Charles C. Anderson's Blog, page 2

HEALTHCARE WORKERS PROTECTION ACT

 In a post last year on my blog, http://thefirsttosayno.wordpress.com, I wrote about my frustration with the apparent lack of agreement among emergency nurses and their national organizations regarding the need for better security in their emergency departments.  I can’t improve on the post  “Wake up, Emergency Nurses.” I’m responding to a nurse’s recent question on that blog concerning what can be done to protect healthcare employees.

I am convinced that emergency nurses hold the key to addressing violence to healthcare workers in general.  There will likely be no Healthcare Workers Protection Act unless national organizations that represent emergency nurses present a legislative agenda to Congress.  Nurses outnumber physicians by a wide margin.  Everybody has a nurse in the family or knows a nurse. There are over 12 million healthcare workers subject to violence in the workplace.  This is an incredibly under-represented group of workers.

All of the big players (OSHA, Medicare, JCAHO, AHA) have been sitting on the issue of violence against healthcare workers for years.  Powerful lobbies oppose an unfunded mandate forcing hospitals to protect their employees.  All of these organizations are incestuous politically, including nursing organizations. This is why nothing has been accomplished to protect healthcare workers.  Security costs money. Money is more important than your security as a healthcare worker.  I find it ludicrous that OSHA has appropriate regulations for safety in every workplace except healthcare, which is the most violent workplace in America.

Consider all of the mandates that JCAHO has been able to cram down the throats of hospitals. Each of these mandates began with some consensus, however misguided. JCAHO can determine where your trashcans and copy machines are located in the ED, but they can’t wrap their brains around violence in the healthcare workplace. Enough emergency nurses must agree on something to change the plight of all healthcare workers. Violence can occur anywhere in a hospital, but the emergency department has the greatest risk.

Let’s imagine what might be in a Healthcare Workers Protection Act. These are just examples for purposes of discussion.

 Hospitals be required to supply uniformed, armed security in the ED at all times. The first principle of crowd control is a show of force. The uniform and the weapon are powerful deterrents, necessary to do this job whether you like guns or not.
Uniformed, armed security personnel be authorized to restrain any person they deem to be out-of-control or a danger to healthcare workers or patients, including the use of hand cuffs.  Of course, there would be guidelines.  My point is that non-uniformed, unarmed security personnel who are fearful of touching anybody is the norm at this time.
Uniformed, armed security personnel be allowed to use non-lethal deterrents without fear of prosecution (Pepper Spray, Mace, Taser).
Hospitals be required to provide legal support for healthcare workers who are assaulted.
No healthcare worker may be penalized for reporting an assault or abuse.
No healthcare worker may be penalized for coming to the aid of another healthcare worker who is being assaulted or abused.
All assaults and patient/family abuse must be reported.
Any healthcare worker who fears for the safety of another healthcare worker, a patient, or a visitor may dial 911 at any time without fear of being disciplined by the hospital they work in.
Any person who is deemed to be drug seeking by a physician may not be a candidate for a patient satisfaction survey, nor can a physician’s decision not to give drugs to a drug seeker be used against him.  Physicians are being forced to please drug seekers in the name of pleasing customers. A disproportionate number of violent people are under the influence of drugs.  High Press-Gainey scores may mean that your ED physicians have given up doing the right thing.
An emergency physician may request the removal by uniformed security of any belligerent person without fear of EMTALA consequences.  There would be guidelines. Surely we can better the current situation, where drunks have all the rights, and healthcare personnel are required to be victims.
An emergency physician may order the physical restraint of any patient whom he deems to be a danger to himself or to healthcare workers without fear of prosecution. The abolishment of leather restraints was a misguided initiative by people who were never in any danger. An alternative would be requiring an administrator to restrain all belligerent, intoxicated, kicking, biting, and swinging patients, with help from some pencil-pushing JCAHO representative.
Bullet proof glass and metal detectors are mandatory so long as the mentally ill have nowhere else to go besides the emergency department.  We cannot hope to change the pathetic way our government has abandoned the mentally ill, but we should address our own risks as the final common pathway for violent, intoxicated, homicidal, suicidal, psychotic, and drug-impaired patients.
Hospitals are required to restrict access to treatment areas.  Physicians and nurses on duty should have some control over how many visitors are allowed and under what circumstances. They are the people taking the risks.

This list is not meant to address all issues, but is offered as a starting point. Every nurse doesn’t need to agree on every action.  When the majority agrees, that’s a consensus.  No one will recognize a consensus if no one collects the views of all emergency nurses on prospective legislative actions.  I can’t find this kind of data anywhere.

I am saddened that the American College of Emergency Physicians has not taken more of a leadership role in an issue so important to emergency physicians. Writing vague position papers is not the same as developing a consensus, collaborating with nursing organizations, and producing black and white recommendations for legislators.

All of the healthcare violence summits have resulted in no legislative agenda. Someone please tell me if I missed any organized legislative agenda. If national nursing and physician organizations cannot come up with a legislative agenda to protect healthcare employees, then I would encourage healthcare workers to join supportive healthcare workers unions. The Obama administration is very supportive of unions.  The chief problem I see with unions is that governments restrict the ability of healthcare workers to go on strike. This is like going to war with no bullets. Strikes force compromise that cannot be attained any other way. I would prefer that national nursing organizations and physician organizations rise to the occasion without forcing healthcare workers to join organized labor unions that already have their wings clipped. Many healthcare workers would have moral objections to strikes that left patients in the lurch. I would.

WHY THE PUBLIC SHOULD LOVE EMERGENCY NURSES

As part of my fellowship in Critical Care Medicine, I worked as an anesthesiologist at the George Washington University Hospital and at the National Children’s Hospital in D.C. An anesthesiologist chooses his own drugs, draws them up in a syringe, and injects them intravenously—by himself. In order to avoid mistakes I developed routines that included lining my drugs up in the order that I would use them and labeling them myself. In the emergency department, 99% of all drugs—oral, IM, or IV, are administered by emergency nurses. In the OR an anesthesiologist has only one patient at a time. In the ED the emergency physician may be managing five to twenty patients at one time. He is continuously writing orders and barking verbal orders for different nurses to give to multiple patients. Despite his/her best efforts, eventually every emergency physician will write the wrong drug order for a patient, or right the correct drug order on the wrong chart, or give the wrong verbal order for an intravenous drug, or order the wrong dose for a patient. 99% of the time your mistake is caught by the emergency nurse. The ED nurse will give you that skeptical look, or touch your forearm and point to your own incriminating handwriting, or whisper that question that sends chills down your spine: “Are you sure you want to do that?” Trust me, if you are an emergency physician, you don’t want to do whatever you wrote. You need to rethink. And then you need to say “thank you.” My point is that the public should recognize and appreciate that emergency nurses prevent doctors from killing them accidently.

NURSING LEADERSHIP IN THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT

NURSING LEADERSHIP IN THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT

Because this is the week we celebrate the nursing profession I wanted to make some comments about nursing leadership. I’ve worked in six EDs in my career, three as a director, and three as an attending physician. After directing an ICU for seven years, my first directorship of an ED was at DePaul Hospital in Norfolk, Va. This was a wonderful experience for 10 years. After that I had another 10 years of satisfying work as an ED director in Farmville,Va. I spent only one year as director in Petersburg, where I was a complete failure. I spent one year in South Boston as an attending physician and I was absolutely miserable. My first hospital in Richmond was Chippenham. I never felt comfortable there. It seemed that the older nurses ate their young. In fact I could not locate a group of nurses on any shift who actually liked each other. In the critical care section where I usually worked, the nurses appeared to have no respect for each other and little for any new physician. That’s just my perspective. Other physicians who had worked there for years would feel differently. They had old nursing friends they could trust. I didn’t. I don’t mind chaos. I like chaos. But I don’t want to battle chaos with people I can’t trust, who act like they hate each other and have no personal relationship with me. If I’m going to be in a foxhole with someone, I insist that person watch my back and I watch his or hers.

After working at South Boston, I was becoming discouraged. What was it that existed in DePaul and Farmville that I could not find at Petersburg or South Boston or Chip? Happily, I found it again at Johnston Willis and later as a part-timer at Henrico Doctor-Retreat.. I spent five years at JW, mostly on the night shift. It was especially meaningful to me because it was the first hospital that I enjoyed working in where I was not the director. I did not recruit or train any of these nurses or doctors. Thus, it was clear that I wasn’t responsible for their success. It was even more clear that the nursing culture of an ED was far more important for success than the physician director or the doctors. Nursing leadership is the key ingredient in a successful ED. I experienced one nursing culture best described as anarchy. I experienced a nursing culture where the chief goal of the nurses was to slow the doctor down, best described as lazy. I had worked in an ED where the chief concern of the nurses was to maintain control, at all costs, and fight any change. Rather than expound on these negatives, I am going to reprint a letter I left on the bulletin board at JW after my last night shift in 2007. I can’t add anything to this letter about a successful emergency department and effective nurse leadership.

June 24, 2007

The Emergency Department Staff

Johnston-Willis Campus of CJW Medical Center

Dear Friends:

For the past five years it has been my pleasure to serve part-time and full-time as an attending physician in the ED at the Johnston-Willis Campus of CJW Medical Center. These five years have been the culmination of my career as an ICU director, an ED director, and an emergency physician. On the occasion of my retirement from JW this month, I would like to thank all of the staff in the ED and my physician colleagues for their kindness to me and also to compliment all of you on your level of professionalism.

