The Next Enron? Pentagon Bankruptcy Could Lead to Global Crisis

[Purveyor]

As the Pentagon spends billions on wasteful products, it risks a major financial calamity that threatens global stability.

02:31 09.04.2016(updated 05:15 09.04.2016)

The infamous F-35 fighter program has been a financial boondoggle. Already costing over $1 trillion to develop, the US Air Force is about to spend another $500 million to upgrade hangar facilities at the first air base chosen to host the new aircraft. With one aircraft barely off the ground, the Pentagon is prepared to spend another estimated $55 billion to produce a next-generation bomber.
Vietnam War

It’s unfettered spending like this that leads Col. John A. O’Grady to compare the Pentagon to failed companies like Enron and Lehman Brothers.

“Today, the [US] Defense Department is in alarmingly similar straits – except that the stakes are far higher,” he writes for Defense One.

“If the nation should become unwilling or unable to fund a military that can remain globally present, the effects on global stability would be similar to that of the failure of financial giants and mainstays on the world’s economy: devastating.”

While the Pentagon is focused on expensive projects, it has developed a habit of keeping the maintenance costs of those flashy toys off of its books.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/us/20160409/1037733272/pentagon-bankruptcy.html#ixzz45MOR35AU

[dreamnightwind]

1. The old stability canard

“If the nation should become unwilling or unable to fund a military that can remain globally present, the effects on global stability would be similar to that of the failure of financial giants and mainstays on the world’s economy: devastating.”

I am there already. Why should we pay to be the global cops? Seriously? And at least as large a part of it is about granting corporations unfettered access to cheap unorganized labor pools and the extraction industries access to natural resources all over the planet. More corporate welfare.

The stability argument is basically the U.S. saying it must control geopolitical developments. I don't buy into that in any way, and honestly I can't remember this nation ever really giving its permission for the powers that be to spend our many trillions of tax dollars to do so. Meanwhile we have no financial, food, or shelter security in our own lives, because the Pentagon needs it.

Also, I've always felt that the global cop role means public opinion and the acceptable range of political representation has been heavily controlled in this country, since the powers that be won't trust our citizens make decisions impacting the global security structure, so much of which is currently enforced by the U.S. military and our many covert paramilitary operations. To keep all this rolling uninterrupted, they capture our government at every level, and make sure we get only thing 1 and thing 2 to choose from at election time, both things in general agreement with "the program".

[SCantiGOP]

2. This makes absolutely no sense at all

Seeing as it comes from the fascist Putin I'm not surprised.

[Purveyor]

3. Yeah. I heard he personally wrote every word of this article.

Now go wash your eyes out. You never know what cleaver text he included that may permanently damage you for life...

[SCantiGOP]

4. The story makes no sense

Even if you are not aware of its source.

[Purveyor]

5. Try the embedded link to DefenseOne within the OP. Maybe that will help. Or not.

[bemildred]

6. Well I agree that it is collapse from within we need to focus on.

The USSR fell apart, it was not taken apart, and that was just our luck, not any sort of wisdom. If it was wisdom it would not have been so unexpected. We would have been speculating and watching to see when it finally happened. But at that time we were planning on Cold War forever, no idea it was all going to fall apart. Stunned disbelief is what I remember.

And I well remember the angst and existential regret for the loss of the USSR in the defense business, the search for some new justification for all the waste. Drugs? Not big enough. China is our banker, as Ms Clinton (allegedly) says. But they seem to have been able to get Xenophobia to work pretty well with jihadi terrorists, and the terrorists have been very "helpful" about it too. But the jihadis are easy to control, in the sense of easy to provoke and predictable in response. You know what they will do, blow things up and kill people, just not exactly where.

The problem is the Pentagon has no idea whatsoever as to how to actually get rid of the terrorists. It's like watching an elephant attacked by ants.

The Pentagon doesn't care about anything but money and power. Just like the Congress. They don't even care if the weapons work. It's just more more more money.