1/19/2023

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

Thanks for visiting CA today. The damage at Capitola Wharf & the nearly destroyed Seacliff State Beach Pier are disturbing. Even more so is the tragic story of  5-year-old Kyle Doan swept away from his mother. Your presence will be a comfort.

            Changing topics, do you think Americans have any idea what it means when Janet Yellen writes about the extraordinary measures that the Treasury Dept is taking to keep paying the bills? Most do not understand the implications of the loans they take to pay for college. We need to help them understand that using $ you don’t yet have is risky.

            I am intrigued by the idea that you could order the U.S. Mint to strike a $1 trillion coin & deposit the token into the Federal Reserve, creating new funds to make credit payments. I wish I had time to learn about that idea.

            My solution for the debt problem is much simpler. Cut back on defense spending. It’s our biggest expenditure. You can just cancel the orders on some of ships, planes & missiles. Since we spend 3 times what China spends, certainly that’s the area of the budget where we can tighten our belt. If we can include financial literacy in the high school curriculum, we could educate our citizens on how much $$ they are investing in the military-industrial complex & they can get behind the idea of saving $$ by cutting back on defense spending.

            Speaking of military spending, the Irrawaddy has good news today about how the junta is getting desperate & realizes that most Burmese are unwilling to accept their bribes. “Lt-Gen Soe Htut, a former military intelligence chief, lamented that the military had failed to extract information from the people about the NUG, its parliamentary body the CRPH, and the PDF. ‘We still can’t get the information we need despite offering rewards and promising secrecy. We are not doing enough to gain information in areas that we control,” he said.’

            BYBS,