Curmudgeon's Corner

The G20 Told Us...

Posted by Al Campbell on June 28, 2010

Economy, Political, Quality of Life, Taxes, U.S.

Isn’t it interesting that our country has been told off, in an economic sense, by the European Union countries?

The G20 conference in Canada has given our government “what for” in that it told us in no uncertain terms that one cannot spend oneself out of a recession with borrowed money.  These are the same countries that we’ve been trying to bail out of their doldrums for some time.  Even they have finally come to understand that there comes a time when the piper must be paid lest they, too, become paupers.

The European socialism experiment is folding in upon itself like a wet cardboard box.  Those leaders have finally recognized that they borrowed and spent themselves into this situation, and seem, finally, to be taking steps to end the experiment.   This is the Europe where people could retire at age 60 with full nationalized health care, etc., etc.  This is the Europe that our current President seems to want to emulate because it works so well and puts big government at the top of the heap.

Our nearly two-year experiment with Obama’s policies seems to have turned sour of late.  We are in much worse shape now than we were when he took office, and not all of it is "Bush's fault".  Obama had some problems to take care of that were not of his making, but he has not seemed up to that task…and it is a task that faces virtually every president who has ever been.  There are always unexpected calamities that hit every presidency,

The presidency is not some neat, tidy arrangement where really important people sit in a nice “Oval office” and make decisions that will place them forever in our hearts and the history books.  The presidency requires tough, and often unpopular, decisions be taken at the right time.  The current President has the “often unpopular” part of that down pat.

We continue to see “big government can help” decisions emanating from Washington as we see the economy stumbling along on money borrowed from China which is tiring of our debt.  We “stimulated” car purchases with the ‘cash for clunkers’ farce.  We bailed out the auto industry with our money and the unions ended up in a better position as the result than did we taxpayers who funded the whole thing.  We stimulated home purchases and, when those funds dried up, so did home sales.  We have begun nationalizing health care at a cost of trillions of dollars that we don't have.  We 'stimulated' employment and that has not been the magic bullet we were told largely because the money went to expanding government jobs and not our jobs.  We are reforming this and that industry and the favored people seem to always benefit.  Those of us who are unfavored are reeling from the pace of this big government take-over.

We have watched major legislation pass through this Congress and we wonder what were they thinking?  What is happening is the very well-crafted erosion of the power of the people in favor of the power of big government.  The Saul Alinsky playbook is in full sway.  The Obama Whitehouse has not missed capitalizing on any crises and doesn’t give any indication that it will.

We bought the proverbial ‘pig in a poke’ and we seem to have gotten what we deserve for taking such an action as voters.  He who would be President had no discernable experience, but talked a good game, and was voted in by a wave of uninformed enthusiasm.  The man had no experience that would’ve possibly prepared him for the task for which he was hired, and he hasn’t disappointed.  He has been as effective in so many ways as would have been expected of a person with no discernable experience.

Maybe we need such lessons at various points in history.  If so, let us hope that we learn from this experience.