America Now Extremely Vulnerable

With current budget deficits so high and increasing we have now become dependent on foreign loans to support our military, to receive tax refunds, and to fund our governments daily operations. Incredible as this sounds, without these loans our government could not pay it's bills and we could be forced to devalue our money.

Many Americans are beginning to recognize how vulnerable we are:

We are facing changing conditions and threats while spreading ourselves dangerously thin. We are trying to manage problems and uncertainties that we may not be able to properly handle as we dismantle our industrial infrastructure, outsource our manufacturing, and try to fight three wars. How can we cope with all of these threats while depending on foreign support for our strength and funding?

• Fighting global wars with a military stretched to the breaking point
  
• Importing over $1.4 million more per minute than we export creating a lien on our assets allowing foreign companies to buy and control our major industries (e.g. movies - 69%; cement - 81%; TV manufacturing - 100% foreign owned
  
• Borrowing from foreign countries at record amounts to finance our government and military
  
• Cutting taxes while at the same time under-funding our military
  
• The constant uncertainty of a terrorist attack on US soil and the economic impact it would have
  
• Bankrupting major companies that can't compete or selling them to pay for our lifestyle of imports
  
• In the last 10 years we have sold 8,600 of our best companies to foreign ownership (e.g. Chrysler, Amoco, Arco Oil)
  
• Dismantling our industrial base and relying on foreign manufacturing for imports and jobs
  
• Losing record amounts in internal (budget - $413 Billion) and external (trade - $723 Billion) deficits
  
• Looming rising interest rates and the subsequent ripple impact throughout the economy

All the while our government repeatedly tell us that as our GDP continues to grow at a healthy pace, that jobs are being created, that unemployment is low, and that we are winning the war on terror. They are also telling us that we should continue to borrow and spend, and not be concerned with the economy, which we are told is excellent and growing.

How can we reconcile these two opposing differences?

We can't of course. GDP is no longer an accurate measure of our sustainable national economic health because it is now driven primarily by debt - personal, government, and trade, and by services rather than production. Foreign ownership and control of our key industries is also distorting the reality of who is benefiting from so-called economic growth. As further evidence of this, jobs are being lost in manufacturing and replaced in service-oriented sectors like retail, healthcare, and government - sectors that don't create value, but merely exchange wealth, which is at the same time being siphoned out of our economy by massive import imbalances with foreign countries.

If our leaders do not recognize reality, how can we hope to plan for the future?

If America is to continue to be the land of opportunity, what must we do to insure our position in this changing world? The first step is to understand the true condition of our country, which is inexorably heading towards uncontrollable problems and uncertainties that are now making us extremely vulnerable.