Introduction
6
Plucking The Entrails
When news arrive, the highest probability is that people grasp only its head and headline. The last of it will remain unknown until its tail is completely grasped and then its entrails plucked after rearing down to its marrow. Jameel Muhammad, Vanessa Fahz Ann and Sayyidatu Abdullah examines the difference between a news item and the issues behind the news, giving examples from current items of the news in our world.
There are more than thin silver lines separating the biggest economy, the largest economy, the strongest economy and the most robust economy. Gulfs of differences separate these phenomenal definitions. While economists will use the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to rate both the largest and biggest economies, they will yet have to turn back to microeconomic principles of Economic Development in, say, personal income, savings, investments and employment rates in order to rate the strength and robustness of an economy.
An economy like that of the United States of America is difficult to rate under any of these phenomenal definitions. First, it has to be rated as the most indebted economy in the world. If it is rated as the biggest economy in the world, it is yet groaning under a 16 trillion dollar debt as at May 2013. By implication, every single US citizen of the 318 million people population is indebted to an average 50 million dollars. With an average of $51,000 annual pay per citizen of the US, it will take a thousand years to repay the US debt assuming a 2% average personal consumption rate, while eliminating all rates of interest and debt service payments.
So, when will the US start borrowing down? In other words, when will the US economy begin to efficiently service its debt, year by year, so that every further annual debt is serviced above its figures? When will economists begin to incorporate debt profiles into the phenomenal definitions of economic performance and ratings. Certainly, boardroom political economics is different from classroom economics, and both are different from the economics on Wall Street.
What the world does not seem to understand is that those who lend the US money have perfectly mastered the art of being masters. It is not just an economic venture; it is a political tool that metamorphoses itself into a political weapon. Whenever the US, as a nation and as a people, tries playing out anything, seemingly against the will of its gang of debtors, these debtors bring out and play the debt joker card. The US then symptomises a feverish shiver and then withdraws its intended action; thus, the US is cowed. Freedom, now, seems just for the US individual citizens; Washington is actually being ruled elsewhere.