A key ingredient in every good department I have worked in is Pride in What You Do. Quality and experience runs deep at JW ED. I have encountered remarkably talented people here in every role. There is no doubt that some of us are adrenaline junkies who enjoy challenges. I work with nurses who are annoyed when they can’t get at least a #20 gauge into a fly as it buzzes past. These are the kind of people I have always enjoyed working with. If we cannot do something well, we do not want to do it. For at least 25 years, peers have chuckled about my carrying my personal laryngoscope in my pocket, hoping for a chance to whip it out on somebody with an interesting airway. I enjoy working with people who are at their best when things are most difficult. People like you.

I have especially enjoyed working with our ED techs, unit coordinators and future nurses. I love their enthusiasm to learn the skills of our craft. Without enthusiasm, you can’t last in the ED, and you certainly can’t inspire those around you. Enthusiasm and compassion are infectious. Hardly a shift went by these past five years that I did not witness the extraordinary compassion of a member of our staff for a human being in emotional or physical pain. Without compassion, you will never be any good at this job.

Although I love you all, I confess that my favorite people at JW ED hang out on the night shift. Most of us are hard-core veterans who like the freedom of action that comes with manning the pit at night. We are not rotating through the Dark Side because we have to. We are accustomed to being overwhelmed without benefit of backup, or diversions, or even full staffing. We get satisfaction out of shooting from the hip and hitting the mark. We can do this job successfully only because we trust each other and we value the opinions and skills of each other. Being playful has helped us keep things in perspective. We say thank you when someone catches our mistakes and nobody keeps score. We stay interested in each other’s relationships, families, pets, illnesses and injuries. We forgive each other for our off nights. We don’t pretend that we don’t make mistakes. We like each other. The nursing supervisor is our friend. Why do I make a big deal out of this?

At this point in your career, you may not appreciate how rare all of this is on one shift. If you have only worked in one or two EDs, you may not have experienced the difference between lots of people working at the same time and everyone working together. I hope that one day some of you will look back and appreciate what we shared on the night shift at JW. We were better as a unit than the sum of our parts. We pulled off some memorable saves. I am proud to have been a small part of this. I will miss you all, but especially those who struggled with me on the Dark Side. Clearly, you are the best night shift I have ever worked with.

Below is a short list of things I have learned in 33 years in the ED. It may not be useful to you, but it’s free:

1. Learn to love and savor the people you work with. Without making a conscious effort to establish sustaining relationships, you will never last a career in the ED.

2. Coming in a few minutes early reminds your friends that you care about them, while routinely coming in late reminds others that you do not care about them.

3. Hugs and smiles are the grease that makes the ED run smoothly.

4. Say thank you to the other people on your shift before you go home and compliment those whose bedside titration of a patient was particularly skillful. Since hearing appreciation from your friends is the only positive feedback you get on some shifts, those few words are necessary to sustain morale.

6. Never allow a nurse or doctor or EMS person to go home thinking that they were the cause of the demise of a patient. The appearance of being in control is a necessary illusion in emergency medicine. It is for the benefit of the patient and families. We must remind each other when people inevitably die that we are not in control and that we can only do our best.

7. In life and in the ED, we reap what we sow. If we are supportive of those around us, they will be supportive of us when we need it. Eventually, we will all need it.

8. If you don’t have a sense of humor, find another job.

9. When the grass looks greener somewhere else, don’t kid yourself. The people you work with are far more important in the long run than the money you make.

It was my good fortune to know each one of you, to work in a quality HCA hospital like CJW, and to work for a quality organization like ECI. You are welcome to visit me on my farm any time.

With love and gratitude,

Charlie Anderson MD

A NURSE’S TEARS

A NURSE’S TEARS

Before we figured out what caused SIDS these tragedies were fairly common. I managed at least ten in my career as an emergency physician. My experience was that these babies invariably presented at the change of shifts, about 7:00 AM. One morning, perhaps 8-10 years ago, a hysterical Hispanic mother brought her dead baby to the triage desk at Johnston-Willis at 6:55 AM. I was finishing a night shift and I was exhausted. The day shift nurses always arrived before the day shift doctors. The day shift nurse who helped me the most with this infant was an experienced ED nurse. Both of us knew that the baby was already dead. It was cold to touch, pulseless, and apneic. But the mother was frantic, and I didn’t speak Spanish. Several of the nurses on both shifts jumped to help me with this futile resuscitation attempt. The infant was more difficult to intubate because it had rigor mortis of the jaw. I taped in the tube and barked orders for epinephrine. The day shift nurse performed CPR with two fingers. The mother stood at the bedside and watched. I don’t think that mom understood anything we were doing, but she kept looking at the nurse doing CPR. This experienced nurse, who knew that the resuscitation was hopeless even before we started, was crying. Her tears did not interfere with what she was doing. They were silent, but profound. They dropped from her eyes, which I could not see, to her fingers on the infant’s chest. Our procedures meant nothing. Her tears meant everything. They overcame the language barrier. They showed that we cared. They revealed that we were doing everything we could, but our efforts were not enough. I’m almost certain that this nurse was Donna Talbot, but I can’t say for sure. I was mesmerized by the tears. They represented all the compassionate ED nurses I ever worked with. I cried on my drive home to Farmville. Whenever I saw Donna Talbot after that, I wanted to hug her. But I wasn’t certain she was the one. An emergency physician has plenty of opportunities to make a fool of himself. So thank God for all emergency nurses. Hug them all, I say.

WAKE UP, EMERGENCY NURSES

Last year I began a campaign to promote metal detectors, bullet-proof glass, and armed security guards in every emergency department.  I took on this mission because I had personally been in an ED or trauma center eight times in my 38-year career when shots were fired.  My greatest frustration has been that there is no consensus among emergency nurses that these measures are needed, despite the fact that healthcare workers have the highest risk of assault of any workplace in America.  There are many organizations like JCAHO, CMS, and OSHA that could have mandated these security features years ago.  Congress could have mandated these measures years ago.  I beg all emergency nurses to read the account of the recent tragedy in Newtown, Conn. and consider one undeniable fact.

The federal government has abdicated its role in the management of mentally ill persons.  The persons who would do such unspeakable things as just happened in Newtown are being concentrated in emergency departments throughout our country.  They wait for hours to find a psychiatric bed. The potential for such a tragedy in an emergency department far exceeds the risk of an elementary school.

There is no gun control law that will eliminate your high risk.  Each of the two pistols carried by the mentally ill person who killed all those children can spit out lethal bullets just as fast as a semi-automatic AR-15, which was apparently used for most of the killings. Thus, a ban on assault weapons and high capacity ammunition clips will do nothing to protect you.  A single clip in a Glock .45 (also carried by the shooter) holds 13 rounds, each capable of killing a human being with one shot.  There are millions of semi-automatic pistols in circulation, about three for every man, woman, and child in America.  Because of the second amendment, it is unlikely that any law can take these out of circulation.  It makes no difference whether you love guns or hate guns.  The fact is that people whose workplace concentrates angry, frustrated, suicidal, and homicidal persons is at the highest risk for a mass shooting.

No congressional committee, or government agency, or hospital administration, or hospital organization is going to mandate the spending of significant amounts of  money to install equipment and bullet-proof glass  or hire armed security guards when the nurses can’t agree that these are necessary.  It is not enough to have symposia on violence in healthcare and come away without endorsing these particular deterrents, which are known to be effective. Are you waiting for a disaster in your own department before you act?  That is the pattern I found. By telephone survey and visiting trauma centers, I found that almost all of the 5 per cent of our nation’s emergency departments that use such security features were prompted by a tragedy in their own department.

This breaks my heart. Do each of you have to see one or more of your colleagues lying in a pool of blood in the floor of your own department before you give up your wishful thinking and feelings of invincibility?  Are you still worried about your department not looking friendly? I want to help you. I’m willing to go to a congressional committee and fight for your safety. I have the additional advantage of being shot at myself in the ED, multiple times, not for anything I did or said, but because I was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. As a retired emergency physician who lives near Washington I know that I could help you.  I know some of the legislators.  I seek no money for my efforts. There is one critical ingredient missing.  With all of the budget cuts that will be required in the near future, nobody is going to mandate these security features for emergency nurses who can’t agree on a single resolution in support of them.

Do you really think that making your hospital a “gun-free zone” is going to do anything besides make you even more of a target? In case you haven’t noticed, almost all mass shootings occur in “gun-free zones”.  Shooters don’t like to go where someone might shoot back.  It is a show of force that prevents violence.  A show of weakness and disarmament invites violence.  The idea that patients will be frightened by having security measures in the emergency department is counter to my own experience.  I believe that most people feel safer in the emergency department waiting room when there is a security officer present.

I have the greatest respect for the nursing profession.  My wife is a nurse. Sadly, I feel that I can do no more until emergency nurses stand up for themselves and their patients, as well as the children and the parents who will be left behind when a shooter walks through their ambulance entrance behind a stretcher pushed by paramedics. Let me know when you make the connection between totally unpredictable violent mental health patients, guns, and emergency department employees.  Please do not put yourself through the agony of one day realizing that you could have prevented a tragedy if only you had supported security measures in your emergency department.

Charles C. Anderson, MD, FACP, FACEP

THE WRONG MEDICINE

Just when I thought I was at peace with my political views and my conservative and liberal friends, I pick up the paper and see that the Federal Reserve is about to land another crushing blow on all of us. Even though $2.5 trillion in stimulus has resulted in no new jobs for 44 consecutive months, Helicopter Ben wants to add another round of Quantitative Easing (QE) onto its already hopeless balance sheet.

I really wanted to stay out of this political race.  I wanted to avoid endorsing either candidate.  From the beginning my thesis has been that Santa Claus money has corrupted both parties.  Neither can claim any moral high ground.  For the last few days I have been sitting in a circle, holding hands with my conservative and liberal friends, singing Kum-ba-ya, and breathing that clean air that is the result of no industrial activity.  Then I picked up my six newspapers this morning and began to read.  They all agree on what this idiot Bernanke is about to do.  (You don’t have to be Republican or Democrat to agree that Bernanke is an idiot.  He went to Harvard.  That should be enough.)

