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How The Financial Collapse Would Happen In An Obama Second Term
By Steve McCann
The stakes in the coming election could not be higher. While crystal ball-gazing always is hazardous, the trail America’s economy would follow, should President Obama’s re-election effort succeed, has already been blazed. Naturally, the media will tell you none of this.
The upcoming election, despite the best efforts of the Obama campaign, the mainstream media, and various polling firms, is going to revolve around two questions: are you better off than you were four ago, and what is the future going to be if Barack Obama is re-elected? The Obama team is attempting to finesse the first question by obfuscating the second. They claim that their policies have begun to work, and, given a second term, life would redeem the promises Obama made in 2008.
A discussion centered on what the future will bring can be confusing and arcane. The Democrats rely on an emotional argument tied into the cult of personality surrounding Barack Obama, essentially stating that because their motives are pure and they have historically been for the “little” guy, they should be trusted when they say that their plans will be best in the long run. The Republicans and conservatives, on the other hand, too often rely on cold, hard facts and figures, which oftentimes succeed only in making them appear impersonal and pedantic, spouting numbers which cause the eye of the average voter to glaze over with confusion.
Further playing into the hands of the Obama cabal is the sense among far too many Americans that the worst could never happen here. This nation has experienced unprecedented prosperity for over 66 years, with only a few minor hiccups along the way. It is extraordinarily difficult to accept that today, America is living on the residue of its past economic achievements and facing a bleak future if the nation remains on its present course.
So rather than get bogged down in statistics from the Republicans or emotional and deceptive rhetoric from Barack Obama, let’s look at a real-life and current example of where this nation is headed: Spain.
For much of the previous decade, Spain was one of the most stable economies in Europe. On the surface it experienced stable growth and managed to keep the national debt below that of its neighbors; in some years, Spain experienced budget surpluses, allowing the country to pay down some of its debt. However, underneath this veneer, other factors were in play.
In 1999 and 2000, when Spain adopted the euro as its currency, interest rates fell to historic lows as the European Central Bank (similar to the U.S. Federal Reserve) made money easily available. So Spain’s banks, its property developers, and the everyday home-buyers (with prodding from the government) embarked on a frenzy of commercial and residential building and buying. From 1996 to 2007, Spanish property values tripled.
