Sweetness in the Dark (48 page)

And who put the country on its knees?
Amanda thought.

“Just a couple of statistics for you, Ms. Richards. The first is a quote from Paul B. Farrell after the 2008 financial collapse,” Amanda said. “Writer Farrell points out that action to supposedly save our monetary system ‘forced Congress and the Fed into bailing out our too-big-to-fail banks to an estimated $29.7 trillion in cash, credits, cheap money loans and debt relief.’ ”

“Almost $30 trillion dollars created out of thin air,” Lars reiterated.

Amanda continued. “Another figure, Ms. Richards, for you to contemplate; $202 trillion. That is the amount of unfunded liabilities of the old United States government. That includes Social Security, Medicare, Federal Retirement Funds and other unfunded, so-called entitlements. Again, borrowed money and promises to pay at some future date. We can thank the sun for ending that bankrupt scheme.”

Lars started to speak, but Amanda wasn’t finished. “$600 trillion.” She said it again for emphasis. “Yes, $600 trillion, ladies and gentlemen. That would be the amount of derivatives outstanding before ‘the Pulse’. A total of $600 trillion of IOUs owed by private investment companies.”

“Well, if you say that all that debt vanished when ‘the Pulse’ hit, then we can start anew with a clean slate,” Rebecca said.

Oh boy, this woman is dumber than a post
, Amanda thought. She would need more than a basic education in the way the world worked.

“Ms. Richards, I guess we need to back up,” Amanda said as she tried to hold her composure. “We don’t need to go back to the 19th Century to understand how America rose to the top of all the nations in the world. We can agree that by the Second World War, the United States was the largest economy. The country came out of that war with almost half the industrial capacity on earth.”

“Yes, I know. The ‘Greatest Generation’ crap again. At what cost to the poor in the Third World did our extravagance cause?” Rebecca asked.

“I’m glad you brought up the ‘Greatest Generation’ as written about by Tom Brokaw. I have an opposite opinion of that generation,” Amanda said. “Yes, they did a wonderful job defeating totalitarianism. Then they came home and went to work. And they raised the ‘Baby Boomers’, the most self-indulgent generation the world had ever seen.”

“That would be your opinion,” Rebecca retorted.

“And many others. But the ‘Greatest Generations’ real crime was their irresponsibility in carrying on American values. With the United States on top of the world and much of the rest of the world devastated by war, the ‘Greatest Generation’ believed that the hard work that had advanced America so far could be compromised,” Amanda said.

She went on to explain that as the other countries rebuilt and became more competitive, the United States didn’t adjust to the new situation. America continued as if the other industrialized countries would always remain minor competitors.

Meanwhile, Americans enjoyed the good life of inexpensive consumer goods. Socialism in America took hold as the wealth that had been gathered to America was deemed suitable to be spread among the less fortunate. This added to the attitude that America could enjoy life without working hard. Then the government decided that watching industry after industry leave for cheaper locales was a good policy. The ‘Greatest Generation’ stood by as the ‘giant sucking sound’, as Ross Perot had described it, drained the life-blood out of the country.

“Wages plummeted as American workers tried to compete with Third World wage earners. It wasn’t a recipe for success,” Lars added.

Amanda added, “In the 1960s, the bottom ninety percent of people in America owned sixty-five percent of the income. In the 2000s, that same ninety percent had been crushed down to eleven percent.”

“The rich got richer. That’s why we need to tax them more,” Rebecca said.

“You’ll never understand, will you? A strong vibrant country is sustained when everyone is doing well. The United States has always had a strong middle class, but what of that middle class before ‘the Pulse’?” Amanda asked. “The last numbers showed that forty-eight percent of all Americans were living in low-income households. And even worse, thirty-seven percent of all household were led by someone with a net worth of zero or less than zero.”

“The middle class was killed off by the policies of our old government. No greater crime exists in the old United States than what was perpetrated upon the American people,” Lars added. “And it can be all attributed back to leaving the ‘gold standard’.”

“And that is why the President has called for the establishment of a banking system based on the Swiss model. Many banks in Switzerland have over one-hundred percent of their assets backed by gold. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse, the Swiss government actually had to devalue the Swiss franc,” Amanda said. “The Swiss franc had increased so much in value that Swiss exports were suffering.”

“Well, there you go then. I would rate that as why we don’t need a money system that increases in value. It would ruin the market for the things we export,” Rebecca said.

Amanda could tell by her smug smile that she thought she had made a salient point in the discussion. Amanda then presented the figures on United States prices prior to World War II. Historically, while the United States was on the gold standard, prices fell on average one percent a year.

A gold standard limited governments ability to inflate the currency, with workers seeing their wages remain fairly stagnant over the years. But if prices on all commodities were constantly falling, then in reality, workers saw their purchasing power increase.

“The net result of a twenty percent drop in prices over twenty years was the same as a twenty percent increase in wages. When the government went to debtism as a form of economic growth, the picture was quite different from earlier times in America,” Amanda explained.

“Yes more people benefited from the expanding money supply. They could get loans to pursue their dreams,” Rebecca said.

“Au contraire,” Amanda jumped in. “I first noticed this watching old ‘Perry Mason’ reruns on TV when I was a little kid. That show from the 1950s would mention what things cost back then and I was smart enough to notice the difference. One episode had a restaurant menu on the screen and a steak dinner was a dollar twenty five. I remember asking my dad what was going on.”

Lars jumped in. “Just counting from 1971 when our old friend Nixon said ‘No More Gold’, the dollar has retained just two percent of its value, based on gold. That, my friends, is government sanctioned robbery on a scale unimaginable.”

“Well, hold on a dang blame minute,” Horst intervened. “I didn’t mean to step in the cow pie on this one. Obviously this is a hot button item that isn’t going to be solved today. Can I get the conversation back to whether Texas is part of the new country or not?”