This guy believes that injecting billions more into the economy on a daily basis is going to make people who are already in debt up to their eyeballs and employers who have no reason to hire employees due to lack of demand will rush out and borrow this money and create jobs. Just how this is supposed to work now, when it didn’t work before, he doesn’t say.  He has a hammer and a nail, and everybody wants him to “do something.”

Bernanke has finally admitted that the economy has “big structural problems.” He should have picked up on this sooner, since he was instrumental in creating those problems.  I have a four-part plan for America to rise from the ashes.  Even Bernanke should be able to understand it.

We must pay higher taxes across the board.  Sock it to me.
We must cut every subsidy, every deduction, every earmark, every slice of pork, and a piece out of every entitlement and social program in our budget.  This is called shared sacrifice.  Of course it will be painful.  It will temporarily decrease GDP.  It will decrease the size of government.  Did you think we were going to get out of this mess without pain?  If we do not do these things in an orderly fashion, we will be forced to deal with them like September 18, 2008.
We must insist that all congressmen and senators live by the same laws as the rest of us.  I think they will make more progress with Social Security and Medicare when they actually have something to lose.  Being a legislator is a privilege.  It does not entitle you to be an aristocrat, exempt from the laws that affect the rest of us.  In any year that Congress does not pass a budget by a specific date, signed by the president, then none of the above should be paid.  We elected them to do this job.  I would give Congress four years to balance the budget or resign.
Enact a Marshall Plan for developing our God given energy resources.  This is where the new jobs will come from.  Becoming an energy exporting nation is the only reasonable way to balance the budget in any time frame without cutting social programs to the bone.  It is the only source of new jobs large enough to turn our economy around.  The spin offs to the entire economy would be enormous. Don’t you think that $2 gasoline would give the economy a big boost? If you don’t want to burn our 100 year supply of coal inside the U.S., then export it to countries that need it.  How about an entire new line of engines that use natural gas or a new petroleum derivative? The tax revenue from these new industries would be gigantic.  Are you willing to bet the future of our country and the opportunities of your children on a global warming theory based on manipulated and manufactured data? According to the esteemed author of “An Inconvenient Truth”, the oceans should be taking over our coast line by now and the earth should be warming rapidly.  It’s not happening.  There are some people who have difficulties making choices where all alternatives represents some risk. They prefer black and white choices with no risks.  So would I, but life is never so simple, is it?  I believe that one can be an environmentalist who does not want to live with hyperinflation, depression, and massive unemployment. Al Gore is not smart enough to make me want to sacrifice our entire country on fudged data.  A real scientist does not need to lie or cherry-pick numbers that justify his own bias.  Natural gas is as clean as it gets.  By now you already know who has blocked the development of our energy resources and Canada’s for four years.  Four years?  Isn’t that the same period of time we have lost jobs every month?

Have a great day.  Hug a liberal. Hug a conservative.  Each is just as passionate about what he believes as you are. Alienating each other makes it more difficult to solve our problems.  America is more important than political parties.  Tough problems require tough choices and risks.

Charles C. Anderson M.D. FACP, FACEP

 

WHY OUR ECONOMY CAN’T GROW

Have you ever wondered why our economy is not growing despite massive stimulus since 2008?  Let me offer some understandable answers.  First, Mr. Obama squandered his time in office chasing ideological goals—green energy, Obamacare, enlarging the welfare state—because he did not recognize the priority of dealing with the multiple financial bubbles that had recently popped (housing, stock market, and consumer credit).  Apparently, neither Mr. Bush, nor Mr. Bernanke, nor Mr. Obama recognized that there were two larger bubbles yet to pop (government debt and the dollar).   Mr. Bernanke viewed the recession as just another business cycle, like the thirty some others since WWII, rather than the collapse of multiple financial bubbles.  At first, Mr. Bernanke assured Mr. Bush, and us, that the subprime mess would never turn into anything significant. Helicopter Ben was ready and eager to treat this recession in the same way that Keynesian economists had always responded to recessions— by lowering interest rates and injecting dollars into the financial system to prime the pumps and stimulate the economy.

The subprime mess that Bernanke thought could cause no significant problems nearly destroyed the entire worldwide banking system in one day, September 18, 2008.  Big banks were failing around the world.  Brokerage houses were failing.  Mr. Bernanke responded with massive bailouts of his Wall Street friends, government takeovers of the mortgage market, a government takeover of General Motors, massive increases in the money supply, artificially controlling interest rates, and injecting gargantuan amounts of dollars into the world by printing money and using those dollars to buy our own bonds or toxic mortgage securities. This he called quantitative easing.  Despite trillions of dollars of stimulus, unemployment has not improved and economic growth, apart from government spending, has not changed.  The entire increase in GDP since 2008 has come from increased government spending, financed by borrowed or printing money—Santa Claus money.  Injecting all this money into the world has done incredible harm to our country by devaluing the dollar, increasing our national debt, and insuring future inflation.

Let’s face it. Mr. Obama is not a hands-on leader.  We don’t know if he ever took a course in economics or history.  Mr. Bernanke, supposedly a smart man with knowledge of economic history, has been blind sided by every financial event since 2008.  He is just now figuring out that the stimulus did not create jobs and that “other factors” have more control over the interconnected world economy than the Federal Reserve.  Supposedly smart people are even now begging him for another round of quantitative easing, despite the fact that there have been diminishing and fleeting returns from previous rounds of stimulus, and disastrous consequences down the road.  I’ll bet he gives in within two weeks.  Obama is desperate to improve the economy, or keep it from collapsing, before the election.  He and Mr. Bernanke remind me of a carpenter who only has one tool, a hammer.  Eventually every problem looks like a nail to them. They are clearly in over their heads, but neither wants to admit it.

The purpose of quantitative easing is to encourage people to borrow and spend.  Can you believe that our government wants us to continue to borrow and spend like it does, with no hope of paying it back?  Many elderly people bet their retirement on an interest rate return of at least 4-5 percent, and are already eating their principle.  Students are saddled with mountains of debt from school loans with degrees in subjects where there is no demand.  Half the mortgages in America are in jeopardy, and our homes are worth just over half of what they were six years ago. The word’s foremost authority on housing values says that U.S. housing has another 20 per cent to fall, at least, to reach historical prices compared to wages.  The stock market has crashed twice in the last twelve years, and is only being propped up by continuous stimulus at this time. 23 million Americans are out of work.

Do you think that quantitative easing is going to convince many people to borrow more money and go further into debt under these circumstances?  Wall Street insiders may enjoy a nice ride for a few months before everything resets at the starting point or below.  This is no ordinary recession.  Since 70 per cent of our economy is consumer spending, and most of that is discretionary (not really necessary), Americans are spending less and less.  Why should it be so hard for Bernanke to understand that government bungling and corruption have left American taxpayers little discretionary income, and small businesses unwilling to hire new employees?

We really shouldn’t be surprised that our own government is the root cause of the financial bubbles all over the world.  It is true that other governments overspent and are also in a debt crisis.  But the entire world is attached to the financial bubbles of America and many of the weaker countries will suffer far greater than the U. S. before a worldwide depression runs its course.  So, what is a bubble?  A bubble represents a financial asset that is artificially inflated, usually by the injection of money into the economy by Uncle Samdusky, who has some ideological motive.  For example, the price of the average home increased 100 per cent between 2000 and 2006.  This would have been fine if incomes had increased dramatically, but incomes increased only 2 per cent during this period.  The federal government, led by Barney Frank, Fannie, and Freddy, forced lenders to take Santa Claus money and lend it to borrowers who had inadequate income to make a monthly house payment.  Wall Street did their part by packaging these high-risk loans into mortgage-backed securities, having them rated AAA, and distributing the toxic assets around the globe.

Over the past four years our economy has been like a patient who needs a frequent shot of epinephrine intravenously just to stay alive.  Bernanke and Obama have added dramatically to the two largest bubbles in the history of mankind—the dollar bubble and the debt bubble. As these bubbles deflate, they will drag down most of the world that is not already in a debt crisis.  This deflation of the debt bubble has already started.  For example, as Americans further cut back on the purchase of Chinese goods, the Chinese economy will collapse.  The Chinese are already massively stimulating their economy to forestall this collapse.

The most important thing to know about any financial bubble is that it will eventually pop. Every last one in history. The second most important thing to know is that bubbles are interconnected, and thus popping one or two makes it inevitable that the others will pop soon. For example, our government is now into its fourth decade of gargantuan budget deficits.  There were a couple of years in Bill Clinton’s term where we collected more in taxes than we spent, but every other year since the early 1980s we have borrowed all over the world to finance a culture built on credit and printed money, mostly to fund an entitlement welfare empire.

Consumer credit reached an all-time high before this bubble collapsed.  The collapse of the stock market bubble and the housing bubble left the average American family unable to borrow and spend anymore.  To make up for the decrease in consumer spending, Obama moved in and spent billions on its ideological favorites.  The graph of government debt over time found on the first page of this blog should erase any doubt in your mind that our government has created the two largest financial bubbles in the history of the world—the debt bubble and the dollar bubble.  Just click on the man at the computer who has just realized that America can never repay its debt or balance its budget.  We are destined to default on our debt.  Go ahead.  Take a look.  This is not hard to understand.

