Word: debt
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...three continents with arms shipments for their would-be revolutions. Osama bin Laden needn't have buttonholed his Saudi relatives for al-Qaeda cash; he could have gone to Skarssen. As the banker tells an African insurgent, "The real value of a conflict, the true value, is the debt it creates." Hearing the outlines of this conspiracy, today's viewer feels almost nostalgic, since it's a nightmare scenario from the first years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Who knew, back in the recent, relatively soothing past, that the bankers could deliver a more lethal blow to the world...
...madness of gambling is based on the belief that either the player will win or somehow come up with the money if he loses. Since gamblers frequenting casinos rarely win, the real issue is their ability to pay off debt. Las Vegas has become like the rest of America. Visitors to the city were just late coming around to the realization that borrowing has gone out of vogue. If most large American banks were based in Las Vegas they would still be buying toxic paper and lending money for leveraged buyouts...
...seem to be starting to rediscover thrift. Debt levels are falling. Consumer spending is down. The savings rate is on the rise. Great, right? Not exactly. The sudden sobering up of the American consumer happens to be the No. 1 force driving the U.S. and global economies downward. We're saving more, yet we're all getting poorer...
...what do we do about this? During the last recession, in 2001, President Bush famously urged the American people to get out and shop--and visit Disney World--to thwart the downturn. We did, and the recession was mild. It was followed, though, by an explosion of debt and imprudence. The savings rate (the percentage of personal income left after spending) fell below 1% for the first time since the early 1930s and stayed there from 2005 through 2007. Millions of Americans spent trillions of dollars on things--houses, mainly--they couldn't afford...
...betting that it won't--and investors from around the world are letting us get away with it by continuing to buy U.S.-government debt. We will, however, eventually have to shape up. Consumers must pay down their credit cards, and the country must pay down at least part of its debt. "Some of the painful adjustments that are taking place are not avoidable," says David Blankenhorn, founder and president of the Institute for American Values, a New York City think tank that for the past few years has made an obsession of thrift. "Wringing debt out of our economy...