December 20, 2004, Happy Winter Solstice to all
Nothing like taking advantage of the cover of the longest night of the year to unveil the President's plans for his second term: decreasing the deficit by half by lowering taxes on those most able to pay them, massive borrowing for social security "privatization", increased spending on "defense" and "homeland security", and, of course, higher debt service payments as massive trade and budget deficits cause interest rates to rise.
Your talking dog has seen this sort of thing, many times in the course of his professional career. As a bankruptcy attorney. Admittedly, it tends to be the exception: most bankruptcies are the result of one of three main kinds of personal misfortune: job loss, divorce, or illness. (This is why the Republicans, such as Hillary Clinton, have been so hell-bent on voting for "bankruptcy reform"-- their word for repeal of existing laws-- which bizarrely seems to have been trapped in a brilliant move by New York's other Senator Chuck Schumer who attached provisions pertaining to anti-abortion protest to the measure, thus trapping it in legislative limbo)
But the President's plans fall into a special category of "structural debtor" who need bankruptcy relief even without one (or frequently more) of the aforementioned personal calamities. Such a structural debtor feels a sense of accomplishment when the months' American Express charges are paid with a Visa check advance, and total debt levels have long since become disconnected to total income (let alone disposable or available income) levels, and yet, some genius continues to issue new credit cards... until the ultimate calamity is that someone refuses to issue a new credit card... and then, being unable to pay Mastercard with Visa for a month, the defaults commence... slowly at first, but in almost no time, as the late payment penalties pile on, and previously un-maxed out lines are cut-off or maxed out... the game unravels...
credit is cut-off, judgments roll in, wages are attached, car repossessed, house foreclosed upon... Until, hat in hand, one goes into bankruptcy court and surrenders all of value, in exchange for a long, long debt moratorium...
I'm not exactly sure why this scenario can't be repeated-- exactly-- on a national scale... especially when the nation behaves in exactly the same way...
Well, with exactly 49 months to go... happy winter solstice, everybody...