This is the first of three articles discussing the urgent need for the US to get its financial house in order or face the consequences. The last two articles will appear in future issues of The Weekly Commentary. Our task is to help you understand the implications of this ominous trend and provide the strategy to protect your wealth.
The size of the projected federal deficits is so ENORMOUS that the U.S. will be forced to borrow HUGE sums from foreigners. When you owe as much as we will owe in 4 years to foreign creditors, sooner or later they will call the tune and we will be obliged to dance.
If you think this is far-fetched, then it is important for you to understand when the United States, the big money center at the time, forced Great Britain to give up its demands upon the Suez Canal during the crisis in 1956 by using Great Britain’s huge debt burden against them.
The United States put financial pressure on Great Britain to end its Suez Canal invasion. President Eisenhower warned the British that unless they withdrew, he would order the sale of the United States’ currency reserves of British Pounds and Sterling Bonds; thereby precipitating a collapse of the British currencies’ exchange rate. Eisenhower in fact ordered his Secretary of the Treasury, George M. Humphrey to prepare to sell part of the US Government’s Sterling Bond holdings. The Government held these bonds in part to aid post war Britain’s economy (during the Cold War), and as partial payment of Britain’s enormous Second World War debt to the US Government, American corporations, and individuals. It was also part of the overall effort of Marshall Plan aid, in the rebuilding of the Western European economies (Source: Wikipedia).