Defense in an Age of Austerity: 2022
Defense in an Age of Austerity: 2022
by Neoptolemus
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My fellow Americans, it is with a grave heart and serious reservations that I come to you today to announce the implementation of the results of the Preserving America’s Economic Security Commission. This congressionally-authorized panel was established to provide our nation’s elected leaders with recommendations to better balance the abyss between our national treasury and our collective ability to pay for our own government and security. Decades of delay and delusion have brought us well past the crisis point. We have preserved global stability for others for many decades, but at great expense. The long war against extremism has cost us well over $2T in direct costs alone and the interest compounds daily. Meanwhile the country’s demographic aging, rising health care costs, and insatiable appetite for entitlements has placed our great Nation’s balance sheet deep in the red. A culture of entitlement over sacrifice and shared obligation has eroded our stature as a great power and our moral standing. A decade of continued economic pressure, unemployment above 12%, coupled with a determined resistance on the part of the nation’s elected officials to come to any serious resolution of the country’s fiscal crisis has brought us to the point of peril.
The international bond market has spoken. We presently owe $23T in publicly held debt and at least another $10T in unfunded social security liabilities. Just the interest on that debt alone costs us more than $1T a year, double our annual defense expenditures. We continue to run trillion dollar deficits as we have for the entire last decade. Our debt to revenue ratio is now well over 120%. People are beginning to avoid U.S. backed bonds and dollar based investments. Now interest rates are climbing several points from 3 to 5 to 7% on our bonds, as global markets have found better places and safer currencies in which to invest. The dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency or first choice. We once criticized small countries like Greece or Ireland for failing to meet their debts, and now we are in far worse shape.
Download the Full Article: Defense in an Age of Austerity: 2022
Neoptolemus, a retired infantry officer, is currently imprisoned as a senior defense official in the Pentagon. Neoptolemus was the son of the warrior Achilles and the princess Deidamia in Greek mythology.
