Not a Lonely Jeremiah

Readers who think I have been and am unduly pessimistic about the American dollar and our economy would be well advised to:

1. Take a look at

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/03/17/ccview117.xml

and

2. Think about what is likely to occur if and when the economy slows enough to cause some real contractions and layoffs. That would result in defaults on the enormous bubbles of outstanding credit card and leveraged buyout debts. Were this to occur the government would see its tax revenues and social security payments shrink. This, in turn, would cause the federal deficit to soar and quite possibly hasten the government's inability to meet its social security, medicare, prescription drug, and pension guarantee obligations without further debasing the dollar by simply printing or borrowing even more dollars and thus vastly expanding the deficit to levels never before seen (assuming there's still anyone out there willing and able to loan to our feckless deadbeat government.

The whole meltdown brings to mind H. L. Mencken's observation that democracy is the theory that people deserve to get the government they want and they deserve to get it good and hard.