it’s been this way for decades and I’m still not seeing the crash happen. Maybe the Modern Monetary Theory people are right. Maybe people do believe those pieces of paper and electronic dots and dashes are real; I mean really real. For years now, I’ve felt like one of those sandwich board men that walked the streets years ago proclaiming “the end is nigh.” Your writers think people are losing faith and trust. I don’t see it in anything I read (e.g. The Economist ) or anyone I speak to.
to be. As I remember, your poems were damn good and my poems... have disappeared forever, I hope. And now I should probably explain the above exchange to the uninitiated Inbox reader. Joe and I were grad students together at something called The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University a couple of eons ago. We were “studying” to be poets. (See Joe’s description of our study habits above.) The first thing they taught
us at The Writing Seminars was: “You’ve got a Frosty the Snowman’s chance in hell of making a living by writing poems – unless your name happens to be Robert Frost.” I’m lying. That’s not what they taught us – but it’s what they should have! I love the magazine and read every article, mainly because I agree with almost everything written there. This latest magazine rightly pointed out that all this new government stimulus will one day destroy the dollar (and euro, pound, yen, et al.) as has every article I’ve read on the subject since the 1980s. And that’s my feedback. Like your contributors, I believe the Western economies have gone seriously off the rails, but
Instead, it’s me who is losing faith (I lost trust in our leaders years ago). – Paul J. P.J. O’Rourke comment: Paul, I’m glad someone agrees with almost everything written in American Consequences . We the writers and editors are in no such perfect concord. However, we all do agree that it is a complete mystery to us why the fiat money balloon hasn’t gone “pop!” like a swollen pink wad of Bazooka gum. Speaking of childish things, the longevity of imaginary money reminds me of watching the Disney animated movie Peter Pan when I was seven. There’s a scene where Tinker Bell is near death and all the kids in the theater are told to clap to show that they believe in fairies because believing in fairies is what will keep Tinker Bell alive. I sat on
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American Consequences
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