Fiscal Ruin Of The Western World Beckons -- The Telegraph
For a glimpse of what awaits Britain, Europe, and America as budget deficits spiral to war-time levels, look at what is happening to the Irish welfare state.
Events have already forced Premier Brian Cowen to carry out the harshest assault yet seen on the public services of a modern Western state. He has passed two emergency budgets to stop the deficit soaring to 15pc of GDP. They have not been enough. The expert An Bord Snip report said last week that Dublin must cut deeper, or risk a disastrous debt compound trap.
A further 17,000 state jobs must go (equal to 1.25m in the US), though unemployment is already 12pc and heading for 16pc next year.
Read more ....
My Comment: When the Soviet Union broke up in the early 1990s, the fiscal crisis that followed impacted everything (I know .... I was there). Unemployment, inflation, devaluation of the ruble, poverty .... everything was impacted.
Russia's military establishment experienced the worse. My uncle was one of the Soviet Unions Directors for the development and launch of military satellites. When I visited him in 1992, he brought me to where he worked .... it was an abandoned building stripped of its parts.
When I reflect, I realize that it was not only the breakup of the Soviet Union that destroyed its military .... it was also the fiscal crisis ... an impact that they are only now starting to get out of.
Our fiscal crisis .... if it gets worse and/or reaches the level of what is happening in Ireland .... it will also impact all levels of our society with the military and intelligence communities being one of them.
I shudder when I think of that possibility .... it is not a road that we want to go down.
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