The Present Day Economy And How We Got Here

Fifteen years ago* an entrepreneur by the name of Calvin set out on his rise to fame and glory in the capitalistic country once known as the United States of America. Calvin was a Liberal and believed in the American dream of 'get-rich-quick' by using any tactic that benefited his selfish desires...his personal philosophy was: "Whatever it takes; as long as the end justifies the means." Soon after starting his little business, Calvin was making what some would call, "obscene profits". Others noticed and jumped into the game to share in this new found wealth and thus competition was the new buzz word...and this was good, all the consumers benefited by lower prices. This period of prosperity lasted a limited time before the government stepped in to get their fare share of the profits in the form of taxes. Why the government did that is not entirely clear for such revenues where not needed prior to Calvin's entrepreneurial venture but Calvin's Liberal friends in Congress were able to find some pork to spend it on. Now not only was Calvin's obscene profits disappearing but all of his competition was beginning to see hard times. Calvin wanted to maintain his lifestyle of corporate jets and trophy homes so he went back to his Liberal friends in Congress to see if he could get some of his money back. The Congress agreed even though they had already spent Calvin's money on their own pay raises plus the pork they needed to avoid starving. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the next step. It was a group of Liberal brain stormers that came up with the obvious solution. "We own the printing presses." they said. "Will sombody print up some bail-out money for Calvin so we can get re-elected!" And that's the way it is... Oh! And don't go away. The Al Gore version of this story is just below... - Norman E. Hooben

* The above cartoon was published fifteen years ago.

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