I was reading a Wall Street Journal article today about the Greek economic crisis that had  led to a lot of worry in the Euro countries like France and Germany.  It seems that they have been borrowing "irresponsibly" and now they are finding it hard to raise more money through, you guessed it, more borrowing.  Now in case you lead a healthy life and don't fixate on the financial news like I do, let me bring you up to date on the problem.  It seems the Greeks have been borrowing to cover the costs of their social programs and various other entitlements.  It would appear that the borrowing has become too large a percentage of GDP to feel safe.  It also seems that the recession, which is worldwide, had negatively impacted tax revenues leaving the government in a bind. This same problem has spread around Europe to the so-called (grossly and I didn't make this up) P.I.G.S. (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain).  This has caused a larger consternation and so the US dollar has risen against the Euro while Europe deals with the situation.

Why the dollar, you may ask?  Because to institutional investors and compared with the European problem we seem rational in our financial policies.  I would just ask the writer of the Journal article and anyone else who buys into this reasoning, what exactly constitutes "responsible" borrowing by a government?  I mean, what is the dividing line between irresponsibility like the Greeks and responsibility like, I guess, us?  I ask this because based upon both the current budget projections by our own government and my life experience which has taught me that nothing ever goes as planned by the government, I don't see much difference between them and us.  They borrow with no idea how to pay it back, and so do we.  In fact not only do we not have a clue, but neither we nor them have any intention of paying it back. 

The plan is, as it always has been since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, to print up money to cover the debt and create a controlled inflation that makes larger and larger numbers seem smaller and smaller.

My worry is that this is, here and everywhere, a giant Ponzi scheme that rests upon the belief
of the participants that they have real wealth in their reserves of paper money with nothing
behind it.  If and when the general population wakes up and fully realizes that their wealth
is nothing more than a mirage, well, that is a day I hope never to see.