Following our own script, we've weakened America

[cyberswede]

Des Moines Register
Richard Doak • March 23, 2008

If al-Qaida had planted a sleeper agent whose job was to gain a position of influence and undermine America from within, he scarcely could have done more damage than Americans have done to ourselves.

The meltdown in the credit markets, a sagging economy, inflation-ravaged take-home pay and, worst of all, a bleak outlook for the years ahead did not materialize out of the blue. They are the consequences of deliberate policy choices. Those consequences were entirely foreseeable, but Americans and their government simply chose not to heed the warnings.

So America grows weaker. It is as if the country were following a script for decline imposed by our worst enemy. If the terrorist manual contained a five-step scheme for undermining America, it might go something like this:

1. Run up the national debt to $9.4 trillion or so, with no end in sight. Incur billions in new debt every year so that you can reduce the taxes of the wealthiest citizens. Become a debtor nation, in hock to your biggest rival, the Chinese.

2. Make it an article of faith that Wall Street can do no wrong. Free banks and financiers from regulation, so that unbridled greed can take over. Fortunes can be made originating bad loans, then concocting exotic new securities to pass the bad paper off on clueless investors.

more at link: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080323/OPINION01/803230312/1166