I watched the Republican National Convention every night last week and I was delighted that Mr. Ryan admitted that we could not get back to normal without “some pain”. He did not specify where the pain would be felt.  You can bet that the details of the pain will be left out of the Democratic Convention this week.  Perhaps a national convention is the wrong place to admit the hopelessness of our position.  People need hope.  I need hope. However, it must be clear in your mind that balancing the budget and even diminishing the national debt is technically impossible without destroying the dollar.

I’m really not a doom and gloom guy.  I’m a thriller guy. I got into this blog trying to address the problem of healthcare violence.  I couldn’t understand why our government was in gridlock.  When I don’t understand something, I do exhaustive research until I do understand it.  Here is my conclusion: There is no realistic combination of tax increases or spending cuts that would balance our budget, even if we could get Congress to agree on such tax increases and spending cuts. Mr. Obama has piled another 50 percent on top of our already insurmountable debt just since taking office.  We will never pay off our national debt.  The question is how we will default.

At this point we have few choices.  I agree with Mr. Romney that a national full-court press to develop our energy resources is absolutely required.  To the environmentalists, I would say, “You had your chance to prove global warming, and you lied about your data and cherry picked the periods of time that supported your thesis.  This is not science.  I don’t care how hot and dry it is this summer. It is only an anecdote in history.  We have had similar hot decades in the 1800s when there were no cars.  Don’t lie to me; then expect me to respect your opinion.”

No one has shown a convincing argument that burning fossil fuels heats up the earth.  Maybe some day; maybe not.  It’s a good thing, too, since we have no other way to massively increase jobs in this country.  This is what Mr. Obama should have seen four years ago. Every economic revival has to have an engine for growth, a new source of jobs.  In North Dakota, where oil and natural gas are being developed over the constant objections of environmentalists and Obama, jobs are going begging.  There are not enough people in the labor force to fill all the vacant jobs.  We are a rich nation in natural resources, and we clearly have enough oil and NG to be energy dependent.

Peak oil was another ideological hoax that never made any sense.  How can you say that you have reached the maximum rate with which oil can be extracted from the earth when you prohibit drilling for it in 97 percent of off-shore sites and 90 per cent of onshore sites?  The miracles of shale oil, horizontal drilling, and hydraulic fracking have occurred in spite of our government, not because of it, almost entirely on private land.

The federal government should get out of the energy business.  Their ineptitude is so great, and corruption so rampant, that taxpayers have been forced to support multiple green energy initiatives that could not make it on their own merits.  Anything that requires a subsidy from government to survive is a hoax.  Really good ideas and breakthroughs in science almost never come from the government. If wind and solar energy make financial sense, then they will survive and grow on their own. Government should be happy that the shale oil and NG boom can provide a huge, new product to tax, and hundreds of thousands of employed people to tax, many new spin-off businesses and products to tax, and hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land to lease.

We could easily become an oil and NG exporting nation, if the federal government would just get out of the way.  All these new oil and gas drillers, and the thousands of small businesses required to service them, and the houses they will need to live in, are the stuff of dreams, minting millions of new millionaires. At this point, we have no other choice.  New jobs must come from new private businesses, or expanding private businesses, not from government.  Obama has yet to figure this out. He is the most anti-business, anti-success president America has ever had.  Through endless regulations and law suits, the EPA has suppressed economic growth.

Before it was clear that the U.S. had over a hundred year supply of NG, the environmentalists proclaimed NG was clean energy.  THERE IS NOW NO SUCH THING AS CLEAN ENERGY.  The environmentalists don’t like nuclear, or oil, or coal, or NG.  Recently a windmill farm was shut down because a single bat had been found at the base of one of the wind turbines.  The federal government’s support for practical renewable energy has been abysmal—-$40,000 cars, gasohol, solar panel companies gone bankrupt.

So developing our own energy is the answer? Well, it will take some of the sting of the depression from those people who grab energy-related jobs and start the new businesses necessary to support all those workers. Decreased worldwide demand for oil due to the depression and increased supply at home could conceivably result in cheap oil again, but we would have to suffer higher oil prices first due to massive inflation. If America could become energy independent, it would result in a much milder depression here than overseas.  We are blessed with so many natural resources, tillable land, and water.

Unfortunately, an improving economy and many new jobs do not solve the twin bubbles of debt and the dollar.  Inflation will allow government to pay off some of its debt with cheaper dollars, but, eventually no one will want U.S. bonds.  Ask yourself this question.  If there was such a great faith in America around the world, and confidence in the dollar, why are other countries not showing up for our bond auctions like they used to? The very concept of quantitative easing means that you must buy your own bonds because there is an inadequate market for them.  Our government is propping up the bond market, artificially lowering interest rates, while devaluing the dollar.  Every time Helicopter Ben takes off to throw money at something, your savings are worth less, your retirement is less secure.

As I have pointed out before, no other country that has reached this point in the devaluation of its currency has been able to save that currency.  Soon, other countries will no longer want dollars or U.S. bonds.  Nobody can say exactly what day our credit is cut off, but it will come as a shock, like September 18, 2008.  Our government takes in currently taking in $2 trillion in taxes each year and spending about $3.5 trillion each year.  We borrow, print, or create the extra $1-1.5 trillion, which I call Santa Claus money.  Because of our massive printing of dollars, the value of each dollar is less.  Would you lend your Uncle Samdusky $1.5 trillion per year at any interest rate given his record of money management?  Remember that other countries already hold $5.5 trillion in our bonds.  These countries see that we owe almost 16 trillion dollars in all, not counting the billions of debt kept off the books, or dumped on the books of the Federal Reserve, or stolen from the Social Security Trust Fund. The U.S. government has over $70 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

Our government’s yearly income in taxes will continue to shrink as more people lose their jobs, and no amount of “soak the rich” taxes will collect enough money to make even a dent in our deficit or our national debt. The very people Mr. Obama wants to punish with higher taxes are the only people who can create jobs.  Despite class warfare encouraged by our president, poor people are not abused by rich people.  It is rich people who provide private jobs, not government.  In America you have an opportunity to advance yourself through your own initiative, as far away from the dependency of government as you can get.

Compound interest is a wonderful thing is you are a saver and your government is not artificially holding down interest rates.  However, if you are a debtor, like Uncle Samdusky, and you borrow more and more each year, and all of your debt must be rolled over every four years, and you never make any payments on your increased debt, your interest costs will skyrocket with only a modest increase in rates. Raising interest rates is the only way to halt inflation.

In summary, we are in deep **** regardless of who wins in November.  When the day comes that no country will lend us any more money, all of our national debt will become due very quickly, since most of our debt is in short-term notes.  So, no matter who is elected, by the end of his four year term the U.S. will have to come up with an additional $20-25 trillion to pay off the national debt and accrued interest.  We will not be able to roll it over (borrow again).  To print it would cause unacceptable hyperinflation.  This is why default is inevitable. You can stick your head in the sand.  You can long for the good old days.  You can wave Romney flags or Obama flags. But you cannot avoid the consequences of what our government has done to us already.  I wish you good luck.

I hope that some of my readers have enjoyed my financial and historical posts.  I decided over the weekend that I would not continue to write on this subject in my blog. Do you know who convinced me?  Mr. Obama.  Last week he looked into the camera and told the American people during the Republican National Convention that “the cause of all this mess in the first place was tax cuts for the wealthy.”  “Trickle-down economics,” he said, “which takes from the poor and middle class in order to give to the rich.” At no time has this man admitted that out-of-control government spending, particularly on entitlements financed with borrowed and printed money, is the cause of our insolvency, and that he has added 50% to our national debt since he took office.

I am certain that Mr. Obama has seen the publicly announced IRS data on taxes, which were re-published in The Richmond Times Dispatch newspaper yesterday.  The IRS says that the richest 1% of Americans paid 40% of all personal income taxes.  The top 5% paid 61% of all personal income tax collected by the government.  The top 10% paid 71 % of all personal income taxes.  The bottom 50% paid just 3% of income tax revenues, and 47 % of taxpayers pay no federal income taxes whatsoever.  Where are the rich taking from the poor and middle class?

Tax demagoguery is useful for politicians who prey on the politics of envy.  At no time has Mr. Obama given the wealthy credit for carrying most of the tax burden in America, or for creating almost all private sector jobs. Successful people should be celebrated, not demonized.  We have heaped so many safety nets on the poor (over 80 government welfare programs) that they have lost the need or desire to strive. Mr. Obama has publicly stated that the job creators should be taxed at even higher rates regardless of whether it produced any increase in total tax revenue, out of “fairness.”  By not making some “fiscal cliff” agreement with the Republicans over tax increases and spending cuts before the election, Mr. Obama is insuring that no employer is going to be confident enough about his new taxes to hire any new employees.

This man’s arrogance and ignorance have been made possible by the lap dog mainstream media, which has hidden most of his lies about his background.  Unfortunately for Obama, a number of books are out now which illustrate his true motives and his desire to destroy free market capitalism. I just completed reading the book Aftershock, by Davis Wiedemer, PhD et al.  Although these economists see even more bubbles than I do they agree with my thesis completely. My voice is no longer needed here.  Last week the University of Virginia refused Mr. Obama’s request to come to Charlottesville and speak to students.

If there is any liberal out there that I haven’t already alienated, I apologize.  I will try one more time.  I would like to make a comparison between a lawyer using his pre-emptive strikes to eliminate potential jurists for his client and Mr. Obama’s search for new voters.  I have been a potential juror 6-7 times, but I have been pre-emptively ruled out by the defendant’s lawyer all but once.  You see, the defendant’s lawyer does not want anyone on the jury who can think logically—-like accountants, doctors, or engineers. These people can connect two dots.  He wants the least-educated, most easily swayed, most fearful, most ill-informed non-readers available for his jury. Mr. Obama is courting the same crowd for much of his electorate.  This is why he so often appeals to jealousy, fear, envy, greed, and getting something for nothing, instead of communicating the true nature of the calamity we face, the need for shared sacrifice, and the difficulty of our journey.  It’s been hard for me to accept how one man could pull the wool over so many eyes or how he could drag us so low.  See you after the election. I am finishing a new book, and it has nothing to do with Barack Obama.

