On the US President

In our system it is hard to overstate the centrality of the president.  Others advise.  The Congress can block.  But he is the initiator and he key decision maker.  I've seen presidents who didn't fully realize this even as they were entering office.  And often when I read commentaries about what is happening in our government, they underplay the responsibility the president has either through his actions or through his decisions not to intervene.

Source:  Colin Powell, Former Secretary of State (USA)
Taken From: Superclass, David Rothkpf, 2008, pg 146

AAA Rating

Peter Barnes: “Is there a risk that the United States could lose its AAA credit rating? Yes or no?”
Geithner: “No risk of that.”
“No risk?” Barnes asked.
“No risk,” Geithner said.

Source:  Tim Geithner, April 2011 (4-5 Months before the US loses it's AAA Rating)
Taken From: ZeroHedge.com, 8/5/2011

US Imperialism

... U.S. imperialism has been the greatest force for good in the world during the past century.

Source: Max Boot, American Imperialism? No Need to Run Away from Label - 5/6/2003
Taken From: Wikipedia 

Note:  The blog author completely disagrees with Max Boot on this point.

Bail out the Banks?

... in our system of profit and loss, we cannot possibly think that the government should bail the banks out of bad loans they made, but allow them to keep the profits on the good ones.

Source: Milton Friedman (Unsourced)
Taken From:  The Dollar Meltdown, Ch2 Quotes

Even the Bankers Know

[Because of the 1 per cent interest rate in 2003/04] the United States and the world began an extended credit expansion and housing boom. From July 2003 to July 2006, the monetary base in the United States increased at an average annual rate of 4.9 percent, credit increased at an annual rate of 9 percent, and housing prices increased at an annual rate of about 14 percent. The long-term consequences of that policy are now well known. The United States and the world have just suffered one of the worst recessions in decades.

Source:  Thomas Hoenig, President of the Kansas City Federal Reserve, Speech March 2011 – London School of Economics
Taken From:  Speech Notes by Frank Trotter: The Prospects for Fiat Currencies (Everbank Executive VP)

Imperialistic Arrogance

I’ve spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower, and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position, ... It didn’t have to look over its shoulder because our economy was so strong. This is a different time.  To tell you the truth, that’s one of the many reasons it’s time for me to retire, because frankly I can’t imagine being part of a nation, part of a government … that’s being forced to dramatically scale back our engagement with the rest of the world.

 Source:  Robert Gates (US Secretary of Defense 2006-2011), in an Interview with Newsweek, 6/19/2011
 Taken From:  Sovereign Man Blog, US Defense Secretary to take his ball and go home, 6/22/2011

On the Conquest of the US by Spain

this scheme of a republic which our fathers formed was a glorious dream which demands more than a word of respect and affection before it passes away.

Source:  William Graham Sumner (Yale professor of Sociology)
Taken From:  The Conquest of the US by Spain by Ralph Raico

Last Hope

Religion now seems to me one of the last best hopes for society, as it is one of the main institutions still competing valiantly with an excessive and overblown government.

Source: Walter Block, Libertarianism and Libertinism
Taken From: Journal of Libertarian Studies, Fall 1994

Hushed Upheavals

One may say that, apart from wars and revolutions, there is nothing in our modern civilizations which compares in importance to [inflation]. The upheavals caused by inflations [sic] are so profound that people prefer to hush them up and conceal them.

Source: Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, 1984
Taken From:  Paul A Cantor, Hyperinflation and Hyperreality, 1994

Deficit War Against the Earth

The U.S. has dropped 15 million tons of bombs on the earth’s surface in last 60 years, spread 1 million tons of napalm on fields and forests, and sprayed 20 million gallons of defoliants on some of the most diverse rainforests on the planet. By any measure, the U.S. military is conducting a war against the earth itself. Such an inane effort does not come cheaply. The total cost of all military expenses for 2012 is estimated to be $1.2 trillion dollars, one-third of the total federal budget. It is the U.S. military that is driving the U.S. itself into bankruptcy.

Source:  Dana Visalli, Deconstructing the U.S. Military;..., April 11th, 2011
Taken From:  Source

Winter's Waterfall

Wherever we’re headed, America is evolving in ways most of us don’t like or understand. Individually focused yet collectively adrift, we wonder if we’re heading toward a waterfall. Are we?

Source:   Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning (1997)
Taken from:  21st Century Breakdown by James Quinn

Inequality

According to Ed Wolff, an N.Y.U. economist who tracks wealth, the very rich have improved their lot in life by getting richer. Half a million U.S. households (one-half of 1% of the population) now own 39.3% of all assets (stocks, bonds, cash, life-insurance policies, paintings, jewelry, etc.). This makes the U.S. No. 1 among prosperous nations in the inequality of income.

Time Magazine (Jan 30th 1995)
Found in Gerald Celente's Trends 2000, published 1998

Campaign for Collapse

History is replete with examples of empires mounting impressive military campaigns on the cusp of their impending economic collapse. 

Eric Alterman (1993, Sound and Fury)

Default

Never in our history has Congress failed to increase the debt limit when necessary. Failure to raise the limit would precipitate a default by the United States. 

US Secretary of the Treasury Timothy F. Geithner (1/6/2011, Letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid)

Adrift

The end of an Empire is messy at best
And this Empire is ending
Like all the rest
Like the Spanish Armada adrift on the sea
We're adrift in the land of the brave
And the home of the free

Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Randy Newman (A Few Words in Defense of Our Country, Harps and Angels, 2008)

Wounded and Staggering

The money-wasting is staggering. [U.S.] Aid payments are never followed, never audited, never evaluated. The impression is of the world's superpower roaming helpless in a world in which nobody behaves as bidden. Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, the United Nations, are all perpetually off script. Washington reacts like a wounded bear, its instincts imperial but its power projection unproductive.

Simon Jenkins (November 28th, 2010, Guardian.co.uk)

Trouble

The world has gotten itself into trouble with its heavy reliance on the dollar.

Vladimir Putin (Oct 2008, Russian/Chinese conference in Moscow)

Bitterness

Li Deshui from Beijing's Economic Commission said a string of Asian states share China's "deep bitterness" over dollar debasement, and are examining ways of teaming up to insulate themselves from the tsunami of US liquidity.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (04/11/2010, In discussion about Quantitative Easing 2)

American Defeat

... since 1789, the only government on earth that has had the power to crush the American people’s liberties across the board has been the government of the United States. 

Robert Higgs (2006, America Won the World Wars, but Americans Lost)

Mathematical Certainty

If you run the numbers, on all those numbers that you just talked about, which I think are accurate, very accurate, in 20 or 25 years, the United States goes bankrupt ... It’s a mathematical certainty.

John Allison IV (11/2010, Former CEO and Chairman of BB&T, the 10th Largest US Bank)