the collapse of Gordon Gekko ("Greed
Is Good!"
)) capitalism. What we are witnessing is
what happens to a prodigal nation that ignores history,
and forgets and abandons the philosophy and principles
that made it great.

A true conservative cherishes
prudence and believes in fiscal responsibility, balanced
budgets and a self-reliant republic. He believes in
saving for retirement and a rainy day, in deferred
gratification, in not buying on credit what you cannot
afford, in living within your means.

Is that really what got Wall Street
and us into this mess—that we followed too religiously
the gospel of Robert Taft and Russell Kirk?

"Government must
save us!"
cries the left, as ever. Yet, who got us
into this mess if not the government—the Fed with its
easy money, Bush with his profligate spending, and
Congress and the SEC by liberating Wall Street and
failing to step in and stop the drunken orgy?

For years, we Americans have spent
more than we earned. We save nothing. Credit card debt,
consumer debt, auto debt, mortgage debt, corporate
debt—all are at record levels. And with pensions and
savings being wiped out, much of that debt will never be
repaid.

Our standard of living is
inevitably going to fall. For foreigners will not
forever buy our bonds or lend us more money if they
rightly fear that they will be paid back, if at all, in
cheaper dollars.

We are going to have to learn to
live again without our means.

The party`s over

Up through World War II, we
followed the Hamiltonian idea that America must remain
economically independent of the world in order to remain
politically independent.

But this generation decided that
was yesterday`s bromide and we must march bravely
forward into a Global Economy, where we all depend on
one another. American companies morphed into
"global companies"
and moved

plants and factories
to Mexico, Asia,
China
and India
, and we began buying more cheaply from
abroad what we used to make at home: shoes, clothes,
bikes, cars, radios, TVs, planes, computers.

As the trade deficits began
inexorably to rise to 6 percent of GDP, we began vast
borrowing from abroad to continue buying from abroad.

At home, propelled by tax cuts,

war in Iraq
and an explosion in social spending,
surpluses vanished and deficits reappeared and began to
rise. The dollar began to sink, and gold began to soar.

Yet, still, the promises of the
politicians come. Barack Obama will give us
national health insurance
and tax cuts for all but
that 2 percent of the nation that already carries 50
percent of the federal income tax load.

John McCain is going to cut taxes,
expand the military,

move NATO into Georgia and Ukraine,
confront Russia
and force Iran to stop enriching uranium or
"bomb, bomb,
bomb,"
with
Joe Lieberman
as wartime


consigliere
..

Who are we kidding?

What we are witnessing today is

how empires end
..

The Last Superpower is unable to

defend its borders
, protect its currency, win its
wars or balance its budget. Medicare and Social Security
are headed for the cliff with unfunded liabilities in
the tens of trillions of dollars.

What we are witnessing today is
nothing less than a Katrina-like failure of government,
of our political class, and of democracy itself, casting
a cloud over the viability and longevity of the system.

Notice who is managing the crisis.
Not our elected leaders. Nancy Pelosi says she had
nothing to do with it. Congress is paralyzed and heading
home. President Bush is nowhere to be seen.

Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs and
Ben Bernanke of the Fed chose to bail out Bear Sterns
but let Lehman go under. They decided to nationalize
Fannie and Freddie at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of
billions, putting the U.S. government behind $5 trillion
in mortgages. They decided to buy AIG with $85 billion
rather than see the insurance giant sink beneath the
waves.

An unelected financial elite is now
entrusted with the assignment of getting us out of a
disaster into which an unelected financial elite plunged
the nation. We are just spectators.

What the Greatest Generation handed
down to us—the richest, most powerful, most
self-sufficient republic in history, with the highest
standard of living any nation had ever achieved—the baby
boomers, oblivious and self-indulgent to the end, have
frittered away.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC
.



Patrick J. Buchanan

needs

no introduction
to VDARE.COM readers;
his book
 
State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, can be ordered from Amazon.com. His latest book
is Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its
Empire and the West Lost the World,

reviewed

here
by

Paul Craig Roberts.