Charles C. Anderson M.D. FACP, FACEP

UNDERSTANDING YOUR ENEMY

Is it just me, or is the “debate” of this presidential race incredibly inappropriate for the condition we are in as a country? Neither candidate wants to talk about our debt crisis.  Neither wants to tell voters that real pain will follow this election.  I’m not talking about the so-called “fiscal cliff” of taxes and spending cuts that are scheduled to kick in January 1, 2013. You can count on the lame duck Congress to do what they always do—slash the cuts in spending and decrease the taxes. It will be hailed as a great compromise.  Kick the can down the road one more time.

Neither candidate has looked the American people in the eye and made the correct diagnosis. From this point forward you should ignore any attack that one candidate makes on the other candidate. If you buy into the fraudulent issues of Romney’s tax returns, Obama’s birth certificate or college records, taxes on the rich, looking out for the middle class, and who is going to push granny over the cliff first, you are missing the greatest issue of our nation’s life:  What is America going to do, now that it is already insolvent and incapable of paying back its debt or balancing a budget?

The candidates would like to avoid this issue at all costs.  Who wants to vote for someone who promises pain?  Both candidates continue down the Santa Claus road, acting as if we can continue to create, print, and borrow money indefinitely. Not only has neither candidate publicly made the correct diagnosis, neither has a believable prescription for improvement. Meanwhile, a few brave economists focus on whether austerity or more stimuli is the road to recovery.

I don’t know if the candidates will get past attacking each other before the election, because each party continues to cling to the idea that government can continue to service its special interests and entitlements.  My view is that our political system is rotten to the core.  Democrats and Republicans are guilty of taking every dime of Santa Claus money they could get.  It is fraudulent to frame the presidential debate as a referendum over who deserves the most Santa Claus money.  In a short period of time, Santa Claus money will dry up, or be worthless.  This will not happen because of the foresight of either party or their presidential candidate.  It will happen because of MATH.

Please recognize that massive austerity programs that gut the entitlement programs and the national defense will not balance our budget.  No amount of government stimulus can change the fact that no country can borrow its way out of debt. No new tax hike that takes every dollar that “rich” people make can balance the budget or pay off the national debt. Obama’s attempt to stimulate our economy has added approximately 50 per cent to our national debt, insuring that the end will be near. What has all that money, directed toward big banks, insolvent states, Fannie and Freddie, and Obama’s ideological soul mates done for us?  Last month 44 states reported increased unemployment.  For a complete look at our national budget, click on the widget by the same name in the right lower corner of page one of my blog, http://www.thefirsttosayno.com

Stimulus was never the answer. Bailouts were never the answer.  Sometimes I wonder how Harvard University can graduate so many stupid people.  According to Keynesian economics, during times of recession the government can stimulate the economy by lowering interest rates and injecting money into banks.  Unfortunately, this is not an ordinary recession.  This is a government-induced debt crisis shared by democracies all over the globe.  Most of these democracies can’t print more money. As businesses and people become more frightened about the future, they spend less.  70 percent of the U.S. economy is directly related to consumer spending.  Less spending causes further contraction in the economy, more lay offs, and even less tax revenue.  This is a self-feeding process that will change the face of America, just as the Great Depression did.

Think of it this way.  Our national credit card is maxed out. This means that other countries will soon stop buying our bonds. The dollar is hanging on only because the Euro is in even worse shape and the dollar temporarily remains the reserve currency of the world.  We have already entered a period of world-wide depression.  Some countries, those few that have sovereign wealth funds and actually spend less than they collect in tax revenue, will weather the years of depression much better than the world’s democracies. Even the Chinese economy is slowing.  Just how fast, they won’t say. Suffice to say, the Eurozone countries will markedly decrease their imports from the United States, and we will markedly reduce our imports from China.

For you to base your vote in November on more government or less government misses the point.  Neither candidate is really for less government, which is the only viable way out after we crash. The Republican and Democratic budget projections for deficits the next 20-30 years are fraudulent, based on growth that cannot occur in the environment we have created for ourselves, and based on other struggling countries lending us more money.

There is no moral courage in Washington.  Ryan’s budget is no different from Obama’s. Should we raise the national debt by over 80 percent or by over 60 percent in the next ten years? This is a ridiculous question.  We won’t even be able to pay the interest on the debt we already owe once interest rates rise. The laws of mathematics will cause our house of credit cards to crash during the next administration, regardless who occupies the White House.  We cannot continue deficit spending without destroying what is left of the dollar’s value.

If these candidates had any sense, they wouldn’t want to be president during the next four years.  No one is going to be pleased when interest rates skyrocket, our national credit is cut off, and governments at all levels must decrease services drastically. Can you imagine the anger all over America when Santa Claus money is no longer available, or is worthless?  I have tried to sound an advance alarm to the nation’s emergency departments, but most of my warnings have fallen on deaf ears. So many Americans cannot see beyond their own self interests.

It is my view that our government is so corrupt that it needs to fail. Who is going to volunteer to give up his Santa Claus money?  No one.  The entire system needs to collapse in order that we can start over with such ideas as self-reliance, hard work, a balanced budget, term limits for politicians, a flat tax, no deductions for anybody, no money from lobbyists, no picking of winners and losers by government, tight controls on the Federal Reserve, malpractice reform, and massive downsizing of all government programs. Nobody is going to vote for such things as long as they are sucking on the government tit.  I don’t recall where I heard this saying, but it seems appropriate here:  “Be vigilant in battle, but never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Both candidates are hastening our day of reckoning.

If you can look at the same old pandering of both candidates to their special interests and not understand why our government is the enemy, I can’t help you.

Charles C. Anderson M.D. FACP, FACEP

 

COUNTRY FOLKS CAN SURVIVE

I don’t think that I could trust someone who doesn’t take his own advice.  For that reason I am going to tell you what I’m doing to prepare for the financial collapse that has already started in our country.  All those pages that I published on this blog on the history of the dollar and the history of democracies must come down to action by you.  Otherwise you have wasted your time reading. You must understand that it is not just poor people, or middle class people, or rich people who have been corrupted by Santa Claus money.  All Americans, as well as our politicians, have become accustomed to a standard of living that could only have been possible with Santa Claus money.  Our governments at all levels are hopelessly corrupt.  Few can imagine what America will look like when all of our printed and borrowed money, sloshing around the world, no longer buys anything.  Our city and state governments, taking their cue from Washington, have overpaid themselves and their employees and promised them unsustainable pensions and health benefits.  The results of hyperinflation are quite predictable if you understand history. Our money is going to die.  This is not going to blow over like y2k. No, you cannot borrow your way out of debt.  The only way that government itself can survive is to print more dollars and reduce the number of government employees and services.

You must protect yourself and your family from this inevitable out-of-control inflation, the consequence of our government recklessly printing trillions of dollars.  The dollar is already losing its place as the reserve currency of the world.  There is no longer any question when our collapse will start.  It has already started in cities, towns, and states, and it is almost a worldwide phenomena.  Look at the Eurozone, still trying to borrow itself to death.  I expect much the same scenario here, only many times worse. There will be no Germany to delay our collapse. You must prepare yourself for the violence which always occurs when benefits are cut off, paper money has lost most of its value, and the stores are empty.  This may sound like wild speculation, but I challenge you to refute it on the basis of historical comparisons. Hyperinflation is a well-traveled road to hell.

I must tell you honestly that I don’t think that a new president can make much of a difference here.  Mr. Romney is a much better leader than Obama, and the Lord knows that we need somebody who knows how to cut the size of government instead of increasing dependency upon government, but our situation is too grave for anyone to guide us through the next few years without pain, violence, and unprecedented intrusion of government into our lives.  There are too many addicts to Santa Claus money. Our nation is no longer full of industrious and self-reliant people.  This is why we have gridlock in Congress.  These fools are still fighting over who will get the most Santa Claus money, oblivious to the fact that Santa Claus has a terminal illness.  I don’t care if you are a Republican or a Democrat; you need to start thinking in ways that you have never thought before.  The best that we can hope for, in my view, is to make the best of a bad situation, to prepare for the inevitable.  There is nothing unpatriotic or illegal about what I have done for myself, or what I am recommending to you.  You must start thinking about your own situation, and start making contingency plans.

Your most important priorities are food, water, shelter, and safety.  Be advised that conditions in cities will deteriorate much faster than in the country.  Imagine providing these priorities for yourself where you currently live.  Can you protect yourself?  Do you have the ability to plant and harvest from your own garden without someone stealing your vegetables in the middle of the night? Please be aware that there are already cities in America that have had to drastically cut services.  As unemployment increases, tax revenues decrease, these services will have to be cut again and again.  Some cities have posted a long list of crimes that police will no longer respond to.  What would you do if you lost power indefinitely or water?  What if you called “911” and nobody answered, or no ambulance or police came?  Maybe its time you asked your doctor to prescribe six extra months of all your medications and pay for these in today’s dollars.

Self reliance will be the most valuable asset you have.  My Uncle Allan taught me as a boy to learn every skill I possibly could—carpentry, plumbing, roofing, electrical skills, gardening, engine repair, welding, and maintenance of equipment. I have not forgotten how to can foods and store them underground.  I have built more than ten types of structures on my farm and have the tools to repair almost anything.  Any skill that you have will become a source of value for you in the coming era of forced self-reliance. Paper money will go to ground.

