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America's Nervous Breakdown -- And The World's
Victor Davis Hanson 10/1/2008
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Ancient thinkers from Thucydides to Cicero insisted that money was the real source of military power and national influence. We've been reminded of that classical wisdom these last three weeks.

In a manner not seen since the Great Depression, Wall Street went into panic mode from too many bad debts. The symbolic pillars of American monetary strength for years -- AIG, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Shearson-Lehman and Washington Mutual -- in a matter of hours either went broke, were absorbed or were reconstituted. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed like the house of cards that they were.

Even though the U.S. government rushed to restore trust, hundreds of billions of dollars in paper assets simply vanished. Friends and enemies abroad were unsure whether the irregular American heartbeat was a major coronary or a mere cardiac murmur. How strong really was the world's greatest economy? Was this panic the tab for years of borrowing abroad for out-of-control consumer spending? Had America finally gone too far enriching dictators by buying energy that it either could not or would not produce itself? Had the chickens of lavishing rewards on Wall Street and Washington speculators rather than Main Street producers finally come home to roost?

Allies trust that the United States is the ultimate guarantor of free communication and commerce
-- and they want immediate reassurance that their old America will still be there. In contrast, opportunistic predators -- such as rogue oil-rich regimes -- suddenly sniff new openings.

We've seen the connection between American economic crisis and world upheaval before. In the 1930s, the United States and its democratic allies, in the midst of financial collapse, disarmed and largely withdrew from foreign affairs. That isolation allowed totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia to swallow their smaller neighbors and replace the rule of law with that of the jungle. World War II followed.

During the stagflation and economic malaise of the Jimmy Carter years, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, the Iranians stormed our embassy in Tehran, the communists sought to spread influence in Central America and a holocaust raged unchecked in Cambodia.

It was no surprise that an emboldened Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once again last week called for the elimination of Israel. He's done that several times before. But rarely has he felt brazen enough to blame world financial problems on the Jews in general rather than on just Israelis. And he spouted his Hitlerian hatred in front of the United Nations General Assembly -- in New York, just a few blocks away from the ground zero of the Wall Street meltdown.

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Time to panic COLOR
By John Cole - The Scranton Times-Tribune * Posted 9/19/2008 12:00:00 AM
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Time to panic COLOR
© Copyright 2008  John Cole - All Rights Reserved.

Posted By: Jeremy  on Thursday, October 02, 2008

The world doesn't want to help us. We need to help ourselves. This country isn't self-reliant anymore, and as long as we are not self-reliant, we will keep getting ourselves into scrape after scrape until we collapse.

Posted By: John Handforth  on Thursday, October 02, 2008

Jeremy is correct.  We have to get back on our feet.

We are borrowing money from around the world, then sending a lot of that same money out to the world as foreign aid.  What's wrong with this picture?

We can't just cut foreign aid, but it is time to wean those countries.  Let's phase out foreign aid, so that we can stop borrowing money to finance it.  Many of those countries like our money (even if it is dwindling in value) but don't like us.  I don't even vacation in Mexico.

I prefer to visit parts of this great Country that I haven't seen.  My minivan has been in 27 States.  That isn't as good as the 57 States that Obama has seen, but, then again, I am paying my own way.

We also need higher import taxes, which will make American products a better bargain here.  Let's start making more American products!

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