America the Broke
Gerald J. Swanson
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Buy *America the Broke: How the Reckless Spending of The White House and Congress are Bankrupting Our Country and Destroying Our Children's Future* online

America the Broke: How the Reckless Spending of The White House and Congress are Bankrupting Our Country and Destroying Our Children's Future
Gerald J. Swanson
Currency
Hardcover
224 pages
August 2004
rated 5 of 5 possible stars

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No book about potential terrorism is as scary as America The Broke, a truly alarming and utterly frightening examination of how our government leaders, Republicans and Democrats alike, are driving the nation to total bankruptcy, and taking us along with them.

The author of Bankruptcy 1995, Gerald J. Swanson, who is the Thomas R. Brown Chair in Economic Education at the University of Tuscon, lays it on the line for the reader. Basically, the book shows evidence of just how close we are of going into a complete economic freefall that would lead to disaster for every American who is not a multi-millionnaire, and a whole lot of people in other countries, too. Swanson shows how each and every presidential administration, from Lyndon Johnson to Bush, Jr., has helped add to the massive deficits that are very soon going to bankrupt Social Security, Medicare and plummet dollar and real estate values.

Focusing on what each president after JFK has done, positive and negative, to impact the economy, Swanson takes us on a virtual tour of economic policies and decisions that have done grave damage to social programs and now threaten to undermine the world economy. Early in the book, we get an idea of just how a complete economic collapse would look to the average family as the author takes us through a few days in the life of a couple who are experiencing the devastation in real time, watching their jobs vanish, the dollar plummet, their pensions whither away and their hopes for retirement go up in a puff of smoke.

The only thing worse than what Swanson predicts for seniors and those close to retirement age is what our children may face if this economic disaster scenario is not stalled, stopped and reversed anytime soon. He directly blames the “neoconservatives", led by G.W. Bush and his administration, who are determined, in their own words, to starve government so that social programs would have to be eliminated, even as military spending skyrockets. The end result they hope for – no more Social Security, Medicare, public schools, and government-run facilities like parks, etc., all of which these neoconservatives would rather see privatized.

Swanson also details how reckless spending on behalf of this current administration could create global disaster if the dollar value plummets and foreign countries that literally carry the U.S. financially on their backs decide to call in their loans or end their purchasing of our exports. This, the author said, is already starting to occur, and the result could be nothing short of a complete shut-down of our country.

This book terrified me more than anything I have read about Al-Qaeda or terrorists, for the real terrorism is occurring where it hurts Americans most - in our pocketbooks and in our hopes and dreams for our own retirement and the future of our children, and it is our own uncaring government doing the terrorizing. We can go bankrupt, America, any day, if the deficits continue and our collective debt continues to skyrocket. If this alone does not scare you, read the book and you will surely see for yourself how life as we know it will drastically, and negatively, change if we don’t demand our leaders rein in the spending and stop wasting our money.

A truly critical book for anyone who doesn’t believe Dick Cheney when he says over and over again, “Deficits don’t matter.” This is proof that they do, to those of us who are not wealthy beyond measure.


© 2004 by Marie D. Jones

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