U.S. to Return to Glorious Unsustainability

Today's headlines bombard the reader with grim news of record-breaking deficits, shutdowns, layoffs. Once staid household names teeter on bankruptcy. The phrase "worst since the Depression" has been hammered home more relentlessly than the times tables in a Japanese prep school. It's enough to make one downright worried about the future. How long before the whole place resembles some hell-scape reminiscent of some Mad Max era bartertown you begin to wonder. Take it from me, don't.

The Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, and Congress on behalf of the wishes of the President, have been working feverishly to spur Americans back into familiar patterns of wastefulness and short-sighted goals. With so many good intentions hard at work, is there any chance we can fail to regain our superior position in every measure?

Soon our overseers will begin shoveling, nay bulldozing stimulus funds into the economy like heaping buckets of coal into the red-hot gaping maw of Davey Jone's locomotive, in hopes that American consumers can rebuild our trade deficit to a scale only dreamt of by lesser nations. Such a monumental goal will require nothing less than the determined and combined spending power of millions of image-conscious, luxury-driven citizens, fearful of obsolete personal electronics technologies or being embarrassingly trapped in vehicles more than four years of age. We shouldn't be aiming to restore mere confidence, but hubris. I believe we are up to this task.

Before this crisis, we were living beyond our means goes the chestnut: saving too little, borrowing from foreign entities to purchase foreign goods, and funneling hundreds of billions of dollars annually to hostile petro-regimes. It is my sincere belief that such God-given excesses will once again define the American way of life. Skeptics worry that such living robs of our children. My answer is simple: won't our children have children? Who are these imagined whelps too proud to carry on such a glorious tradition? Don't punish the brazen antics of Madoff, embrace them.

This same way of life will benefit workers worldwide, as they harvest, mine, sew, and toil to feed our endlessly ravenous sense of want. Such gluttonous demand for all the world's idle resources will undoubtedly be seen as a selfless act of brotherhood, with the unwashed populaces of nations from Guatemala to Vietnam grateful to play their part as the cogs in our vast machinery of More.

With the introduction of tough new regulations on Wall Street, it will be at least several months before loopholes are found and exploited for the personal gain of a few, allowing more and more Americans to again imagine themselves in a prosperous retirement one day. By propping up real estate prices, it is hoped the speculative building booms that swept across millions of acres of unimproved wilderness like locusts in 7 series sedans can return large-scale developers to their rightful place, once more immune to the pesky red tape of zoning boards and environmental worry warts.

Americans should be encouraged to double or triple their travel, to better take advantage of the higher fuel efficiencies of today's modern cars and lower fuel prices. It's a beautiful country out there, you shouldn't restrict yourself to the shortest route home. Why not circle the block a few times to see how the neighborhood's doing? No antidepressant can hold a candle to doing donuts in an empty parking lot. Or why wait for it to be empty, if you're feeling bold? As oil prices hold to their southward trajectory, the length of NASCAR races might be increased to more than eight hours. Even more exciting, a new racing league altogether could be born. Maybe 747's circling hot-air balloons filled with topless cheerleaders, or tractor trailers burning raw coal speeding across an arena of artificial ice. I get goose bumps just imagining the wrecks. This is the land of innovation.

The lower ancillary costs of energy could have other positive developments here at home. People should take advantage of cheaper food prices to stock up on extra calories, adding to their layer of insulating winter fat. If it works for the bears, it can damn sure work for any red-blooded patriot. Leading physicians suggest the associated onset of obesity-related ailments could then provide desperately needed skiing vacations for leading physicians. Not to mention the bump provided for pharmaceutical companies in search of elusive quarterly dividends.

Some parties just don't want to end. And why should they? The world miraculously keeps buying our T-bills, kindly keeping history's grandest pyramid scheme afloat. In no time we will rise like an amnesiatic phoenix, order dessert, and try to figure out what the next hot market will be in. It will take innovation and wisdom to return us to the well-worn, candy-wrapper strewn paths of old. But with some sacrifice, we can finally get back to a lifestyle requiring no sacrifice.