An Empire of Debt

I'm reading this terribly entertaining book called An Empire of Debt by a pair of gold bugs named Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin.

It suffers a little from its emphasis on goldGoldGOLD as being the only true money, but is vastly entertaining. It details the rise of the American empire -- which I think we can all agree is now fact -- and how it has been funnelled by the boom in consumer debt. It's an entertaining lament on how there are no more conservatives left in the States, how those who seek to change the world usually screw things up and how hollow it feels to be a libertarian howling in the woods of empire (among other things.)

All quite true, all very entertainingly written.

Money quote (re Vietnam and the domino theory): The idea was not stupid. It was just absurd. Einstein had said that things should be made as simple as possible but no simpler. America's empire builders of the 1960s had gone too far. It was as if they had simplified the Old Testament as: "Jews kick butts [sic] in the Holy Land." They had lost the nuances and details that made it interesting.

Unfortunately they fail to get their own details right in some instances, which immediately calls into question their entire thesis.

1) Madame Nhu was executed along with Ngo Dinh Diem in the back of an APC? I don't think she'd agree, wherever on the Riviera she is.

2) MacArthur didn't "recognize[...] what business America had gotten itself into" (i.e. empire)?! The American Caesar himself didn't realize that America had become an empire? Well, maybe so, though it's hard to imagine he wouldn't have turned it into one had he become President. But it rings hollow, hollow, hollow.

Nonetheless, it's an entertaining read and worth buying just to snicker over the cutting language. And after all, every dollar you put into their pockets, they'll put into the gold market, at whatever price it is...