CHARLES ORTEL: America nears financial suicide as voters head to the polls

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

In the United States, we are free to make choices — good ones and bad ones. At this moment, voters stand perilously close to making collective decisions that could quench the American dream.

Will the legislative branch finally attain power required to bring President Obama’s lawless administration to heel? Or, is the American republic set to die an undignified death, drowning in debt, deficits, and dangers?

These are the stakes this coming Tuesday — you have choices to make and consequences to bear. Will you do the right thing and send an unmistakable message to the Obama administration and those who still defend its tragic record of failures?

The reality that bites all

This great country has never been more exposed, financially and strategically — even in November 1980, we had far less to lose in a second Jimmy Carter term than we may suffer swiftly should Barack Obama be given a “blank check” to do whatever he wants, no matter what, during the final years of his historic presidency.

In November 2014, those who open their eyes understand that we follow along a modern trail of tears, where only politically connected cronies can argue they are better off.

The most recent data available shows that, in 2013, the bottom 80 percent of American households tapped into meager savings or somehow borrowed to cover the rising gap between dwindling after tax incomes and soaring annual costs. Meanwhile, the top 20 percent suffered double-digit percentage decreases in pre-tax household income and gigantic tax increases.

These dismal results occurred even as central banks, led by our Federal Reserve System, kept interest rates below consumer price inflation, while America and other major economic powers borrowed vast sums that children and grandchildren will struggle mightily to service and repay.

Those who believe economic things are actually fine errantly remain convinced that our central bank can forever suppress benchmark interest rates, while households, businesses, financial institutions and governments roll over and increase the level of their aggregate borrowings.

This belief, spawned with reference to history from 1945 forward, “succeeded” in turning a nation that justifiably was the envy of the world into a subprime credit risk whose financial day of reckoning now approaches at warp speed.

If you have work inside the private sector today, you understand daunting economic truths that politicians in both established parties fail to grasp — all jobs inside America are at risk, whether to much less expensive foreign labor, to powerful machines that get cheaper each day, or to both.

Republican Mitt Romney is decidedly wrong thinking that restoring an investor-friendly climate inside America will meaningfully arrest downward pressures on American incomes in the private sector. He should know better having decades of meaningful experience.

Rather than tinkering with tax rates and rolling back some regulations, nothing less than disrupting and resizing government is required, on a scale that certainly will send shockwaves through elites in the public sector who seem sure they can forever suspend the laws of supply and demand.

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton is even more wrong in her unguarded pandering to progressives stating flatly that government creates jobs, not entrepreneurs. But who expects otherwise from her? She has never operated in the market economy, met payroll, manufactured a good, or provided a valuable service.

The choice is yours and ours

What began as a dream, full of hope, is an unrelenting nightmare — the most powerful government on earth is “led” arrogantly by a team of incompetents just as America must face rising Russia and a raft of threats.

The election this week should produce a tidal wave of support for changing course and installing more elected leaders in our House of Representatives and Senate who will stop and reverse the “War on Capitalism.”

You have the power to end the unprecedented assault on our constitutionally protected freedoms that Barack Obama and his unvetted, irresponsible, and economically illiterate supporters have followed since Jan. 20, 2009.

Make sure your vote counts, before it is too late.

• Charles Ortel serves as managing director of Newport Value Partners (NewportValue.com), which provides economic research to executives and to investment firms.