The Coming Crash

 

 

"So we spent our stash! So what?!?"

A bit of family history. Shortly after we were married, my wife and I were out with some friends on a Friday night. After a couple of rounds of drinks, my wife and I thought we would might have one more round with our friends. My wife looked in her purse to see if we had enough for another round. She found $40 she did not know she had. Party on! We had the third round and then ordered dinner. It was not until we went grocery shopping on the following Saturday we realized we accidently spent our grocery money. Ouch. Since we were students back then, and usually stone cold broke, the food situation for the following week was very bleak indeed.

Why do I tell this story? This is the same thing which is happening to our country right now. Really? Like how? Remember the Social Security Lock Box? The money which was going to protect our Social Security Fund, and keep it going almost forever? Gone. Not only gone, but never existed. Where is all that money? Spent. Some on Social Security benefits, some on "other".

There is now talk of juicing up the Federal gas tax to reinforce the Highway Trust Fund. Seems the roads and bridges the Feds are suppose to maintain are not in good shape at all. Where the taxes taken in for the Trust Fund too little? Maybe, or maybe not. One thing is for certain however - much of that money has been siphoned off into "other". If we had not spent some of that money on bike paths and fitness classes, the fund might still be viable.

This type of thing is happening across the board. It seems the math used to ascertain funding required to match appropriate spending, went sideways. In other words, there was no math. We have obligated trillions of dollars (that is trillions with a "T") to be spent on entitlements, pensions, trust funds, you name it - without having the correct amount of funding or oversight.

So where does that leave us? It is as simple as a law of physics. Either programs which were promised are going to go bankrupt and fail, or we are going to have to pony up with some HUGE cash to get the math right. When I say huge cash, there might not be enough tea in China to make this happen. The dollars required are simply staggering.

Whose fault is this? Ours. We elect idiots, morons and crooks to manage this kind of money. Then after we elect them, we go into "auto pilot". In other words, we just assume they are doing the right thing. They are not and they have not. For decades now, they have not. We have known there is a problem, and yet refuse to fix it. You know, kick the can down the street so to speak. My old boss once told me, "When you are in a ditch, stop driving the same way." Amen to that. We truly are in a ditch right now.

With the new Congress in session, it is okay to ask them what we are going to do about this. It is not okay to hear the same pabulum we have heard for years. A crash is coming. The only question is this - will it be a bad crash or a fatal crash? That decision is up to us and the new Congress.