Editor:

Every year for the last 12-14-years, the United States has exceeded $500 billion in trade deficit. If this course continues, the US system will fall — with a hard crash.

The math about our public debt is worse than the government admits. Billions are being added to the debt while being erased from the budget with phony government wordsmith. For instance, money is borrowed from the US Treasury by Wall Street to fund student loans, but the budget-entry action isn’t counted as debt. The outlay is weasel-worded as an “investment.” Our elected leaders wink at the action knowing it contributes to the nation’s pending disaster.

While the political and educational media present a good spin about the loan program, the fact is many students will never repay it. More than half of those who receive student loans and start college fail to finish.

Then, there is the financial curriculum offered in some Liberal Arts business schools. They read, Financial Engineering.” You know what that means? It means “how to manipulate another’s wealth”. Instead of making money the old fashion way, Financial Engineering teaches how to deprive, connive, scam, hook, rook and crook another person’s money from the bank, and/or legally steal it from their 401K.

Today, financial deception and trickery are the norm. The expression once heard in the business community, “We make payroll…” meaning a business sells it products and services, ethically and honorably, has changed. Business success is measured on the basis of takeovers, buyouts, and leverages. Already, the expression “too big to fail, and too big to jail” are the notions of the day.

Here’s another consideration where math matters.

Americans have been consuming more than society can produce. Today, we create nothing anymore (but iPhones or iPads) and they are actually manufactured in Asia. For the past 25 years, we have been on a consuming binge, and as a result have bankrupted the nation. We have spent our nation’s wealth, and now we are spending our children’s wealth on the products of other nations — making foreign nations rich.

Not to despair. Our hope is twofold. (a) Maintain US sovereignty; and (b) make a drastic course-correction in our educational philosophy. It’s imperative we teach our children to become thinkers, not manipulators, that we teach them to be nationalists not globalists; savers and not consumers. Math matters.

Jack Dawsey

Salemburg