Financial Catastrophe?

[Oscar]

Financial Catastrophe?
November 18, 2008

To the Editor,

The American election is over. There will be a new President. Millions of Americans, especially most coloured people, have entertained high hopes for a better life in the future. Many want to believe that Martin Luther King's impassioned speech of 40 years ago--"I have a dream"--may now be possible in a new American political, economic and social milieu.

Many people of good will from diverse parts of our planet, including Canadians, share that same dream, And others are hopeful that there may even be peace, [an end to war] in the near future.

But there are heavy black clouds of trouble on the North American economic horizon. The American financial bubble has burst. The ensuing debt storm has engulfed the global financial structures, and its reverberations are being felt world-wide.

People have generally felt that the financial institutions --the banks--were supposed to be the judicious stewards of our financial stability. But belatedly we are learning that apparently the global bankers do not share that responsibility, and probably are the prime cause of this financial debacle. The institutional speculators, the hedge funds, etc, triggered the collapse of listed companies through "short selling" and other speculative operations. They then cashed in on their large scale speculative gains. After all, the more money global bankers loan governments to bail out financial institutions, the more interest they collect, which will eventually have to be paid by today's taxpayers, and perhaps by the next generation of taxpayers.

The US now faces a threatening $1 trillion budget annual deficit. The American tax-paying public is burdened with roughly a $10 trillion national debt. As far as can be ascertained, Americans are bearing a $13 trillion consumer and credit card debt. US housing mortgages are in a shambles. As many as 1 million home owners may be facing bankruptcies.

The US has costly military bases in many parts of the planet. Their military budget is about $1 trillion annually. They are fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Canada has allowed the Americans to drag us into that never-ending deadly struggle. These wars, including Viet Nam, were totally unnecessary. But then, wars are the bread and butter of the world's largest arms manufacturers, like Lockheed-Martin, who are heading the pack of the 10 US top arms dealers, and are well supported through the government-industrial-military complex subsidy program.

The oligarchical power group that guided the Bush administration for 8 years, and still illogically believes that the US is meant to be the undisputed world power, are planning to wholly integrate Canada into the American economic regime. If we Canadians allow that to take place, certainly the rest of the world would conclude that we are using marbles instead of brains.

Leo Kurtenbach,
Box 268, Cudworth, Sask., S0K 1BO
Phone: 306-256-3638.