When I was a little kid I remember asking my father, who worked for the government all his life, where the money supply came from and him telling me that it was the U.S. Treasury and when questioned further by me, about six years old at the time, where they got it he said that they had it printed up. I then asked him why don’t they give some to the poor people so they wouldn’t be poor anymore and he said they couldn’t do that but when I asked him why they couldn’t do it all he said was that I was too little to understand but that when I was grown up then I’d understand. My father was a very intelligent man, he had an engineering degree and was a Colonel in the Air Force and worked for NSA for 30 years, but he never could explain to me why they couldn’t print some money for the poor people.

I’m all grown up now, although my wife will, quite vehemently, differ with that opinion, and I still don’t understand why we can’t print some money for the poor people in this world. I have studied the law and economics, in college as well as extensively researching the subject myself, and I understand that when the money supply is increased that the demand on goods will also rise, causing the supply of goods and services to go down or become much more costly.

The expert economists down through the years have varied widely: from Adam Smith, the Scotsman who thought that private enterprise, and the market system, should and could regulate itself, to Karl Marx, who said that Capitalism was a blatant theft of a man’s produced labor and also of land which should not be owned by anyone. This was not an altogether new theory: it was actually just an echo of every Native inhabitant of every country that was “discovered” by the “intelligent and civilized” people of the World, and who also had the largest armies with which to take (steal) the land that they had so surreptitiously “discovered.” I still remember a quote that I came across while I was researching a story I was writing on Native Americans. It was said by a high-ranking Army officer to a governor, as they watched an Indian Tribe that they had “given” the land to for an Indian Reservation, as they lined up to get commodities at the Army Fort they were in. He said to the governor that they had “won,” they had finally “beaten” the Indians and when the governor asked him why he nodded towards the lineup and said: “We’ve finally gotten them to accept money.”

And then there was John Maynard Keynes’ theory that government had the duty to step in and regulate businesses. It was his theory that when an adverse business cycle appeared, as happened during the Great Depression and at other times like now, the government could and should step in, by means of closing down or propping up certain segments of the business community, as it has today with the banks, car dealers and so on, in order to prevent a recession or depression. Most governments and economists today adhere to these Keynesian theories and so we find ourselves watching helplessly as the Treasury prints money to buy our own worthless debt and watch as this causes the dollar to spiral downward, even as Bernarke and Geithner hand over tons of the green stuff to their friends at the banks, the too big to fail insurance companies and other conglomerates as they see fit.

I am getting on in years and find, as my wife will gladly testify to, myself regressing back to my childhood days, much happier times; blissful ignorance some might say but was that what it was? I must say that I still, five decades later, remember that little boy I was and that question I asked of my father and I still haven’t gotten a satisfactory answer (from anyone, especially the Geithner’s, Bernarke’s and Greenspan’s of this World) and so I can only guess at what the answer would be but I can’t help wondering what God Almighty himself would say if presented with this predicament?

Gimme a minute I’m thinking of all the convoluted, lawyerly opinions, not to mention the sophisticated and formulated Fed-speak of Alan Greenspan and all the numerous economists and mathematicians and accountants, with masters degrees and doctorates who will line up and make their arguments to the Almighty. It would probably take days, if not years, but then what’s time to God anyway, for all these suave, scholarly politicians and leaders to make their arguments; and sterling, well-researched, well-thoughtout and well-spoken arguments I’m sure they all most certainly would be.

And then, there would be mine the one that would take only a brief few seconds; the one that any child could plainly see and give: “why don’t they give some to the poor people so they won’t be poor anymore?” What would God say? I wonder … oh how I wonder …

May our friends respect us, trouble neglect us, angels protect us and heaven accept us.