The cold war is now only a distant memory. For some of us though, it is hard to forget. The reason for this is that the cold war had a surprise ending. We won only because we outspent our enemy. Our enemy was a giant but it had an economy that was only a portion of the size of our own. It failed because there was no more money to compete. Ronald Reagan said "tear down that wall..." and they did. I think he was more surprised than anyone else when the Berlin wall came down.

We are now spending more than we ever did. If we were a company, our bonds would be lower than junk bonds. New estimates just for the Iraq war are TWO TRILLION DOLLARS. A trillion dollars is one thousand billion dollars. This is not to mention the fact that income into the government coffers has been greatly reduced from what it could have been. This is due to the fact that taxes on the rich keep getting reduced. It is very nice for them, but it certainly doesn't help with the huge deficit we are compiling. We used to have our money backed by gold and silver, now it is only backed by the full faith and credit of the country. In other words, our money is backed by our economic and military might and will stay valuable only as long as others allow it to be. Much of it is now in foreign hands in the form of cash, bonds and different financial certificates. If these countries ever get together and demand value for their money and certificates, they could ruin us.

Other countries are watching the mighty U.S. with relish. They know that we can not keep on going the way we are. Each war we take on, takes a chunk of money from our economy, money that could be used to make things better for our citizens. It also puts us deeper in the hole. This country has decided to police the entire world as a solution to the nuclear problem. It is neither feasible to do so or smart. Unfortunately we are a country that has many enemies and the nuclear genie is out of the bottle. What is the answer to this problem? I wish I could say that if we do this or that it would solve the problem, but the problem is of huge proportions. Let's look at the problem for a second and analyze it. It seems to me that we want to keep our nuclear capability, but don't want countries that are either our enemies or unstable to get nuclear weapons. There is an old saying, "don't do what I do, do what I say." If a country that we like gets a nuke then the policy is not to talk about it. It is very hard to enforce a policy in this manner. One major problem is that some countries feel that they must be known as a nuclear powers to get the respect of the world and the position they deserve.

We counter these problems by throwing huge amounts of cash at them. We try and develop detection satellites that are very costly along with spy rings and contacts in these countries. We must be expecting this to get even worse because there is a bill in Congress for a universal draft of men and women and one of the provisions states that the draft is to protect this country and for other reasons. This is not the exact wording but I think you get the idea. If we look at this in terms of money, it probably means a bigger armed forces at a higher cost. We have all the defense contractors working full time developing more and more expensive planes and ships. Here is something I was wondering about, since we are the only country in the world to field a force of aircraft carriers, why must be constantly build new ones rather than overhaul the ones we have, it would be a lot cheaper. Even if we only got twice the life span on each one it would be a huge savings?

We are like a piece of meat being eaten by ants. Each ant takes a tiny bite from our economy and one bite doesn't mean too much, but when you have thousands of ants the bites add up. The problem is that no one is counting the bites. We are being nibbled to death. Others know this, since it is so obvious. Much of our income has been lost, just look around you and count the manufacturing facilities in this country. There is only a fraction of the amount of factories that we used to have. A good example of this is steel production. We were once the leader in that area now, if it wasn't for specialty steel we would have nothing. I have heard it said that if we were ever attacked and the turret manufacturing facility for tanks was knocked out, we would not be able to produce them anymore. A scary thought indeed.

I can't believe that we didn't see this coming. Sure labor is cheaper in other places, but with the robotics we have, you would think that we could compete with anyone. Is there something else involved here? Could it be that we had some master plan to avert world unrest by allowing other countries to improve their standard of living at our expense? Why can't the rulers of this country see what they are doing to it? If other countries see that we are destroying ourselves, why can't we? You certainly don't have to be a genius to see that if you spend far, far more than you take in and keep floating bonds which are loans to fill the gap, someday no one will buy those bonds and they will want their money. If a country's economy is improving at a rapid rate and they are acquiring surplus cash, eventually they will be in a position to out bid us on strategic supplies that we need, further hurting our economy.

I read an article that stated that all oil purchases all over the world must be made in U.S. dollars and because of this, every country must have them. If this ever changes then the value of the dollar will drop like a rock. It went on to state that the U.S. has really been bankrupt since 1933, but our good faith and credit along with things like the petrol dollars keep the value of the dollar up.

If things keep going the way they are or get worse, the downward spiral of our economy will speed up. Will we become another Soviet Union? Will people say someday that yeah America was the strongest country in the world only to collapse because of their over burdened economy? Will we have to tell all those other countries like North Korea, Iran, Syria etc. to go do what they want, we are withdrawing from the world stage? On the surface it sounds like a relief, but in reality it would probably result in a nuclear holocaust. I think we could save some big bucks by letting Taiwan protect itself. If it doesn't want to, that shouldn't be our problem. The troops should be pulled out of Japan and Europe and any other areas where they are. It is about time we let these countries run themselves. If help is requested for any reason, then that country should pay for the cost. I don't think that any of this is unreasonable, do you?

Iraq will be on its own someday and the chances are it will not make it, if we don't have soldiers there. It is what is known as a money pit. A lot of companies are making a fortune there. There has never been such a company oriented government in the history of the U.S. It gives away no bid contracts and contracts to other than the highest bidders. When certain companies over charge by hundreds of millions or billions, they are still retained and only forced to pay some of the over charges back. Of course that could be because certain officials worked for these companies before taking office. We have no choice, we have to get out of Iraq. We should have had an Iraqi force built by now. We have had years to build this force and have really gotten nowhere. If it was up to me, we wouldn't have went there, but since we did, I would be out in a year period. This would trim the deficit nicely. I would also leave Afghanistan. Hey they could even train the Iraqi force here to avoid attacks upon them while they are learning.

Are we ever going to get back in the black with our budgets? We better, or the U.S. might just become a third class nation.