2009 Soap Box Archives

Lurking In the Not Too Distant Shadows

The picture above depicts what at one time was an actual currency, a currency that had been exposed to the exponential ravages of hyperinflation by an inept and corrupt government.

Can you imagine having a hundred trillion dollar bill in your wallet and you can't even buy a loaf of bread with it?

That's what happens when hyperinflation sets in, as an economy collapses and the government issues currency that isn't worth the ink it cost to print it. The world markets start reacting to the implosion and unloading that nation's currency as quickly as they can, pushing it's value down even further until the notes have to be printed in larger and larger denominations so it doesn't have to be carried around in a wheelbarrow.

Zimbabwe printed the first one hundred trillion dollar notes in January of 2009 after hyperinflation completely devalued its currency to the point where one hundred trillion Zimbabwe dollars was roughly the equivalent of 300 U.S. dollars

In 2004, Zimbabwe's inflation rate stood at almost 600%, in February 2007 it jumped to 1,729%, in November of 2007 it leaped to 14,840%, in 2008 it went over 100,000%, and hit somewhere over 200,000,000% before the Zimbabwe government abandoned their currency in favor of U.S. dollars and other foreign currency.

Now I know that a lot of you are probably scoffing at what I say when I draw an analogy between what happened in Zimbabwe and the present day situation in the United States of America.

You're thinking that it can't happen here, that no matter how bad it gets the USA has existed through good times and bad and that somehow, some way we will pull out of our current malaise and get back on the road to prosperity.

Well the truth of the sorry matter is that America doesn't have to even approach the magnitude of the problems in Zimbabwe to suffer the unthinkable.

We may not have to print one hundred trillion dollar notes, but America's fiscal infrastructure would disintegrate long before then.

The problem is that this nation's ship of state is sailing in totally unchartered waters. Neither our nation, nor any other as far as I know, has ever mortgaged their future as heavily as America.

In eight short months Barack Hussein Obama and the band of ruthless scalawags known as the U.S. Congress have spent this nation into near bankruptcy and are still clamoring for the American people to let them take us even farther down that disastrous road.

Well people, in plain language, we will never pull out of this tailspin if our government continues to spend money that simply doesn't exist.

It can't happen because it has never been possible to end a depression with federal spending and the election of Obama and a Democrat-controlled Congress have not changed that fact, no matter how many political and media claims there is to the contrary.

It is nothing more than basic cowboy logic to realize that when you take a dollar from one place and move it to another place, you are not creating more wealth, you're simply taking money from one person and giving it to another person. It's called redistribution of wealth, or in plainer terms, socialism, which both boil down to nothing more than government control over every facet of your life.

The fiscal policies of Obama are not new, it's been tried in Russia, Cuba, China and the entire eastern European block and it has miserably failed in each instance.

The politicians scream about tax cuts for the wealthy which is the biggest scam that has ever been pulled on the American electorate. Tax cuts for anybody are a good thing because they take the money out of the hands of the government and put it in the hands of the people, where it belongs.

The next time you hear about a tax hike think about it as more money for the government bureaucracies to drain 30 cents off the dollar before they spend it on some other piece of socialistic entitlement, designed for nothing more that to obtain the status quo in Washington.

I did a show in Hong Kong recently and met quite a few American expatriates, some of America's best and brightest entrepreneurs who had started businesses over there and become very well off in the process.

Hazel was talking to a young man from Knoxville, Tennessee and asked him if he wouldn't like to come home. He replied that he would love to come home but as long as the Obama government was in office he would remain in Hong Kong, rather that come home and be exposed to the exorbitant taxes America is going to be paying in the very near future.

The top tax rate in Hong Kong is 17%, which means that when somebody makes money, they can keep most of it, which results in more investment, more growth, more jobs and more wealth.

Hong Kong is now part of China, which has a totalitarian government, but even at that they have sense enough to know that high taxes discourages investment and growth.

In fact they have pretty much instituted a hands off policy toward Hong Kong, which was a British colony up until 1997 when it reverted to Mainland China under an old treaty between the British and Chinese.

Hong Kong is a free port, has it's own currency and is going through the roof economically. If a sign says something is ten dollars that's all you pay, there is no sales tax, which helps make it the shopping mecca of the new Asia.

The point I'm making by all this is that the tax rates in America have chased more businesses out of the continental United States than we'll probably ever know about. Investment dollars that once stayed in our country and financed the opening of new factories and services are now being taken to foreign shores, where the products are made and shipped back to America to be sold to the very people whose jobs they have taken away.

And even more sadly, some of the best and brightest business minds America produces are taking advantage of what goes on in the rest of the world, where they can make money and keep most of it.

I hope and pray that something will happen to put the brakes on what's going on in Washington and I'm afraid that only divine intervention is going to accomplish that.

I just hope that the people of this nation will wake up and realize what is happening to our beloved nation before it is too late and it goes into receivership.

In the mean time the threat of inflation is catastrophic and I fear eminent.

It's simple logic.

1. Our government ran out of money a few trillion dollars ago.

2. They continue to spend as if there are tons of cash in the Federal Treasury, which we all know is empty. Well, not empty, but full of trillions of dollars of I.O.U.s.

When a government prints money that is nothing but green paper, it has to devaluate the money already in circulation, simply because no wealth is created, simply more currency, so the money they print waters down the money in circulation making a dollar worth less and less all the time.

3. The situation feeds off itself as the government collects more taxes to service the interest on it's monolithic debt, it borrows more and more, making it impossible for businesses to borrow the money they need to keep operating simply because the money doesn't exist, the government has borrowed it all.

4. As businesses face higher taxes and restrictions they will move their base of operations out of America and seek new locations and new markets, costing America more jobs and devastating the federal tax base.

5. The government's answer to this problem will be to continue to raise taxes, further exacerbating the situation. It's like a snake swallowing it's own tail, it can only go so far before it runs out of room and it just lies there and dies.

Am I saying this is going to happen in America?

No, I'm not.

Am I saying that this could happen in America if something doesn't change?

Absolutely!

What do you think?

Pray for our troops, and for our country

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

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