It Could Happen Here...

In 1989, my company was forced into Chapter 11. Until that fateful day, I believed that I could overcome all the overwhelming forces surrounding me. In the years preceding the bankruptcy, I engaged in all the delusional behaviors I now see being acted out on a larger stage. Probably the most seductive and insane idea was that more debt could erase current debt.

America is a great country with an amazing heritage, but lately, it seems, our business and political leaders have fallen into the same sort of strange pathologies that I experienced in my own moment of crisis. For it now appears that our political and financial elite, who profited disproportionately during the good times, have foolishly concluded that burdensome debt will save the country from…burdensome debt.

I look on in wonder as America’s best and brightest explain to a nervous nation that two plus two does, in fact, equal five. Unfortunately, a time is coming, and may have already come, when it will be clear that their new math is fatally flawed. And what then? Will the fate of King David’s shining city on a hill be America’s fate as well?

“How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave.” (Lamentations 1:1)