A bankrupt empire by ERIC S. MARGOLIS 
Print This Post
| 
Email This Post
|
Share on Facebook
President Barack Obama calls the $3.8 trillion budget he just sent to Congress a major step in restoring America’s economic health. In fact, it’s like giving a drug addict another potent dose of the narcotic to which he is addicted.
The drug is debt. More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion. The latest example was the Soviet Union, which spent itself to ruin buying tanks. Washington’s deficit (the difference between spending and income from taxes) will reach a staggering $1.6 trillion this year. The huge sum will be borrowed, mostly from China and Japan, which the US already owes $1.5 trillion. Debt service will cost $250 billion. By 2015 it will consume a third of total federal spending. To spend $1 trillion, one would have had to start spending $1 million daily soon after Rome was founded and continue for 2,738 years until today.
Obama’s total military budget is nearly $1 trillion. This includes Pentagon spending of $ 880 billion. Add $75b (nearly 2.5 times France’s total defense budget) for 16 intelligence agencies with 200,000 employees. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars ($1 trillion so far), will cost $200-250 billion more this year, including hidden and indirect expenses. Obama’s Afghan ‘surge’ of 30,000 new troops will cost an additional $33 billion — more than Germany’s total defense budget. No wonder US defence stocks rose after Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama’s ‘austerity’ budget.
Military and intelligence spending relentlessly increase as unemployment hovers at 9.7 per cent. Critics claim the real figure is closer to 20 per cent. America has become the Sick Man of the Western hemisphere, an economic cripple like the defunct Ottoman Empire that used to be called the Sick Man of Asia. The Pentagon now accounts for half of total world military spending. Add America’s rich NATO allies and Japan, and the figure reaches 75 per cent.
China and Russia combined spend only a paltry 10 per cent of what the US spends on defence. There are 750 US military bases in 50 nations and 255,000 US military personnel stationed abroad, 116,000 in Europe, nearly 100,000 in Japan and South Korea.
Loading ...
Comments
No comments yet.