Amanda knew now what Rebecca and Horst had in common. Each wanted to see a return to America being a debtor nation. The President and his supporters were just as determined to see a new era of true capitalism bloom in the country.

* * *

The next day she met with the President to report her discovery. The two worked on plans to hold off the Texas advance.

“But why would Horst and Rebecca team up? Their views are opposite when it comes to government,” Amanda said.

“Not as opposite as you might think. Rebecca is angling to get the social programs back. She thinks that happens by borrowing and taxing to redistribute the wealth,” the President answered. “Horst, on the other hand, wants Imperial America to return. As the leader of the Neoonservatives, or Neocons, his view is that it’s a dangerous world out there and only America can defend it.”

“But it is a dangerous world,” Amanda said.
Horst is right on that item
, she thought.

“No disagreement here. It is a dangerous world, but America can no longer defend the civilized parts all by herself,” the President said.

The President and his advisors had been putting a political coalition together. The new country’s Constitution had broken the stranglehold of the old two-party system that had dominated the old United States. With only the House of Representatives being directly elected by the voters, the power of a party system was severely weakened.

Senators, being elected by tax-paying individuals according to their tax bill, were less likely to need a political party for support. And the National Council was antithetical to any party. Chosen by random selection, each Councilor was beholden to no one.

As a consequence, the UAS political landscape had broken into four main groups. The current President was the acknowledged leader of the Libertarian Caucus. Horst Petrasek acted on behalf of the Neoconservative Caucus. Rebecca had assumed a quasi-leadership role among the few remaining liberals in the country.

The last group was the Christian Caucus. Holding a strong position in the South and the Midwest, the Christians had placed a large block in each body of Congress. They were well represented on the Presidential Cabinet and the Supreme Court.

With Rebecca and Horst teaming up to block any establishment of a gold standard monetary system, that left the President looking to the Christians to broker a deal.

Amanda asked, “Mr. President, can we make a deal with the Christians on this?”

“We worked closely with them on getting the Constitution approved,” the President admitted.

Amanda recalled the political ‘horse trading’ that had taken place to reach a consensus on the Constitution. With the Texas crowd and their Neocons neutered at that time, it had come down to the Libertarians and the Christians.

As the acknowledged leader of the Libertarians, the Idaho governor had worked out a series of compromises. To get the National Council approved, the other side made sure that the ‘Defense of Marriage Act’ was incorporated into the constitution.

For a Senate elected by tax-paying voters only, the Christians demanded that abortion be made illegal. The Libertarians refused that position and a compromise position was reached. Abortion would be regulated by each state for only the first trimester. After that time, a Constitutional ban on all abortions would hold.

The President and Cabinet being chosen, instead of elected, almost cost the Libertarians Sunday. Or at least all commercial activity on Sunday. The Christians wanted a return to the old ‘Blue Laws’ that had prevailed in many states up until the 1960s. Back then, the law in many states excluded most commercial activity on Sunday.

The Libertarians had resisted such a demand. The Christians then had asked for changes in the tax structure. A television tax as well as an entertainment tax on movies was approved. A TV tax had been common in the countries of the British Commonwealth since TV’s inception. Amanda had thought at that time that the old Democratic Party had certainly missed that tax. Since Hollywood was a ghost town, no objection to a movie tax had been made.

The Christian Caucus further asked for a doubling of the national sales tax on Sundays. If they couldn’t stop commerce, they would certainly discourage it.

The Libertarians swallowed hard at that time and accepted these compromises. They understood the bigger picture of a smaller government outweighing the infringements on freedom to which they were agreeing.

Amanda recalled that someone had commented at the time, “Governing is like making sausage. Sometimes unappealing in the making, but the end product tastes good.”

The President broke the silence as both he and Amanda remembered the past negotiations “We’ll have to see what price they want this time. I don’t see another option. We could try to appeal to the voters, but that would take too long. The country needs a stable economy now.”

“I’ll call Mary Salter, if you’d like. I think she’s our best choice,” Amanda said.

“I agree. See if she’s available today. We need to get an agreement quickly before the Neocons make a pitch for the Christian support,” the President responded.

Mary Salter was the Secretary of the Interior in the President’s own Cabinet. She had been elected to the House of Representatives from the State of Tennessee. The House had chosen her for the Cabinet where she had been selected for Interior.

As such, she was responsible for the items in the old Interior Department, like public lands, hydroelectric dams and National Parks. But with the reduced size of the national government, Interior had taken on a lot of orphan programs when other departments had been closed. The small remaining portions of the old Departments of Transportation, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture and the Environment were now under Interior.

* * *

Being on the Presidential Cabinet made Mary Salter a leader of the Christian Caucus. While leadership roles were still being sorted out in the new government, Amanda recognized that Mary had become a leading Christian spokesman.

“Mr. President, I’m honored that you’ve called me. How can I be of service?” Mary asked when the three met.

“As you are aware, I’m putting together the foundation for a sound money system for the country. Unfortunately, I’m meeting resistance by those wishing for a return to the old days of easy money,” the President explained. “After our success writing the Constitution together, I thought we could work to establish a system free from the money changers.”

Amanda recognized the Biblical reference in the President’s pitch. Jesus had thrown the money changers from the temple.

“Mr. President, while I can only speak for myself, I know my side sees the advantage of sound money. The Bible speaks often of gold, both in good and bad ways. The past experience our country has endured certainly speaks of the bad side of phony money,” Mary said. “If you may allow me twenty four hours, I will have an answer for you.”

The President agreed to a one-day delay to consult with her faction. They set a time to meet the following day.

* * *

The next day Amanda and the President got their answer. It would be a difficult bargain.