Thread: Bankruptsy jumps 40 percent 2007

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Personal Bankruptcy Filings Rise 40% - washingtonpost.com
Bankruptcies likely to rise again in 2008 -- analysts - MarketWatch


Here is little article that was aquired from the net....



Going Bankrupt


Why the Debt Crisis Is Now the Greatest Threat to the American Republic


Tomgram: Chalmers Johnson, How to Sink America...


By Chalmers Johnson


The military adventurers of the Bush administration
have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy
company Enron. Both groups of men thought that they were the "smartest
guys in the room," the title of Alex Gibney's prize-winning film
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0413845/> on what went wrong at Enron.
The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted
themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance
their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.


As a result, going into 2008, the United States finds itself
in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated
living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment.
Its government no longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses
of maintaining huge standing armies, replacing the equipment that
seven years of wars have destroyed or worn out
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/04/AR200...>
, or preparing for a war
<http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10533205> in
outer space <http://www.afspc.af.mil/> against unknown adversaries.
Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future
generations to pay -- or repudiate. This utter fiscal irresponsibility
has been disguised through many manipulative financial schemes (such
as causing poorer countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money),
but the time of reckoning is fast approaching.


There are three broad aspects to our debt crisis. First, in
the current fiscal year (2008) we are spending insane amounts of money
on "defense" projects that bear no relationship to the national
security of the United States. Simultaneously, we are keeping the
income tax burdens on the richest segments of the American population
at strikingly low levels.


Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the
accelerating erosion of our manufacturing base and our loss of jobs to
foreign countries through massive military expenditures -- so-called
"military Keynesianism," which I discuss in detail in my book Nemesis:
The Last Days of the American Republic
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805087281/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>
. By military Keynesianism, I mean the mistaken belief that public
policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and
munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a
wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true.


Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited
resources), we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and
other requirements for the long-term health of our country. These are
what economists call "opportunity costs," things not done because we
spent our money on something else. Our public education system has
deteriorated alarmingly. We have failed to provide health care to all
our citizens and neglected our responsibilities as the world's number
one polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a
manufacturer for civilian needs -- an infinitely more efficient use of
scarce resources than arms manufacturing. Let me discuss each of
these.


The Current Fiscal Disaster


It is virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what
our government spends on the military. The Department of Defense's
planned expenditures for fiscal year 2008 are larger than all other
nations' military budgets combined. The supplementary budget to pay
for the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not part of the official
defense budget, is itself larger than the combined military budgets of
Russia and China. Defense-related spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed
$1 trillion for the first time in history. The United States has
become the largest single salesman of arms and munitions to other
nations on Earth. Leaving out of account President Bush's two on-going
wars, defense spending has doubled since the mid-1990s. The defense
budget for fiscal 2008 is the largest since World War II.


Before we try to break down and analyze this gargantuan sum,
there is one important caveat. Figures on defense spending are
notoriously unreliable. The numbers released by the Congressional
Reference Service and the Congressional Budget Office do not agree
with each other. Robert Higgs, senior fellow for political economy at
the Independent Institute, says
<http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1941> : "A
well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon's (always well
publicized) basic budget total and double it." Even a cursory reading
of newspaper articles about the Department of Defense will turn up
major differences in statistics about its expenses. Some 30-40% of the
defense budget is "black," meaning that these sections contain hidden
expenditures for classified projects. There is no possible way to know
what they include or whether their total amounts are accurate.