Could They Be Deliberately Crashing the Economy?

Could it be possible that our economy is being deliberately set up for a crash? Ok, I know that is a crazy sounding notion, but hear me out. Unlike some, I don’t think the Bush administration planned 9/11. Frankly, I don’t think they are competent enough to have pulled it off without bungling it and getting caught. This administration did learn though from 9/11, that a tragedy has great power to unify the country behind its leaders and generate enormous political capital. This administration, for about two years after 9/11, was drunk with power. They got their way unopposed on any legislation they requested. Remember how they rammed the obscenely misnamed “Patriot Act” down our throats. Remember how it passed a fifty/fifty senate 96 to 1? The tragedy of 9/11 gave this administration carte blanche to wage the wars of conquest in the Middle East; wars that they had planned before they took office.

What if the success they reaped from the 9/11 tragedy set off an idea. Just as with their foreign agenda for conquest in the Middle East, this group has a domestic agenda that is probably far too ambitious for them to ever hope to completely achieve. Only in their wildest dreams could they envision getting to actually write their radical religious right agenda into the Constitution of the United States. But what if an economic tragedy of epic proportions hit the U.S.? Couldn’t these people, who had just experienced the power bestowed to them by the tragedy of 9/11, recognize the potential political capital that could be generated by the fear and panic brought on by a financial collapse and the subsequent millions plunged out of work? Wouldn’t the tsunami of a financial collapse make 9/11 look like a small wave? Couldn’t this financial collapse, if handled properly, rally the country behind them, just like after 9/11, so that they could address a made up constitutional crisis? Couldn’t this financial collapse generate the vast amounts of political capital which they could spend to call a Constitutional Convention where they would have free reign to write their domestic agenda into the law of our land on a permanent basis?

Of course, I don’t know that this is their plan. But this makes sense and it is plausible and it fits with the evil genius of Karl Rove. Remember, the ideologues in this administration live by the credo that the “ends justify the means”. I made a list of the things I would do if I was Bush and wanted to crash the economy. Of course, I could not do obvious things like announce that the economy is shaky and about to collapse because that would cause the crash. In that case, I would be blamed for it so that wouldn’t work for my purposes. I would be restricted to actions where I could make some kind of plausible denial that my actions had anything to do with the crash. Here is a list of the things I would do as president, if I was trying to collapse the economy:

1. Spend, spend, spend like there’s no tomorrow

2. Reduce tax revenues to make matters that much worse

3. Encourage people to borrow, borrow, borrow

4. Encourage consumers to spend, spend, spend

5. Discourage efficient uses and conservation of resources

6. Swell an already bloated military budget to epic levels

7. Discourage development of alternative energy sources

8. Steal the Social Security trust fund and spend it

9. Encourage the shipping of jobs overseas

10. Cut funding of job producing education and research

11. Encourage an enormous trade deficit to swell to stratospheric levels

12. Allow the dollar to free fall in world markets

13. And did I say spend, spend, spend?

I can’t think of anything else I could do as President to crash the economy of this country and still be able to shift blame to others (foreigners). It became apparent as I was writing the list that the current occupant of the White House is already doing all of these actions with no exception. I could be wrong, I hope I’m wrong. What if I’m not? What can we do? Are we powerless to stop him?

Think about the time before 9/11, imagine if everybody in the country knew the attack was going to happen several weeks prior and had been warning Bush to watch out for hijacked passenger planes being flown into the WTC towers, he would have accrued no political capital from the event. In fact, he would have been held responsible for letting it happen. In the same vein, if we all start saying “we’re on to you George, you are trying to crash the economy in order to garner political capital” and to the extent that that notion becomes a widely held and disseminated opinion (that is why I’m writing this), it will remove or at least blunt the power he would receive for the fall of the economy. In fact, if the notion I’m proposing becomes commonly known, he may just be held accountable as the culprit if he is successful in crashing the economy. So the best way to fight this possible “Bush rewrite of the Constitution” is for us all to repeat widely and spread the notion of “crashing the economy in order to garner political capital for radical change”. We’re on to you George.