Too Much Debt, Not Enough Oil

Looking out, there's NO WAY that most Western governments can ever pay their ongoing obligations or pay off past debt!

But that doesn't mean that governments won't try to maintain their expensive and intrusive invasion of the private sector.

In fact, the odds point to rising taxation and tightening strictures on all aspects of capital formation. The effects will be to make you poorer, either by taking your money or by blocking you from pursuing your dreams.


We're in the midst of a "Greater Depression" and right now we're basking in the calm eye of the hurricane.

Indeed, he shared five ways reduce the inevitable damage:

• Abolish the Federal Reserve and return the US to a gold standard.
• Reduce government spending by about 95% - give or take.
• Withdraw US troops immediately from across the world, and end the ongoing wars in which the US is involved.
• Abolish the income tax.
• Do the "honest, ethical thing" and default on national debt. "After all," says Doug, "We're never going to pay it back. Or if we do, it'll be with dollars that are utterly worthless."

These proposals are mere "pipe dreams," he admits. "The government is doing the exact opposite," says Doug, despite the clear evidence that "the very idea of the nation-state - which has been around only since the 17th century - has failed."


Blowout in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM):

As in no large deep-water drilling vessel would ever sink. "We thought it could never occur," he said. "Never."


I looked back at two other disasters, both in January 1969. I reviewed the terrible fire aboard the nuclear-powered Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise on Jan. 14 of that year.

The flight deck was an inferno, with 500-pound bombs cooking off. Dozens of sailors were killed, with hundreds more injured. The ship suffered severe damage, and for a time, there was a distinct possibility of the vessel - and its eight nuclear reactors - sinking in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Yes, heroic actions by the crew saved the ship. But it was a close call.

Santa Barbara, Calif., oil blowout about two weeks later, on Jan. 29, 1969. No lives were lost, but the environmental impact was severe. Political pressures all but closed off the West Coast of the US to future energy exploration.

Out of these two disasters, the Navy, of course, kept on going with nuclear power, but with much-changed procedures to improve safety and harden against damage. The oil blowout was a key factor in the rise of the modern environmental movement. The offshore industry redoubled its efforts to drill safely, in deeper and deeper waters.


In a sense, looking back over the decades, it was almost easy to imagine big, expensive, well-built drilling rigs would never blow up and sink. It sure fooled the normally flinty insurance industry.

Also, considering the track record of operations, it was easy to believe that deep-water wells would never blow out. It apparently fooled the engineering and regulatory community. Surely, no one was ready to deal with the current Gulf of Mexico blowout.

The hastily imposed GOM drilling "moratorium" is just one more energy problem for the US. It compounds an already dysfunctional national energy policy. It's as if we would shut down the entire airline industry just because one airliner crashed - due almost certainly to pilot error, by the way.

The GOM drilling moratorium is terrible policy for medium- and long- term US energy production. We're already seeing rigs leave the GOM destined for other continents. We won't see those rigs back here for many years, most likely. And GOM oil output is now destined to fall, meaning that US oil imports will rise - if we can find the oil in a competitive world.