Gas Rationing Next

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.2.07]

Writing for The Daily Reckoning Australia, Bill Bonner says it better than I ever could:

The worldwide media is speculating as to what the Bush administration will do next. The general tone of the guesswork is this: just how dumb are these people?

So widespread is the belief that the United States is run by idiots, we feel compelled to rush to their defence. They are morons, maybe… but not idiots.

There are two major parts to the administration’s program: deficit spending and war. Either one would be ruinous in itself. But what is remarkable is that neither seems to take any notice of the other. Normally, in times of war, the whole budget is put toward winning it. Citizens see the necessity of sacrifice. They cinch up their own belts and resign themselves to living lean until the battles are over and the boys come home.

But this war breaks all the rules. Spending on non-war items continues to go up, even though the war itself is incredibly expensive. And even though the nation lacks the money to pay for it, no ‘war bonds’ are being offered. No collections for scrap tin or iron are taken up. No ration tickets are distributed.

Guns or butter, Lyndon Johnson was warned. You can have one or the other, but try to go for both and you will make a mess of things. Of course, Johnson did try for both. His Great Society was also the society that was trying to kick butt in Vietnam. As it turned out, it got its own butt kicked…and the economy went into the worst period of inflation in its history, followed by the worst recession since the Great Depression.

The Bush boys knew these facts as well as us. Even better known, since Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney have been Capitol Hill insiders since the Nixon Administration… and hardly a major blunder in Washington has been committed since the 1970s without their help.

No… the Bush administration is not just plain stupid. It is stupid in a more complex way. Will it now turn its stupidity on Iran? We don’t know. It would be a very stupid thing to do. But put that way, it sounds like a certainty.