Chriss W. Street at BigGovernment.com looks at the latest actions of the Federal Reserve and brings us the dismal news. In The Golden Age of Hope and Change, things are looking worse and worse. But this should be a surprise to no one. The laws of economics cannot be broken, nor modified to suit the left’s fantasy vision of reality. That which is consumed must in the end be paid for. There is no free lunch.
Americans are now learning the hard way that the government’s unending promises have very real effects on us all. As voters we are responsible for this. It is we who have elected politicians year after year who gave away more and more of our money in return for votes. At long last people can feel the hand of government on their wallets and it is a bit of a new experience for many. But there is no escaping the fact that severe changes are in store for how we live as a nation.
The government handouts are going to come to an end one way or another because we just don’t have the money to pay for them any more. And that means that all of you who are currently living off of government checks are going to have to adjust to the new reality in which we can’t afford to pay for you any longer. You will have to start pulling your weight again whether you like it or not.
Consistent with my prediction that the booming production of capital goods would fall hard next year after the expiration of the 100% “bonus depreciation” tax credit; the bad news parade picked up steam this week with reports that U.S. durable goods orders fell 0.7 percent last month and initial jobless claims came in higher than Wall Street analyst’s predictions.
On the always dismal European front, interest rates on German “Bund”Treasury Bonds exceeded the interest rates on U.S. Treasury bonds for the first time as traders feared the financial turmoil of Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain (aka the “PIGS”) is causing a financial contagion that may implode solvency of German banks. Peter Cecchini, head of investment strategy at Cantor Fitzgerald in New York reporting on effects of the European financial crisis for the rest of the world: “Evidence is slowly mounting that containment is a pipe dream.”
