As we wind our way towards an election between the professional liars that have been put forward as candidates for U.S. President, it seems to be a great time to remind us all about the issue being routinely ignored by virtually everyone (except Ron Paul, of course, who was never really embraced by the "please lie to me" mainstream public). To what issue am I referring? The national debt, of course. As you can see in this bumper sticker, the way to annoy a liberal is to "get a job," as the pop culture bumper sticker says. To annoy a conservative, all you have to do is "defend the Constitution." But how do you annoy everybody? That's simple: Explain the national debt. Americans don't want to hear about the national debt. It's like a family living paycheck to paycheck, maxed out on their credit cards, trying to pretend the collection notices are all being lost in the mail. They don't want to admit they have no ability to actually pay off the debt they've incurred by pursuing a flamboyoant lifestyle, blowing wads of cash on high-priced wines, luxury vehicles, and an occassional line of coke -- they desperately want to imagine they can keep living on money that appears from nowhere, regardless of how much they owe to everybody else and the fact that their incomes don't even come close to matching their expenditures. Too bad every household in America doesn't have its own Federal Reserve, huh? If it did, we could all just print money to pay off our debt, save our skins, and ignore the fundamentals of economics. But even in Washington today (and New York), the Federal Reserve is too busy bailing out greedy, criminally-operated banks to turn much attention to the much larger issue of the United States' national debt. Apparently, saving the banks is more important than anything else, and the Fed is now committed to destroying the U.S. dollar through runaway hyperinflation in order to prevent a few rich bankers from facing the consequences of their outrageous sub-prime lending sprees.

America runs its finances like a crack addict

But let's get back to the national debt for a moment. The United States government is broke. The only reason it's been able to operate for this long is because other nations and foreign central banks have been foolish enough to keep lending the U.S. government more money. It's like giving cash to a crack addict and hoping he will somehow seek out a drug rehab center on his own. This is the person who never gets a job, never makes an honest living, but yet somehow manages to hit up everybody else for cash. You know how it works: "I need to buy a car to get a job," they say. And then when you pony up the cash for their car, they get drunk and wreck the car, and they never try very hard to get a job in the first place. They keep spending and spending, tossing money down the drain on blows of crack, meth, heroin or booze. They promise to go into rehab someday, if you'll only help them through "the next month" with a little more cash. This is the life of a drug addict. (Do you know one? Everybody does, it seems...) America is that drug addict. It borrows cash from the central banks around the world, blowing it all on Medicare prescription benefits signed into law by Bush (money for drugs, see?). It spends trillions on military campaigns that accomplish nothing positive, yet enrage the global community and recruit lifelong enemies of this nation. Notice how the price of oil has more than tripled since the war with Iraq started? It's so bad now that truck drivers are going on strike over the price of diesel. America spends money not merely like a drunken sailor, but like a crack-addicted sailor with a wheelbarrel piled high with one-hundred dollar bills, locked in a room full of Gov. Spitzer's favorite hookers and a suitcase spilling over with blow.

Don't dare explain the national debt to anyone

But try to explain the simple workings of finance, debt and economics to the uninformed, and you'll be accused of being a doomsayer, a pessimist, or -- the worst insult in today's fear-based society -- unpatriotic! How dare you point out the economic truths that will soon bring this country's federal government to its knees! Such blatant truths shall not be tolerated... especially not in a country whose entire financial system is based on a cascade of fictional financial instruments propped up by nothing more than wishful thinking and Enron-style accounting fraud. Let me translate all this for you in serious terms: The United States is already broke. The Federal Reserve is destroying the currency. The U.S. dollar will soon be virtually worthless. There is no saving the dollar, and there's no saving the savings of any U.S. citizen foolish enough to be holding dollars when the music stops. The Federal Reserve has already decided to do anything in its power to save the rich bankers; even if it means destroying the value of all the dollars held by hard-working Americans. The day will come, folks, when your savings accounts will all be "recalibrated" and you'll be given ten cents on the dollar while the Fed slinks away with 90% of your savings, using it to bail out overpaid bank owners. And the federal government? Under a long string of presidential crooks -- Democratic and Republican alike -- it has decided to pursue a dangerous experiment called, "What happens if we never pay our debtors while running up more debt?" That experiment, not surprisingly, will end in the financial demise of this nation. (But there's good news: A new, better system may emerge from the dust of the greenback... keep reading...)

You can't defy the laws of gravity... nor economics

These aren't careless predictions, by the way. These are simple observations the follow the fundamentals. Why are the nations of the world fleeing the U.S. Treasury debt auctions? Why are dollars increasingly worthless everywhere except in the United States itself? The answer is because the Fed is hyperinflating the currency to save the banks, even while the government is snorting yet more crack and spending unprecedented levels of increasingly-worthless dollars on drugs and war (or, as they call it, "medication and defense"). Hence the bumper sticker: Annoy everyone. Explain the national debt. People don't want to hear this. They'd rather imagine none of these problems exist; that debt doesn't matter; that unlimited dollars can be created out of nothing with zero impact on peoples' savings; that the U.S. government is wise enough to avert financial disaster. These are the hopes of the deluded. These are precisely the ramblings of Enron's accountants before the crash, or dot-com stock pushers before that crash. They're the slobbering blatherings of all the people who said housing prices will never fall, and therefore everyone will get rich off the never-ending housing price booms!

