Who will stop the train?

 

 

Is there one person, one person at all who can do something?

Sorry. This article is not about the Southwest Light Rail. Nor is it about the Northstar. Nor is it about the high speed train going to Duluth. Or Rochester. No, I am using the word "train" as a figure of speech. This is about our run away national debt. I know - it has not been talked about for awhile. By anybody. But is should be. It is still there, and growing. It is like a tiger crouched in the corner, waiting to pounce on our economy and devour it.

I have listened to many of the senate campaigns in various states. Many topics are discussed - in particular terrorism and Ebola. The public seems to have tolerance to hear about those items as they are the most trendy today. Many candidates refer to the ISIL threat as a "cancer", and they are right to do so. ISIL has metastasized mainly due to malfeasance in our State Department.

No, the other "cancer" we have is our national debt. You know, the boring topic. The one that puts people to sleep when you bring it up.

President Bush (43) did not do anything about it. It grew in the eight years he was in office. Our current President has certainly not done anything. It has mushroomed under his watch. So who in the line of 2016 potential candidates will do anything? Jeb Bush? Hillary? Elizabeth Warren? Mitt? The only person who has ever said boo about the debt (and might run) is Paul Ryan. And his plan was to only slow down the growth of the debt.

There was an article in the paper this week about the regional Federal Reserve member who serves in our district. He is a maverick. Why? He is a voice in the wilderness crying out for change. He thinks the interest rates should be adjusted to reflect 2% inflation. If the entire Fed adopted that philosophy, the DOW would plummet. It would go south faster than snowbirds from Minnesota in January. Would a 2% rate be wrong? Not a bit. It would put SOME reality back into the stock market. However, it would also increase our national debt.

With our national debt currently at $17.893T, and our current interest rates a hair above zero, money needed to service our enormous debt is somewhat manageable. However, should the interest rates go up by 2%, the money needed to service a $18T bill would be staggering. If the rates do not go up, the national debt will be $20T by the time Obama leaves office. Sooner or later the rates will have to go up. As the saying goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Here we sit, with this "cancer", or ticking time bomb, in our economy. Our debt has the potential to ruin everything we have worked for. It is no different than a family making $50k/year and then having consumer debt of $100k and growing. Pretty soon the family is going to have to pay the piper. Sell everything, maybe file for bankruptcy, possibly live on the street. The same is true to us. One day the bills will come due. The party will be over. The phony Wall Street bubble will burst, leaving many people dazed, confused, and broke.

We do, all of us, need to ask our politicians how we are going to pay for things. It is nice when our President wants to bring people here from all over the world to be treated for Ebola. At $300,000 a patient, how are we going to pay for this? Put it on our tab? To spend money when there is no money is nothing short of IRRESPONSIBLE!

Wake up America! We need to take our country back before the debt train can no longer be stopped. As we know, train wrecks seldom turn out well for anyone.