After years of being drunk on our debt, Americans are realizing that their nation is more fragile than they thought. I remember clearly spending many hours in ad agencies, working on designs for credit card direct mail packages and others for car payment deals for automakers, and still others for mortgages.

I wonder if any of the creative geniuses who came up with all these schemes questioned if they would be sustainable for those who agreed to them? Well, of course they were not. The American people and their government have not learned either. As our leaders prepare to buy treasury bonds with money that they print for the purpose super hyperinflation looms on the horizon waiting to take what little wealth remains in the hands of the average citizen.

We have lived in a false economy for so long that we forget the simple solution, make products in the U.S. You can call it protectionism, but it works. How has lopsided trade with China or Mexico helped us? It has not, unless you count poisoned dog food and second rate guitars as some sort of incentives.

There are differences in philosophy, but what both parties have in common is their need to spend without any way to pay for it. Obama will learn what holders of sub prime mortgages already know. You cannot borrow your way out of debt or spend your way out of a recession.

A CASE IN POINT
The results of hyperinflation, caused by printing too much money without the real economic muscle to to back it up, is best seen in the Weimar Republic, which eventually reformed the currency by creating a new one called the Rentenmark. Even so, the damage caused to the society by the hyper inflation, which peaked in 1923, further destabilized Germany and helped usher Adolf Hitler into power.