Being right does not make you popular

I've spend many years pointing out the idiocies of the deluded. I publicly predicted the dot-com crash and began warning people to get out of the market in 1998 - 2001. (This is a matter of public record, not some wishful hindsight.) I also publicly predicted the collapse of the housing market right here on this website, beginning nearly two years ago. And now, those predictions that once seemed "radical" are the Wall Street Journal's front page news. What am I predicting now? Like I said, it's not a prediction, it's just an observation. It's like observing gravity. If you toss something into the air, you can be confident it's going to come falling back to the ground. You don't have to "predict" gravity; it's a law of the universe. It works by itself, like clockwork, regardless of what you want it do to (I'm ignoring near-light speed travel, relativity, quantum physics, and all that fun stuff for the purposes of this metaphor, by the way, for those readers who are physicists). Likewise, when you see a nation throw its dollars into the air, spending its way to oblivion, ignoring its debt and ramping up its spending to even higher levels, it doesn't take much of a prediction to know that it's all going to fall back to the ground in a grand economic collapse. So I'm not even calling the coming collapse of the U.S. government a "prediction." It's just common sense. It's as obvious as gravity. If you don't believe me, do the math. There is no mathematical solution to the current financial crisis facing not merely the banks and the currency, but the federal government itself. The only unknown factor is WHEN things will happen. Can the Fed help the economy limp along in a state of near-collapse for another year? Perhaps. Five years? Maybe. Ten years? I doubt it. Now for the good news: The good news is that the U.S. federal government will eventually go bankrupt. Yes, that's the good news! Because after the financial chaos passes (which will not be fun, believe me), we have a chance to create a new society, a new currency and a new, honest system of government that actually represents the People for a change. The current cabal of corruption and criminal behavior that sits in Washington and pretends to protect the interests of the voters is about to find itself on the receiving end of an angry mob. The 200+ year experiment called The United States of America is in its final chapter. But out of its failure, we can learn important lessons. We can learn things that will help us create a better future society. Lessons like: • Never let a private company (the Federal Reserve) control the money supply. • Never let "representative" legislators vote in your place. Insist on a DIRECT Democracy in the next society. (We don't need Senators and Congresspeople, folks. The whole concept is long since outdated, and most Senators and Congresspeople are crooks.) • Never let a government abandon the gold standard for its currency. If you do, that government will inevitably hyperinflate the currency and leave the people broke. • Never let corporations run the government. If you do, your government will become a branch of the corporations, and the regulators (like the FDA, USDA, etc.) will become agents of corporate-sponsored terrorism that abandon all ethics and destroy the health and safety of the People. • Never allow the centralization of power in one branch of government. For example, do not allow the creation of Executive Orders we've seen signed by the President. • Never allow one man (the President) to commit acts of war. Didn't we learn this after Vietnam? • Never allow people from industry to take jobs in the government where they become biased, pro-corporate pushers of everything from pharmaceuticals to beef. • Never allow politicians to censor scientists. • Never allow the population to be dumbed-down through sub-standard public schools that only raise a generation of obedient workers, not skeptical thinkers. • Never allow the media to control the population through advertiser-supported propaganda and violent programming. • Never allow politicians to destroy citizens' rights. When they attempt to do so, march on your capitol (in a non-violent way, of course). Arrest the politicians. Prosecute them for crimes against the People. • Never allow corporate lobbyists to have access to lawmakers. If you do, you'll end up with a corrupt government that only protects corporations, not the People. • Never allow your government to operate in secret, with secret prisons, secret wiretapping laws and secret war "evidence" that is never made public. Secrecy breeds corruption. Honest societies do not need to conduct their judicial processes in secret. • Never allow corporations to play God with the food supply by genetically modifying the crops. • Never allow corporations to be granted intellectual property ownership over seeds, genes, animals and medicines. If you do, you will one day wake up impoverished, "homeless on the continent your fathers conquered," to quote Jefferson. • Never allow banks to operate on a fractional reserve system of loans and money creation that's just begging for a series of cascading failures. ... I could go on, but you get the point. We have learned some very tough lessons over the last 200+ years, and once this present government collapses, it is crucial that we apply those lessons in creating a new system that abandons tyranny and embraces genuine freedom. We will have this opportunity soon. Many Americans will lose their life savings on the journey towards this new opportunity, but if we maintain our collective vision of a brighter future society, I believe we can create something much better out of the ashes of this failed experiment called the United States of America. Please note: In no way do I support violence of any kind in creating a new society in the aftermath of this current one. I only support collaboration, openness, freedom and great respect for all living creatures as well as our sacred planet Earth. I believe the passing of this failed government is a blessing, not a curse, and I believe the collapse of the U.S. dollar will ultimately help awaken many to the tough but rewarding decisions that will face us all in the very near future. We must consciously decide to take back our freedoms, our rights and our futures from a system of corporate and government control that has destroyed our planet, exploited our people, and stolen our savings. But if can make the rights decisions based on creating a more promising future for our children, then the rewards will be unimaginable. We the People hold the power to create a new society based on the freedoms and promises once held sacred in this land. Be ready to play your role, a constructive role, in the aftermath of this current society. And do not be surprised when gravity kicks in and this entire fictional government charade comes crashing down along with the fractional reserve banking system, the criminal Federal Reserve, the war-mongering politicians and the endless, endless debt. There is no way out now other than collapse and rebirth. I can't say when it will come, or exactly how it will play out. I only urge us all to remain positive, informed and constructive. The coming chaos will be painful in the short term, but out of the ashes of a failed society, we can work together to rebuilt a new one based on real freedom, honest money, sensible medicine and limited government.