Those of us who live in the country have a leg up on city folks.  The greatest thing we have going for us is our low population density.  In the county I live in, there never has been any garbage pick-up.  No one maintains my roads but me. I am accustomed to being without power for a week at a time.  My rural electrical service sucks so bad that I have had to design my own backup system.  My family has lived on the same farm since 1743, and agriculture is in my blood.  Country folks are, by nature, more self-reliant than city dwellers.  Hank Williams Jr. was right.  You can’t stomp us out.  If you have a relative who lives in the country, maybe it’s time you had a long talk about what you could contribute if you lived with them during the crisis months.  I expect National Guard troops to replace policemen in some cities.

I intend for my own grown children to leave the cities they work in when it is no longer safe there.  All of my children have wonderful careers, but their skills may not make a living in the chaos of the breakdown of city society.  One of my children is a talented film editor and producer.  One is a banker.  One owns a swimming pool business.  One is a physical therapist. One is a dentist.  When money no longer buys much, people won’t want to spend what they have on swimming pools, or dental work, or movies, or elective physical therapy.  But if my children come home to the farm and bring my grandchildren, we become a stronger community.  Among us, we have skills to help other people, and to barter. What will you use for money?

A couple of years ago I began to take all the money out of my IRA and 401(k).  I paid the taxes and did not deposit this money in any bank.  I completed the process this year to avoid the tax hikes coming in 2013. I had my attorney draw up a trust that included my home, my farm, and anything of value on my farm.  I am no longer the owner of my property, which has no mortgage.  I am just the manager until I die.  Then my children can go to the courthouse and present the trust and my will.  At that time they can take possession of their share of the farm without paying any estate tax.

Why would I do such things?  It is important, I think, to show as little in assets as possible to the government.  I am not required to file my trust in the courthouse or my will.   Estate taxes are going to come back in a big way, but I no longer have an estate to tax. Be forewarned.  Uncle Samdusky is coming for your retirement money. This always happens when democracies collapse due to debauching of the currency.  Our government is already staking claims to pensions of federal employees. On paper, you need to look like a pauper. All entitlement programs will be means tested before they disappear.  If you have assets in a bank, or brokerage account, or retirement account—they are not only at risk, they will be used against you.  You may not get social security or Medicare benefits if you have too many assets or too much money in a bank.  Have you ever heard of wage and price controls, bank holidays, or restrictions on how much money you could take out of your bank account or retirement fund?  The government may force you to buy rapidly depreciating government Treasuries with your retirement fund.  Or they can just freeze your assets in the name of preventing bank runs.  There is no limit on the power of government to steal from you when they are desperate for money.

What did I do with my money?  I can’t tell you exactly, but the majority of it is in commodities that I have taken possession of.  I believe that silver and gold coins are more valuable to me than bullion.  Can you imagine standing in line at Wal-Mart and shaving off a piece of a gold bar to pay for stuff? I can imagine that any coin that is pure silver or pure gold will be negotiable by weight.  The value of all commodities will rise dramatically as the government must print more and more money.  I have a bias against the stock market, gold ETFs, and commodity ETFs.  The problem is that somebody in the government knows what you own.  And they will be coming for it.

I prefer holding negotiable coins hidden on my own property.  When you buy one of my books, you are helping me buy more gold and silver coins.  Thanks. I don’t buy from anyone who keeps records and I pay cash.  If you read my novel, The Farm, you might guess where I keep my coins.  Unfortunately, it won’t do you any good.  Not even my wife knows the access to my hiding place.  Gradually I am moving those tools and weapons that I consider irreplaceable to my hideout.  It is helpful to live on a piece of property that no one but your family has ever owned, large enough to hide an army.  You need a hideout somewhere, because thieves will abound.

My home is wired to run off of batteries or a propane generator, which can recharge the batteries.  Propane is important to have because it can be stored indefinitely underground in 1000 gallon tanks. Propane does not deteriorate like gasoline and many other fuels.  Propane wall heaters are so efficient now that they do not require venting. I have switched my appliances, water heater, and dryer to propane to decrease the amount of power I need to run everything in my house that I need from my batteries or my generator.  By storing power in the batteries, I only have to run the generator a few hours of the day.  My home is very quiet at night, and I can hear you coming a long way off on my mile long gravel driveway.  I have divided my home, which I built, into zones.  I only heat or cool the zones that are occupied.  I live on a river and can irrigate my fields and garden using pumps that do not require gasoline. I have scattered four wells across my farm and built buildings that look like barns, but could just as easily house families.

I think it is important to identify what you are good at and what you can offer others in trade when money dies.  I am an ED physician and my wife is a nurse.  When the time comes, I will hang out my shingle again, but I won’t take paper money.  I’ll be glad to help you any way I can in exchange for a half day’s work, a couple of chickens, a bag of tomatoes.  You get the idea.

Although I own several large freezers, they consume too much electricity to run continuously.  I have approximately 400 deer on my farm.  I look at them as fresh protein on the hoof.  Why kill one until you are ready to eat?  This avoids refrigeration costs.  I am a bow hunter, so you won’t hear any guns going off on my farm unless there are thieves about.  I can shoot a turkey on the fly with a bow and arrow.  Food is every where, if you know where to look.  My wife is an expert at preparing game and gardening.   Don’t delay.  Buy extra can goods now at reasonable prices.  Buy things that can be stored without refrigeration. Buy medical supplies.  Buy batteries. Buy water. Don’t tell everybody what you are doing.

During the Great Depression, alcohol served as a reliable source of money.  America is full of alcoholics.  I call these folks job security.  Did you know that you could build a still and make alcohol for gasohol and never pay any tax on it as long as it is used on your property?  Thanks to Jimmy Carter, the ATF will even come out and inspect your still, and you can deduct all the costs of building it.  I have an entire building that houses a 50 gallon copper still that can produce 95 per cent alcohol. I use propane to cook the strained mash. For several years I used this alcohol in older gasoline tractors on my farm.  I haven’t fired it up in a number of years, but the fact remains that I have the ability to plant several types of crops, irrigate them in any climate, grind them up in my own water wheel grist mill, and use the meal to make mash.  My product is free of heavy metals and other toxins that stomp brain cells, because I soldered the copper parts together using silver solder.  If you like I can put a few drops of peach, strawberry, raspberry, or apple extract in your jug. Prepare to dilute this brandy several times.  Taken full-strength, one gulp would knock you on your butt.  I gave up drinking some years ago, but I believe this is a great barter item for hard times. It stores well. Besides, I’ll need some alcohol to sterilize stuff.

Some of you are going to have to rethink your ideas about firearms. Personally, I don’t like guns.  I own perhaps fifty, but I rarely shoot any of them.  I’m more of a collector.  Guns make it too easy to kill. Only one of my guns is registered or traceable to me.  It’s a bull-barreled Savage .308 Marine sniper rifle with a silencer, a bipod, and a third generation night scope.  In short, I could hit a volleyball at 1000 yards in the dark.  I had to get three ATF permits to buy the parts for this gun. I keep all my guns, except a couple of pistols, locked up and out of sight, not in my house, well-greased, with enough boxes of ammo to hold my ground.  I don’t mind telling you this because you couldn’t find them if you had a lifetime to look.  Yes, I’m one of those peckerheads who lives in the country and owns too many guns. Lenin said, “One man with a gun can control one hundred without one.” I love my country.  I hate my government. I’m a patriot.

My advice is that you take a class for a “permit to carry” and own at least one handgun.  My favorite is a Glock .45 cal.  I believe that by 2013 I will need to carry that gun everywhere I go.  If you come to my house asking for help, I will be glad to do what I can for you, most likely for nothing.  But if you come to steal or harm my family, I will shoot you stone dead. And nobody will find your body.  Welcome to the New World.  Maybe you should call first.

Two years ago I was faced with a practice run.  A burglar broke into my basement in the middle of the night. I’m a light sleeper and my Glock is close to my bed.  I watched him from the top of the stairs in the moonlight, piling up things in the floor that he intended to leave with.  I waited until I had a clear shot, and then turned on the dancing red laser sight on my Glock.  He looked down as I walked the laser dot from his groin to the center of his chest.  I didn’t want to kill this person.  I never killed anybody as a physician and I don’t look forward to taking any human lives with a gun.  He stood still for about three seconds, looking down at the dancing red dot, and then he nearly tore the basement door off its hinges getting away.  I never said a word.  I’m sure he won’t be back.  If he had reached for a gun, or started toward me, I wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot him. He would have disappeared from the face of the earth.

I’m glad this happened. It was a good rehearsal. My hands were not shaking until he was gone. I’ve had a few thousand tense nights before in emergency departments. I was able to think clearly and do the right thing.  I was prepared.  Are you?  By the way, if you can’t see protecting yourself or family with a gun, the next best thing is a couple of well-fed dogs.  At the time of this incident I was mourning the death of my beloved dog Abby, who was killed by a coyote. Now I have a dog that can hear and smell you half a mile away.  On my command, he takes no prisoners. He knows all of my friends, including the UPS man.  If he doesn’t know you, stay in your car.  This professional security guard has never asked me for pension benefits or overtime pay.

Some of my preparedness may cause you to laugh and scoff. Good luck to you. What have I lost if I’m wrong about the future of paper money in America? Now consider what you could lose if you sit on your butt and do nothing. Which do you think is going to be more valuable in five years–my coins or your dollar bills? Don’t allow the federal government to take your lifetime of savings.  Don’t standby while your dollars become worthless.  Don’t make yourself ineligible for Medicare or Social Security.  Don’t bother with the stock market. It’s rigged. If you must invest, do it in commodities like oil, copper, zinc, platinum, aluminum, and uranium, using ETFs.  When the stock market crashes, and inflation kicks in, these will do well.  I recommend finding a pawn shop that will sell you gold and silver coins, rather than investing in gold ETFs or gold stocks in a retirement account.  Governments have a way of labeling gold and silver investors as speculators.  In the past they have levied a 90 per cent “windfall” tax on gold and silver, and sometimes confiscated both.

