Saving Miguel - The Aftermath of Global Economic Armageddon

Saving Miguel - the novel that tells
it like it is, what happens to the world
when the U.S. Government takes the
world into global economic Armageddon.
 

Prologue (outtake from the Novel Saving Miguel) 

        No one can pinpoint the exact year or series of events that started the world’s economy into its steep death spiral, but in 2006, the U.S. housing market began what was considered the largest decline in recorded history, dragging down with it large portions of the world’s financial systems. The collateral damage from the housing market crash was felt everywhere in the world with millions of people losing their jobs and home equity while the banks that had financed these risky mortgages fought to remain in business.  

        While the world’s economy teetered on the brink of financial destruction, another economic crisis of catastrophic proportions occurred in 2008. Widespread fraud and manipulation swept through the world’s financial institutions, walloped the markets and bankrupting well-known and respected companies. Banks around the world collapsed, resulting in the single largest money transfer in recorded history when governments took on insurmountable debt to bail out their respective financial institutions.

        While all of these catastrophic economic events were occurring, a shaky economy threatened to collapse the European countries of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus, and Italy. With the financial future of these countries in jeopardy, one of the bellwether currencies in the world, the Euro, fought for survival in the midst of a possible collapse of the European Economic Community.   

        In the 2008 presidential election, the majority of citizens in the United States liked the message of hope and change from one of the candidates. No one knew for sure where this candidate had come from or how he rose so quickly up the political food chain. Part of the nation believed he was the messiah who would unite a divided country while the rest of the nation believed he would drive the wedge even further into a divided country.

       The majority of the people elected this candidate to the presidency of the United States and with Congress’s approval, the U.S. government embarked on a spending spree never before equaled in the history of the world. The government, through its entitlements and social welfare programs, supplied food, housing, medical care, and even cell phones for all most citizens who asked. The government passed economic stimulus programs designed to prop up the weak economy and provided bailouts for failing companies and industries. The President promised affordable health care for every citizen in the country and Congress passed massive health care reform, adding billions of dollars of cost to the health care of citizens of the United States. Under this charismatic president, the United States migrated towards both socialism and bankruptcy.

       In 2012, the people of the country spoke again, reelected the President for another four years. The unprecedented spending spree by him and the Congress continued. The government spent far more money than they collected in tax revenues, spending money on wars, economic stimulus, international assistance, health care and domestic social programs.

       The U.S. remained on the verge of bankruptcy during the President’s second term and Congress remained ineffective, divided between two very distinct ideologies. Congress debated whether to raise taxes on the rich or to cut government spending. In the end, the President and Congress could not find common ground with their differences and the country’s debt continued to rise. Unable to even propose a budget that could deal with the ballooning debt, the government took the path of least resistance and printed more money, the equivalent of an individual citizen paying his mortgage with an already overloaded credit card.  

       It took nine more years of reckless spending, state-supported social programs, and failed fiscal policies to take the U.S. economy into a bottomless abyss, bankrupting the country and setting off a catastrophic domino effect that brought other major economies of the world to their knees. The value of the world’s major currencies plummeted and governments were unable to pay their bills. The payment systems between countries no longer worked and with the resultant drop in consumer demand, companies could no longer pay their employees, causing massive layoffs and unemployment. With high employment and no consumer spending, the downward spiral continued with even more layoffs, plant closures, bankruptcies and entire governments collapsing. The social welfare programs that had once supplied the basic living needs of millions of people around the globe went bankrupt, leaving the vast majority of the world’s population impoverished and homeless.

I wrote the above portion of the Prologue for my novel Saving Miguel in early 2013. Unfortunately, much of what I wrote appears to be coming true as far as the U.S. Government's extraordinary high debt coming to roost. The U.S. Government has spent itself into bankruptcy and the only reason it has not already been an issue is because the U.S. Government can hold nearly infinite debt and makes up the difference by printing its own money. It would not be any different than you or I printing money in our basements to pay for our high credit card bills. Just like what is happening to the U.S. Government, sooner or later our outlandish spending comes to roost and there is a day of reckoning. That day of reckoning appears sooner for the U.S. Government, rather than later. 

For several years, knowledgeable economists have been preaching about the deadly effects of the U.S. Government's debt. These knowledgeable people have also prophesized that a day of reckoning was coming. It is hard to believe that with all of the attention and recognition of a potential  Armageddon-sized problem (U.S. debt), why there was not more done to circumvent this catastrophic disaster. All it seems the President and the Congress of the United States are doing is pointing fingers at each other.
I am attaching a link to an interesting article on how the world is already bracing for this upcoming  global economic Armageddon. The exploding debt of the United States is not just a United States problem, it is a problem of gigantic proportions for the entire world.   

The World Braces for Global Economic Armageddon

Read Saving Miguel  and find out my fictional version of what the world looks like after this Global economic Armageddon occurs. I am optimistic that the resilience of ordinary people will overcome what governments have done to unravel the global economy.