THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED BY NEO-LIBERALS
Transgenerational Financial Terrorism

Still don't believe me when I say that insane neo-liberal economic policies are literally destroying our nation? Read this segment of an essay posted on AlterNet:

Media consolidation helps obscure the gross mismanagement of the nation's financial affairs as both parties embraced the University of Chicago's "neoliberal" economic model. As the 1980s began, the national debt was already a hefty $909 billion. After 20 years of leadership by two like-minded, neoliberal-inclined parties, that debt – our debt – is on track to reach $7384 by September 2004. In a 2003 survey on transgenerational accounting, economists working for the U.S. Treasury identify $43 trillion in unfunded government liabilities.

At every turn, this expanding liability – our liability – was used to expand the wealth of the already-wealthy. In 1981, while I served as counsel to the Senate Finance Committee, Republicans Reagan and Bush proposed supply-side investment subsidies enacted at a fiscal cost of $872 billion, every cent deficit-financed. In the mid-90s, Democrats Clinton and Gore enacted a similar investment subsidy at a fiscal cost of $268 billion, also totally deficit-financed.

Both the debt and the interest owed on that debt are backed by our full faith and credit. Interest payments – received by just four percent of U.S. taxpayers – grew from $58.5 billion in 1980 to $247.5 billion by 2000. Combine our interest payments with investment subsidies paid for with our debt and what's the result? In 1982, when the supply-side subsidies first became law, Forbes required $91 million for inclusion on its list of the nation's 400 richest. The average wealth of those listed was then $200 million. By 1986, average wealth topped $500 million.

By the close of the Clinton era, $725 million was required just to make the list (versus an inflation-adjusted $161 million). Average wealth by 2000 topped $1.4 billion as, from 1998 to 2000, the wealth of this politically favored few grew an average $1.9 million per day.

And

What does this mean? Even as both parties trumpeted "our" economic boom, most Americans had roughly the same or even less. Meanwhile, neoliberal lawmakers leveraged up the national balance sheet with massive debt while holding us personally liable. Don't pay your taxes to repay "our" debt and off to jail you go.

To keep up, households leveraged up their personal balance sheets, helping fund a Wall Street-boosting illusion of shared prosperity as purchasing power was sustained with home equity loans and massive credit card debt.

At one end of the "Chicago" food chain, the pace of personal bankruptcies held steady at 1.4 million for each of the past five years, an average 7,000 per hour, as household debt topped $7.6 trillion in 2001, a record-breaking 73% of GDP, while home mortgage foreclosures reached a 30-year high. Meanwhile Daimler-Chrysler launched its $300,000 Maybach luxury sedan and high-end boatyards report continuing strong demand for super-luxury yachts, 150 feet or longer.

For the very disturbing big picture of long term neo-liberal economic devastation, click here.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$