I fully realize that many of my own friends will not heed my advice.  I have built a large enough compound, a fortress in the country, to accommodate as many of them as I can. If you are a friend of mine, you are always welcome here.  Those of you, like me, who have more than you need and live in a safe place, should begin to think about all the desperate people around you and relatives who will need your help.

I have had the pleasure of working with hundreds of incredible nurses during my career.  After working with any one of them regularly for six months, she knew what I needed without my asking for it or writing an order.  Most ED nurses could do just about everything that I could do. They have honed their skills at triaging patients and recognizing who is really sick and what is really broken.  If you know an emergency department nurse, make friends. They are the best all-around nurses in the world.

One last thing.  Facebook and twitter and email will make you a target.  Prepare to disappear online and keep a low profile once lawlessness and panic set in.  I hope that I have given you something to think about.  Go back and re-read the last four or five posts on my blog if you still have doubts about preparation. Feel free to leave a comment or buy one of my books. http://www.thefirsttosayno.com

Charles C. Anderson M.D. FACP, FACEP

THE END GAME FOR AMERICA

By now, you should be getting angry at your government, as well as a little annoyed with me, since I have been pointing out everything that is wrong with our country without offering any solutions. This will be the last “historical” post.  Normally I post on Sundays, but I felt that this information was too important to withhold.  After reading you should have enough information to make reasonable assessments of where America is and where we are going.  If you promise to read this information carefully, then I promise to switch gears and make some suggestions regarding what you can do for yourself to prepare for the hard times ahead.  If you do not understand the history of our dollar, you can’t appreciate where we are now, and you will be less likely to do anything to prepare yourself. The government can always keep printing money, can’t they?  So far, so good.

America was the only industrial power not devastated by WWII. In July 1944 delegates from 44 nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire and agreed to “peg” their currencies to the U.S. dollar, the only currency strong enough to qualify for international currency transactions. Member nations were required to establish a parity of their own national currency in terms of the dollar (pegging).  The dollar was attractive to the winners in the war because each dollar was based on 1/35th of an ounce of gold.  This gold was supposed to be in the U.S. Treasury.  The value of gold was fixed by law at 35 dollars an ounce.  The U.S. agreed to convert any dollars into gold at that price.  Unlike gold, dollars earned interest and could be transported anywhere.  Thus the world gradually adopted the dollar to trade international commodities like oil, wheat, soybeans, and corn.

Fast forward to the Nixon administration.  Tricky Dick and the administrations preceding him printed far more money than could be backed up by our gold. The Vietnam War had cost $500 billion and President Johnson had cranked up the social programs of the Great Society.  When France asked to see real gold instead of the dollar bills, Nixon knew that he could not let the world see how little gold we had.  So in 1971 the Bretton Woods agreement fell apart as Nixon abandoned the gold standard and declared that the U.S. dollar was now a fully floating fiat currency.  Now here comes the interesting part.

Recognizing that the U.S. and the rest of the world were going to need increasing amounts of oil, and that Saudi Arabia wanted to sell its oil to the U.S., which was the world’s largest consumer of oil and had the largest economy by far, Nixon made a historic agreement whereby Saudi oil must be purchased by all countries in U.S. dollars.  In exchange for this, the U.S. agreed to protect the Saudi royal family (not the people of Saudi Arabia) from its neighbors, including Israel.  By 1974, all oil-producing countries had agreed to this protection arrangement and most commodities in the world were traded in dollars.

The petrodollar deal has been a windfall of unimaginable wealth for the U.S.  As every nation grew and needed more oil and commodities, it first had to sell something to get dollars, or borrow dollars from the International Monetary Fund. Every nation had to keep a supply of dollars and U.S. Treasuries to trade with other countries.  Currently there are $5.5 trillion dollars of U.S. Treasury bonds in the banks of other countries. Americans hold an even larger amount of Treasuries. These must be rolled over when they mature and new Treasuries provided at current rates.

As the world grew, the U.S. enjoyed a massive pool to dilute fiat dollars created far out of proportion to world productivity or tax revenue.  Think Santa Claus money. Dollars began to pile up around the world as America ran a larger and larger trade deficit. China owns 26 per cent of our debt, and continues to lend those dollars back to us to buy cheap Chinese goods. It is estimated that the extra dollars we print allow us to skim a trillion dollars off of other countries each year by making them pay for the depreciation of our dollar.  We have been able to buy commodities, grow our military, and create an entire society based on our unique ability to print dollars and spread them all over the world while artificially holding interest rates down. The dollar has been the “reserve currency” of the world since the 1970s.

Being the reserve currency of the world is a nice gig if you can get it, and keep it.  However, other nations have grown tired of this racket.  As the value of the dollar decreased due to all of the extra dollars we print, the cost of oil and commodities has been pushed up around the world.  This is a classic case of too many dollars chasing too few commodities.  The world looks at fat, lazy Americans creating a society built on printed and borrowed money, while many countries work harder each year to maintain the American lifestyle. How would you like to live in a country that could not produce enough food and you had to buy corn, wheat, and soybeans at inflated prices to support the American dream?  Forty per cent of the American corn crop goes to gasohol, a Santa Claus handout to mid-west farmers, while other countries have starving people.  We are using food that the world needs to fuel our vehicles.  Every other country knows that producing alcohol from corn consumes more energy than energy created, but we keep forcing this failed green energy on Americans for political and ideological reasons.

The world has rotated many times since America began to print endless amounts of money for other countries to use in international trade and for our own social programs.  New centers of wealth and natural resources have emerged on the world stage, like the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China).  Their economies are growing as ours is stagnant.  China now buys more oil from Saudi Arabia than the U.S. does.  Despite the current problems with the euro, China continues to trade many things in euros.  It has also started an aggressive program of buying up oil fields and oil companies from around the world. Very clever.  They are not buying oil with dollars.  They are buying oil fields and oil companies with Yuan.  Several oil-producing countries have almost completely broken away from the dollar scam.  Think Russia, Iraq, Libya, Venezuela and Iran.

Funny how we seem to get into military conflicts with countries that try to quit our protection racket.  Have you ever considered that the last Iraq war to unseat Saddam Hussein wasn’t just about WMDs?  Saddam was trading Iraqi oil in euros and other currencies. He was annoying for other reasons, but nobody in the mainstream media has ever made the connection with our militarism in the Middle East and our need to keep the petrodollar scam going. Could be a coincidence, you think?  The first thing the U.S. demanded after the invasion of Iraq was a return to the oil for dollars program. Venezuela hates us, but we currently have the only refineries that can process their heavy crude. The Chinese have promised to fix that.

The U.S. has crushed weaker countries that tried to abandon the dollar, but it cannot control larger countries that do not conveniently have terrorists or dictators we don’t like. Politics in the Middle East has changed.  Militant Islam understands the dollar scam well.  America’s support for Israel has undermined its relationship with many oil-producing countries. Iran now trades its oil in any currency except dollars, and even accepts commodities from other countries as payment, despite the U.N. sanctions against this. Interesting how you only hear about their possible nuclear weapons development. I’m not saying that Iran doesn’t represent a threat.  I’m just asking if the threat isn’t like the WMDs in Iraq. Yea, it’s probably a coincidence that they sell their oil for currencies other than the dollar.

Other countries are thirsty to deal in currencies that are not in the toilet. Officials from China, India, Brazil, Russia, and South Africa recently met in China to discuss expanding the use of their own currencies in foreign trade.

Last year Standard & Poor’s declared that U.S. Treasury debt no longer deserved to be considered among the safest investments in the world.  The U.S. has had AAA rating for 70 years, but no more.

Recently, while hardly anyone in the U.S. press said a word, China signed an agreement with the United Arab Emirates to trade oil for Yuan. This is the first of the old OPEC oil-producing countries to openly break with the dollar.

It is Saudi Arabia that is in the cat-bird seat. And it appears that they just signaled their decision.  They no longer need U.S. protection.  The U.S. is no longer their biggest trading partner.  They have a new best buddy, who promises not to rip them off.  Again, almost unmentioned in American newspapers, Saudi Arabia and China have just teamed up to build one of the largest refineries on earth, a behemoth at the Saudi Arabian Red Sea port of Yanbu.  The project will be completed by 2014 and costs $8.5 billion. The U.S. does not have any refineries in Saudi Arabia.

Please note that the Red Sea location avoids the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz. Also note the shrewdness of the Chinese.  Refining the oil in Saudi Arabia means that their tankers will be carrying a much more valuable cargo back to China. This means lower costs.  China has already removed the dollar from their trade with Russia. China is negotiating with Brazil for a similar deal right now. Singapore wants to trade commodities in Yuan instead of dollars.

Do you see an unstoppable trend here?   Almost every nation on earth would be better off using another currency besides the dollar for trade, thanks to Uncle Samdusky and his Santa Claus money and American greed. The only shoe left to drop is Saudi Arabia openly announcing that it will sell its oil in a basket of currencies. I am arguing that they have already done this with the joint-venture with the Chinese.  The Chinese are buying gold like never before, probably as a hedge on the collapse of the dollar.  If little UAE (United Arab Emirates) can look the U.S. in the eye and tell us to take our dollars and shove them, can the rest of the oil-producing countries be far behind?  Don’t listen to what Saudi Arabia is saying.  Look at what they are doing.

