Reply #3: Read Kevin Phillips book titled "Wealth and Democracy: A political History of the American Rich".

[AdHocSolver]

Kevin Phillips is a conservative economist who was Richard Nixon's economics advisor. In this book he describes the rise and fall of several empires including Roman, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch. The gist is that the wealthy in all of these empires stole their treasuries, broke their own middle classes through outsourcing (colonization), got involved in wars that bankrupted their governments. Sound familiar? He believes that Bush/Cheney are doing the same thing to the U.S.

Phillips also wrote "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush."

As to draining the Treasury, that is being done in a round about way. It started under Reagan with a plan set up by Alan Greenspan. The plan was to raise Social Security taxes on the middle class to generate huge amounts of cash. Then, the government withdrew the Social Security cash into the general fund replacing the cash with government IOU's. This makes the U.S. deficit look a lot less than it really is since these "IOU's to itself" are not included in the federal deficit figures. This is why they cry that Social Security is running out of money and they have to lower benefits. Then they avoid drawing on the SS fund to pay benefits, and never have to make good on the IOU's by paying the money back. Another way is to drain the Treasury and declare "bankruptcy".

Why destroy the U.S. government? Up until Ronald Reagan, the U.S. for all its faults, after defeating the corporate, fascist states of WWII, led the world in promoting human rights, civil rights, climate protection, and even allowed unions to survive. This angered the power elite and so they are doing their best to destroy the U.S. government. With China and India offering business opportunities for cheap production and growing markets, the wealthy don't really need the U.S. anymore.