Opinion: Is It Twilight in America?

As President-elect Barack Obama tries to channel Franklin Delano Roosevelt with his recent statements, he should remember that this is not 1933. At that time, America was the world's largest creditor nation. We are now the world's largest debtor. Also at that time, Europe and Asia were both in the process of disintegrating as a result of revolutions, fascism, socialism, and ultimately World War II. This situation left America as the strongest country in the world.

If you look at when the stock market actually ended its bear market that began in 1929, it was actually within a month after Pearl Harbor. Of course the market bottomed back in 1933. But if you look at when the new bull market began, it wasn't until January 1942 and coincided directly with the entry of the U.S. into the wars in Europe and Asia. I do not see any similar circumstances globally that will benefit America, nor do I see the benefit of being the world's largest debtor instead of the world's largest creditor.

Obama today faces a much more serious challenge than FDR ever did. Hopefully, his administration will rise to that challenge, and maybe America will somehow get lucky. I don't know. What I do know is that it is not helping for our nation's political and financial leaders to keep writing checks that they can't cash and lying to the American people about the financial solvency of our nation and how we're going to turn things around.

We aren't going to save ourselves economically with more borrowing and spending and speculating. That much should be clear to everyone at this point. History will judge our current leaders very harshly if it turns out that they presided over the twilight and ultimate decline of our great country because they were either too afraid or too ignorant to face up to our real problems and take action to start correcting them.