When Mr. Obama refused to approve the XL pipeline from Canada through the Great Plains, he spit in the eye of one of our closest allies and neighbors. The Canadians naturally want to develop their resources and get them to markets.  They wanted to ship their oil to us, Mr. Obama said no.  A few days ago the Chinese oil giant CNOOC made a $15.1 billion bid for a Canadian oil-sands firm called Nexen, Inc.  The Chinese would be glad to help with a pipeline that does not pass through the United States.  Welcome to North America, China. And goodbye to all of the jobs that the XL pipeline would have created in the U.S.  The Canadian government must approve this deal, but Mr. Obama’s actions are driving them to make the Chinese the developer and recipient of their enormous resources.

In the twinkling of an eye, any day or any week or any month from now, the U.S. economy could be crushed by a simple agreement among a very few  countries on whose faces we have tread for so long.  They only need to agree not to extend us any more credit, to stop buying out debt to use in international trade, to trade in their own currencies.  It is clearly in their best interests to do this if China can guarantee their safety.

Once our petrodollar scam on the world is over, there is little reason for other countries to use the dollar for international trade unless they are buying something from the United States.  We have given the world every possible reason to give the dollar a pink slip, and Obama’s stated policy of continuing trillion dollar deficits makes it plain to the world that we cannot end our addiction to Santa Claus money on our own.  In the past 12 months alone, the value of the dollar has decreased 7.4 per cent.

I think this could be the end game for America, the event that acts as a pin to a huge balloon.  The rest of these key oil-producing countries may thumb their nose at us one at a time or all in one day.  It doesn’t matter in the long run.  The important thing is for you to see this trend and to fully understand what it means.  The benefits to the world of using a basket of currencies instead of America’s dollar for trade are too great to ignore, especially when much of the world is in financial distress.  The fall of the euro and the crumbling of the eurozone economies has given the dollar a short reprieve.  Soon, life in America as you know it will be changed forever.  The U.S. will no longer be able to print unlimited amounts of money and foist it on the world for international trade while holding interest rates down.  The U.S. will have trouble borrowing. Unlike Greece, no one is able to bail us out even if more debt were the answer.

Twelve other developed nations have stronger currencies than the United States, and these countries are not full of people addicted to Uncle Samdusky’s Santa Claus money.  Why should foreign countries hold large amounts of U.S. Treasury bonds once they can buy oil and commodities cheaper with their own currency, or with gold?  Wouldn’t they flood the world with dollars and U.S. Treasuries, driving their value even further down the septic system?  The cost of commodities for almost every nation in the world would go down, except in the United States. I have seen estimates that the dollar could be devalued by 50 per cent almost overnight if we were not the reserve currency of the world.

Mr. Obama’s energy secretary said that he had to figure out a way to get gasoline to $8 a gallon.  By Golly, I think he’s done it. Our ideological pursuit of magic green energy and our failure to develop our own oil and NG reserves to achieve energy independence have got to be two of the stupidest national security decisions of all time.

This is what happens when a country is run by partisan ideology,  Santa Claus money, and an amateur president.  A free market best determines where capital should go.  In a free market, failures are quickly dealt with, without bailouts. Investors lose money, but they become better investors. When government has unlimited amounts of Santa Claus money to throw at their ideology, and can manipulate the tax code to reward and punish, it is the government running the economy, rather than the free market. I could provide you with a list of Mr. Obama’s failed ideological projects, but do not have room here.

None of Mr. Obama’s ineptitude could have been possible without the consent of the ideologically bankrupt American media, which sold us all out.  Had the American media vetted Mr. Obama properly, this man with an unknown past, hidden financial donors, a cozy relationship with Marxist radicals, no foreign policy experience, no business experience, no accomplishments as a Senator, an autobiography full of lies, and hidden academic records would never have gotten the Democratic nomination.

Do you understand why a retired emergency physician is warning you about impending disasters?  The mainstream media are so heavily invested in partisan politics that they are willing to turn a blind eye to the most inept president in the history of this country.  I don’t claim to be an economist. I pay little attention to what our government says or the mainstream media report.  I know that all of the government’s economic numbers are lies. I did my homework.  I look at what other countries are doing, and what Mr. Obama is doing, and what Congress is not doing, and try to draw reasonable conclusions.  Isn’t this the job of a free press?

On July 12, 2012 Mr. Obama illegally ended welfare reform, a reform that had reduced the welfare rolls by almost half.  Welfare recipients are now relieved of any responsibility to work, or look for work, or train for a job.  You can get away with stuff like this when the press is your lap dog and your attorney general is a crook himself. You can say one thing for Mr. Obama.  He’s looking ahead, for himself. Pack those food stamp rolls.  Pack those welfare roles.  Pack those union votes. Pack those illegal immigrants. This is called “spreading the wealth” by increasing the size of government. I think I know where this road leads.

WESTERN CIVILIZATION IS GOING DOWN THE TUBES.  WE HAVE TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICITS NOW AND PROJECTED FOR YEARS.  OUR GREENBACK IS BEING ABANDONED AS THE RESERVE CURRENCY OF THE WORLD.  WE ARE HOPLESSLY IN DEBT.  A WORLDWIDE FINANCIAL CRISIS IS SHAPING UP——- AND THE MEDIA IS CONCENTRATING ON GAY MARRIAGE, CHICKEN SANDWICHES, AND MR. ROMNEY’S TAX RETURNS. 

Neither candidate has even brought up the tremendous sacrifices that will have to be made soon.  For the mainstream media to allow both candidates to act as if life will go on in the U.S. as it has in the last half century is treason, in my view. Not one single time has the mainstream media asked either candidate to specify exactly how they would dramatically cut big government. This is now the most important issue of our lives and our nation’s life.

Think about this.  If you had a tremendous investment in Saudi Arabia, and you had the largest standing army in the world, how long would it be before you needed a military base in Saudi Arabia to protect your interests and provide security for your new, best buddy?  China represents the dynamic, industrious, powerful new world emerging.  There is no reason for Saudi Arabia to place all their bets on the corrupt, bankrupt, narcissistic world-bully of the past.

Think about this.  The U.S. needs a war with Iran to halt the abandonment of the dollar and reassert itself as the dominant world power, to which oil producing countries need to pay protection money.  And, of course, restore Iran to the dollars for oil scam.  There is no doubt that we have the military capability. The president of Iran has made the same mistake as Saddam Hussein. Expect to hear more about the nuclear threat of Iran.  Don’t be surprised if war breaks out.  Protection money works two ways.  You pay and we protect you.  You don’t pay, we invade you for WMDs unless you have big friends in China or Russia.

In subsequent posts, I would like to discuss what measures our bankrupt country is likely to take when the music stops, following the examples of what other failed democracies have historically done.  No more Santa Claus.  The U.S. now has approximately $16 trillion of debt and nearly $80 trillion in unfunded liabilities, with few friends in the world.  If you are not scared now, you need to go back and re-read this post.  Then rethink the policies of Mr. Obama and Mr. Bernanke.  Mr. Obama and Mr. Bernanke appear to view America’s problem as a lack of liquidity, rather than a government-induced debt problem. If they had one complete brain together, they would already be cutting government spending and regulations in draconian fashion.  Are you ready for another round of QE (quantitative easing) at the expense of the rest of the world? What else can the U.S. do to piss off the Saudis and the Chinese and the Canadians, while hastening our own collapse?

If you are beginning to feel uncomfortable with Uncle Samdusky’s hand on your thigh and in your pockets, you are welcome to share this post with your friends.  Think this through for yourself and your family.  If I’m wrong, and I truly hope that I am, you don’t need to change a thing about the way you live or the way you think about our government.  Uncle Samdusky’s got your back.  Personally, I don’t believe that we will need to worry much about the conservative vs. liberal issues of the past.  Most of these issues should never have been the business of the federal government to start with.  Our issues will be about massive unemployment and what to do when government’s checks stop coming. Or when they arrive, they aren’t worth anything.  This is true for state and local governments, who can’t delay the process of going bankrupt by printing dollars.  The Federal government can’t bail them out anymore.

The U.S. is going to survive, but it’s going to get ugly.  Count on a lot more violence in our daily lives as Santa Claus money dries up.  I’m not saying that our financial collapse could start at any time.  I’m saying it has obviously already started. Just look for the signs of insolvency in your local and state governments first.  Watch for cutbacks in everything, layoffs, broken promises, a breakdown in infrastructure, less firemen, less teachers, less policemen, massive loss of government pensions and benefits, and higher taxes on everything. San Bernardino is the third city in California to file for bankruptcy this summer, after Stockton and Mammoth Lakes.  The city council of San Bernardino suspended debt payments, stopped paying into the retiree health fund, and imposed a hiring freeze. Coming to a city near you…and a state…and a country.

Can you see any possible way the United States can change its fate with the president we have and the aristocratic thieves in Congress who created this gargantuan mess over many decades?  If you can see where my thinking is flawed, then speak up.  It’s okay to disagree.  I don’t claim to be infallible. I’m searching for some other possible end game myself. It’s not reassuring that Mr. Romney reportedly has over $100 million in foreign banks and investments, where hopefully his own government can’t confiscate the money or inflate it away.  Good for him.  He’s thinking ahead, for himself.

As an emergency physician I drove to work for almost four decades thinking about how I would be tested on my shift.  In any busy emergency department you are always tested because you have no idea what kinds of nightmares or how many nightmares you will be asked to manage at the same time.  Frankly, I was almost never tested the way that I feared the most on any given night.  Nobody can really foretell the future.  Nevertheless, sooner or later almost every nightmare I ever had came true.  Because of my fears, I prepared myself to deal with those nightmares.  I’m scared for my country. We are so unprepared for this.

Charles C. Anderson M.D. FACP, FACEP

http://www.amazon.com/author/thrillerguy