Even on budget government spending in the United States (and American government books are cooked more than those of most Western governments) is 39% of GDP – local, State and Federal (mostly FEDERAL).

I just thought I would put some reality in. The American government is bigger (much bigger) than establishment people like to claim it is.

Remember, I do not consider his having been an academic to be a good thing. And it appears that most voters agree with me.

I do not consider lies to be “noble” (in fact I am not an admirer of the father of academia, Plato, in general), and when most people find out they are being lied to they do not conisder it “noble” either.

One of the few signs of hope there is in the modern world is that most people appear to be losing their respect for what the universities teach.

“Canada had a terrible deficit and national debt problem – but it managed to deal with it, so will the United States”.

Does not work.

For example, the Canadian government had not backed virtually every home loan in the country (what is a TRILLION Dollars here and there?), but also……

Canada had (at that time) a relativelly unideological Liberal party.

Most ideolgical leftists joined the N.D.P. – not the Liberals. Thus allowing a pragamtic person (Prime Minister Turner – if my memory serves) to control the Liberal party and cut government spending.

The Canadian Conservatives (of course) did not really oppose his efforts (as they did not want Canada to collapse either).

This is just not true in the United States.

Leftists join the Democrats in the United States (because it is the only game in town – at least on the left side of the street), even Marxists like Barack Obama join the Democrats – and (as we have seen) can rise to the very top of the Democrats.

These people (not just Obama – but even the nonMarxist left such as Nancy Pelosi) do not want to save the United States by dramatic cuts in government spending.

Barack “Cloward and Piven” Obama certainly does not want to save “capitalism” (what he would, in private, call civil society) he wants to destroy it utterly.

True people like George Soros think they can manipulate him (ditto the high ups in J.P. Morgan Chase), but I think these people are too “clever” for their (or anyone else’s) own good.

By the way the Canadian Liberal party went nuts recently – electing a big spending supporting television (British television) pundit as its leader – in a move that even shocked the establishment left.

It was basically political suicide “I know, let us elect as leader someone who was born in Canada, but who appears on late night British culture shows watched by about three people”. “What does he know about Canada? The same as he knows about politics or anything else – NOTHING”. Really (to steal a line from Richard Littlejohn) “one could not make it up”.

This worked out as one would expect…..

Now (for the first time in history) the Canadian Liberal party is the number three in Canadian politics.

What may happen now is even worse – the Liberals may join up with the NDP.

If that happens then Canada will end up in the American position – should the left ever retake power.

Remember the “great Canadian escape” happened because the part on the left side of the street (the Liberals) was not under the control of the real left.

The American Democratic party IS – because there is only one major left party in the United States (so all the leftists who wish to take part in the real game of politics, winning elections, join it).

I have said this twice (in this post) and have written hundreds of times (over the last few years), but I still can not convince some people.

“But I met some Democrats at a social event – and they were so reasonable, they will not let America collapse…..”

Watch and learn, watch and learn.

Even if the Republicans really try and stop the collapse (and that will take a lot more than the Ryan plan) the Democrats (and the media) will rip them to bits.

“But that means America will go bankrupt” – if the Dems win in 2012 (or perhaps even if they do not) YES IT WILL.

Not only are the top Dems not really going to do anything to stop that happening, THEY WANT IT TO HAPPEN.

That is the whole point of “Cloward and Piven”.

A few years ago I was doing a deal in Brazil, and I spent some time with the US Department of Commerce in the consulate in Rio. One of the concerns we discussed was the exchange rate risk, since the contract was denominated in Brazilian Reals. Our profit margins were based on an exchange rate of 2.4 Reals to the Dollar. The commerce department assured us not to worry since the exchange rate had been stable between 2.3 and 2.5 for a long time. Don’t worry, they told us, the Brazilian currency is pretty solid and stable.

Currently, the Real is trading at 1.5 to the dollar. Maybe I don’t have a degree in economics, but, to me, that means the dollar is down over 30% against the Brazilian Real. How that translates into 3% inflation, I’m not sure.

Something not discussed much concerning the skyrocketing gas (I mean petrol) prices is that much of it comes from just plain loss of value of the dollar, which comes from the over worked printing presses at the Fed.

The really troubling thing though is that there is a very low lending rate in the US, due to the various abuses the banks and financial sector has been subjected to. (When you threaten to put CEOs in jail for poor business choices is it any wonder they start becoming hyper conservative?) What that means is the the massive growth in M1 is offset by a relative decrease of commercial money. Because each dollar of savings is lent out less times in the fractional reserve system, the total M3 money in the system is considerably less than you would imagine from the vast increases in M1.

It is ironic that the reason the wheels haven’t really come off the bus is the very flat credit market bemoaned by the administration that is having its ass saved by that same flat credit market.

No reason indeed

As I have said many times in the past, reducing the monstrously overgrown state, at all levels, will require a concerted effort and a long-term committment from millions of ordinary people who are convinced that reform, i.e., reduction, is imperative.

The Tea Party movement is only a small beginning to the effort that will have to be made.

It took over a century of relentless progressive effort to construct the “frankenstein” state. It may very well require a similar unrelenting effort to carefully dismantle all the intrusive elements, and return the state to the size, scope, and cost that is sustainable for the future health of the nation.

This will be a long, dirty, thankless task requiring the highest level of moral and philosphical consistency and integrity.

There are no simple solutions. There is only the daily effort to make one more small advance, and resist any blandishments from the collectivist side that this compromise or that surrender is really OK.

As Lincoln said of the Civil War, that a drop of blood drawn by the lash must be matched by a drop of blood drawn by the sword in order to satisfy cosmic justice, so too, in this case, it may very well be that every drop of sweat expended to construct the leviathan must be matched by a drop of sweat expended to dismantle it.

I only hope and pray that my grandchildren, and theirs, will one day look around, as I remember doing when I was a young man, and marvel that such a free people could exist on this earth.

Helping to accomplish such a future is certainly worthy of all our best efforts, while to shirk that responsibility would be a truly tragic failure, betraying our own humanity, and our posterity’s inheritence.

To paraphrase that old book, truly the demands of reality are just and proper, altogether.