ON TOXIC WASTE & TOXIC RELATIONS

Our national debt is $9.2 trillion. A little over $8.2 trillion of that has been accumulated over the past 28 years. Ronald Reagan began the deficit-spending binge. George W. Bush, interestingly enough (given his background), turned it into an addiction. Now, we’re faced with an economy that appears to be staggering in Bush’s final year, but the Federal Reserve refuses to issue “Last Call” – choosing, instead, to hand out more free drinks to those who irresponsibly bellied up to the Subprime Bar that sold instant highs in concoctions insiders called “toxic waste.”

So, as George Bush prepares to leave office – in the process, sticking us with the tab for his rotgut-filled, deficit spending binge – I’ve been reading a couple of books that help shed light on why things may get worse before they get better.

Want to know about the “toxic waste” produced by the market? Read The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash, by Charles R. Morris. It's perhaps the most accessible reading on what's been happening in markets that I've read.



If you want to understand why we won’t be escaping the political and military entanglements of the Middle East any time soon, read the appropriately titled Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, by former CIA operative, Robert Baer.

Both of these books are highly readable, and non-technical (although the book by Charles R. Morris has to get into some jargon). At the end of the day, what we find is that the Saudis aren’t our worst nightmare … it’s the people in Washington who can’t seem to say no to Wall Street, and are captured by self-serving political and financial interests that keep us tangled up with a very corrupt and morally bankrupt Saudi regime.

- Mark