The End of Debt
excerpt from Doug Casey's Conversations With Casey

It’s important to understand that it’s not just the government that has a debt problem. Many of those voters the politicians must pander to have no savings and are one paycheck away from hunger – if they even have jobs. Americans are not alone in being burdened with an entitlement mentality – that’s why Europe is perhaps even more incapable of fixing its problems. It’s why Latin American governments make ever more economically suicidal policy decisions in the wake of protests and pressure from organized labor – but at least there’s no debt in Latin America, simply because no one will even lend them money.

People in many countries have been consuming more than they have been producing, and they feel they have a right to do so. They’ll be disabused of that feeling soon, and it’s going to be very ugly. But until then, no way will debt-ridden voters vote for politicians who promise to smash their cracked rice bowls. That’s why the Ron Paul campaign is of educational value only.

We have finally gone beyond the point of no return. There’s no way to avoid a gargantuan catastrophe – much worse than what happened in the 1930s and ‘40s. There are several ways this could play out, but the government always chooses the worst alternative, which in this case is the destruction of the US dollar. Its first priority is saving the US government, not the dollar, nor the interests of the people. The politicians will wind up destroying the productive parts of the economy to save the government; the parasite will kill the host. It’s a total disaster, with wide-ranging consequences, and it’s already happening.