Let me preface this by saying that I really appreciate everybody's response on the soapbox every week, whether they be pro or con. I certainly don't expect everybody to agree with my opinion.
I rarely respond to the comments made unless I have, what I feel, is a very important and specific reason for doing so.
However, there were some comments made on the message board at my website on the soapbox article from last week that - although I'm sure were made in good faith by the reader who made them - I consider to be worthy of revisiting.
The comments I refer to state that America could not possibly run out of money as long as we continue to print it and that inflation is not a real danger for the American economy.
First of all, green pieces of paper mean nothing unless you can buy something with them and the American dollar has always been accepted as the world's standard trade currency, meaning that if a nation buys oil from Saudi Arabia they have to purchase dollars from us to pay the Saudis.
As we watch the fiscal turmoil in the European Economic Community and the direct and indirect effect it has on the rest the world's stock markets there is cause for major concern. And we have so far only seen the tip of the iceberg, the volatile and potentially catastrophic underbelly has not been exposed.
There is a very real possibility that there are nations in that alliance who could renounce the Euro and institute their own monetary system or even leave the ECC altogether and nobody actually knows what the extent of the effect of such actions would be.
The real problem the Europeans face is many faceted. The trade unions, the unwieldy bureaucratic monstrosity, the short work weeks and the spoiled population who have grown up under socialism who have little or no work ethic and think the government should see to their every need from cradle to grave.
Sound familiar?
In a way, our problems are more dangerous and convoluted than Europe's.
In addition to the union problems, the massive bureaucracies and the growing, non-working entitlement class, we have an ominous and potentially ruinous problem looming over our economic system.
As we print more and more dollars and they become worth less and less, if the American economy worsens, the rest of the world could very well demand that a more stable currency replace the dollar.
Where does that leave us? It leaves us in the position of having to purchase what ever currency the rest of the world chooses to be the trade standard and as the dollar continues to devaluate, and it will if we continue to print them so irresponsibly, we will have to pay more and more dollars that will become less and less valuable fueling inflation.
i.e…. if oil is one hundred dollars a barrel and we are forced to buy say, Swiss francs to pay for it and we have to expend one hundred and twenty five dollars to buy the equivalent in francs, that makes us pay one hundred twenty five dollars for a one hundred dollar barrel of oil.
And the same applies to most imports; if they stop accepting our dollars we are in big trouble and headed for hyperinflation.
You can see how this would wreck our economy and continue to bring the value of our currency down around the world, then it would take one hundred fifty dollars a barrel, then two hundred, and on it goes, with the dollar falling like a rock.
As America's debt mounts and the interest alone starts to consume the largest share of federal revenues this nation could well slide into a downward spiral that leads to the same place Greece is headed.
Think about it.
What do you think?
Pray for our troops, and for our country.
God Bless America
