Closed for Reconstruction: Credit Card Street

U.S. consumers are paying down revolving debt at record rates – $21B/month in July – experts predicted only $4B.

Sesame Street is teaching families to cope with hard times…

Sunny Day.
Sweeping the clouds away.
On, my way, to where I live debt free.
Can you tell me how to get… how to get off Credit Card street?

Now if Obama’s Fed could just come to grips with this New Normal reality – stop trying to restore Wall Street’s status quo, Armageddon tickers.  Crushing the dollar by increasing debt insures only continuing American decline.  In other words, current (Republican/Wall Street) Fed policy solves none of America’s long term problems:  Not under-employment.  Not health care.  Not education.  Not global warming.  Not falling living standards.

In short, the Future belongs to savers, creditors and investors not to gamblers, Ponzi-schemers and debtors.

New Rules for the New Normal:

  • Debt <> Growth
  • Growth <> Progress
  • Progress <> Real progress (absent sustainability)
  • Real progress <> (destabilizing) Income Gap (richest to poorest)
  • Capitalism <> Democracy
  • Democracy <> Intelligence (e.g. “Keep the government out of my Social Security and Medicare!” = WTF?!)

Real leaders lead!  They don’t flinch from risk or quiver and equivocate before opinion polls and opposition propaganda.  They tax and regulate chaos and failure -- greed, cronyism, obesity, disease, debt – out of existence.  They incentivize real, sustainable progress.  That’s what FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and Johnson did well – despite flaws and mistakes they found a way to leave America better in their wakes as Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush did not – or we wouldn’t be in this mess today – a leaderless, elitist, debt-driven, masturbatory kind of democracy, creating, exacerbating then ignoring one crisis after another.

Thus, it’s time for Obama to starting leading America instead of following Wall Street’s libertarian, fast money vision to oblivion.  A majority are likely to follow – and do the better thing.  Take it from the folks on Sesame Street.

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