I just found this article on a Market Watch. It's author,Mr. Paul Farrell, who works at Goldman Sachs discusses an often assumed though infrequently mentioned fact that the United States national security is very dependent on sound fiscal policy. The link to the story is below
http://www.marketwatch.com/...
Mr Farrell makes the point that after 9/11 and in particular with the start of the Iraq War that America abandoned the sound financial planning policies that were instituted by Alexander Hamilton over two hundered years in favor of the new system of "faith-based planning"
January 1790, Hamilton, by then the country's Treasury secretary, confronted the American people with a stark fact: the nation had run up a huge debt fighting the Revolutionary War. This debt, he wrote, was the 'price of liberty,' and the new government had to repay it. The future creditworthiness of the United States, and ultimately the security and ability to finance future wars, would depend on how successfully and faithfully this was done."
Hamilton's principles have kept America's credit strong through every war since the Revolution ... until the Iraq War. Since then, "although U.S. leaders have warned that the war against terrorism could last for decades, the country lacks a multidecade financial strategy to address the challenge
Apparently Wall Street has made the connection between sound finances and security.
Recently Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs (International), appeared before the U.S. House Budget Committee to "discuss an issue of great economic, financial and national security importance to our country -- the growing dependence of the United States on foreign capital." Currently we import $1 trillion new debt annually, with no repayment plans. That's a historic break from over two centuries of American policy.
Unfortunately, Washington's radical new faith-based financing is sabotaging national security. America's unsustainable deficits are making us extremely vulnerable to terrorists whose goal is to "attack the United States, perhaps with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons capable of killing enormous numbers of people and seriously disrupting the American economy," targeting a "major port or transportation center."
The source of our current fiscal chaos is clearly highlighted:
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, true to Hamiltonian principles, warned the White House of a coming fiscal crisis. The vice president retorted: "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." (Hormats tells me Reagan never said that.) Soon after, Cheney "fired" O'Neill ... and Hamilton's principles of sound war financing were dead.
What I like about the artcle is that it highlights the fact that Wall Street is getting very insecure about the financial future of America. It could also be why they are beginning throw lots and lots of cash as democratic presidential canidates i.e. they know that the country literally can't afford another Republican president. So much for the party of "fiscal responsibility".