Hey, maybe we can all unite around Pat Buchanan. It is St. Paddy’s day after all, even if Pat is an Orangeman, as are my ancestors, Scottish owners of a pub in Dublin. Better for the Scots to be in charge.
If the global financial system is going down, and I’m tellin’ you it is, my friends, then Pat is right. Globalization, no matter what its theoretical virtues, has become a way in which the rest of the world will drag the U.S. down with it.
If we close off the borders to immigration and trade, we will suffer a decline in our average standard of living. Some goods will become more expensive. Some will decline in quality. We will have to drive American cars. But we will have full employment, a solid domestic currency, and a decent federal balance sheet. The decline in our standard of living will be far, far less than what it will be if we remain tied to the rest of the “global economy”.
The global economy is quickly approaching the mythological status of “global warming”, or, excuse me, “climate change”.
The real scandal of the latest AIG bail-out is not the $165 million bonuses to the executives, but rather the more than $50 billion (that’s a $thousand million each) that went from AIG to foreign banks.
Our children and grandchildren are now in hock because of banks in Germany.
Protect the depositers, let the banks go out of business, let China go hang. Come home.
The delusion is that we can (!) untie ourselves from the global economy. We can’t. It’s like saying we can untie ourselves from the world war or from the world addiction to alcohol and drugs or, yes, from climate. It won’t done because it can’t be done, though like you I sometimes wish it could.