The US balance of payments deficit hit an all-time high for the first quarter of the year, rising to $195.1 billion, up 3.6 percent from the previous record of $188.4 billion for the final three months of 2004 and well above market predictions of $190 billion. The latest figure means that the US payments deficit is running at an annual rate of $780 billion, requiring $2 billion a day from the rest of the world—mainly provided by Japan, China and other Asian nations—to finance it.
We can’t afford to send enough troops to Iraq. We can’t afford to properly equip those that are there. We can’t afford to draft reserves and the National Guard, stripping towns of all the people that know how to do useful things.
It’s hard to afford to do anything while giving tax cuts to the rich and funding wildly out of control war profiteering by Halliburton and other favored companies.
You don't need to be a wizard to see that as long as we continue to underwrite the gluttony of the extreme Right elites we can’t afford the basic structures we working people counted on. If this continues we will lose medical coverage, access to higher education, quality public schools, ability to own our homes, cheap travel, retirement and much more.
We are an empire in decline. It should be apparent to all that the Bush dreams of seizing control of the world’s energy resources are delusional.
To raise our spirits maybe we can invade Grenada again or take a shot at Venezuela. Or, we could once again create a society so attractive everyone would want to be a part of it or duplicate it in their own countries. Nice idea, but not likely to happen with a government that insists on stripping rights and economic independence from working people and rule them by keeping them insecure and terrified. Who wants that?
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