Yes...but!

December 10, 2007

Home > Columns >Yes...But! Year 8-5

Last week I saw President Bush fumble the Iran nuclear bomb issue, his latest lapse in a series of world-endangering foibles. His first decision was to cancel a Clinton initiative. Here is its back ground.

In 1993 President Bill Clinton, urged by Al Gore, his vice-president, summoned the heads of the Big Three automakers to Washington, and gave them a Billion Dollars to develop a vehicle that would be more economical than any on the market.

The usual blah-blah-blah about American technology, American entrepreneurship, American savvy, accompanied this announcement. Already then there was talk about a diesel-hybrid combination.

The Japanese were left out, but this did not stop them from tackling this concept as well.

By 2000 the Big Three- as they were still labelled then- wheeled out their concept cars, and then wheeled them away, never to be seen again, because there had been a change of regime: Bush had blundered into Washington. Flanked by representatives of the same three American manufacturers, the then Energy Secretary – a former lobbyist for the automotive industry – announced that the Clinton-Gore concept had been basically flawed and the Bush-Cheney car of the future, already labelled the “Freedom Car,” was to be powered by pure hydrogen.

In the meantime Toyota and Honda did develop this supposedly flawed concept, resulting in the Prius, of which now more than a million have been sold, a million that could have been money in the pockets of GM or Ford.

And the Freedom Car? It proved to be as flawed as all the other Bush ventures, the first of his many fundamental gaffes since he took office.

What are the other Bush bloopers? When Clinton left office in January 2001, the US national debt stood at $5.7 trillion and, with surpluses rising, the Congress Budget Office calculated that the debt would be fully eliminated in the year 2006.

So what happened? The first thing Bush did was to cut taxes for the rich, not once but twice. Now every minute of every day of the year a million dollars is added to its national debt: in real numbers: 60 x 24 x 365 = 525,600 x $1 million = $525 billion. In hard dollars this means that, when Bush leaves office, the national debt will be $10 trillion or $30,000 for every man, woman, child in the USA, almost doubled in 8 reckless years.

Bush’s march of folly lately includes an ever growing avalanche of mortgage defaults, imperilling the global banking system. While his Republican cronies on Wall Street made millions in fees and many more in bonuses, millions of ordinary people are losing their homes and jobs. As the rich get richer and the poor poorer, inequality is widening at a rate not seen since that fateful year 1929, the start of the Great Depression, signalling even greater financial turmoil to come.

Thanks to Bush’s disastrous policies, a young American male in his 30s today has an income, adjusted for inflation, that is 12 percent less than what his father was making 30 years ago. Some 5.3 million more Americans are living in poverty now than were living in poverty when he became president.

In spite of drastically reduced tax income, Bush doubled agricultural subsidies, gave tax breaks to his friends in the oil-and gas industry amounting to billions of dollars, and, to top it off, started the financially ruinous “war of choice” in Iraq. Funds sorely needed for health care, for future pensions, for repairing decaying roads, bridges, sewers, electricity grid, have been wasted on a useless war, which has resulted in the tripling of oil prices, and the murders of ten of thousands of people.

The next occupant of the White House will inherit a situation so messy that it is quite well possible that the financial and environmental harm is beyond fixing.

Money itself has become mere numbers on the computer screen. Its value is purely psychological. At some point the Rest of the World will realize that America has become a total liability: not only is its net-worth negative, due to its immense debts, but its footprint on the ecological world, with 5 percent of the world population using 25 percent of the world resources, is something the world can no longer afford. Once its creditors realize this, America will collapse like the house of cards it is.

When I watched Bush at his press conference last week I was reminded of the prophet Isaiah. Under the heading “Jerusalem (the USA) on its last legs,” Isaiah 3 tells us: ‘I’ll put little kids in charge’. That is precisely the situation in the USA.