WHAT BIDEN AND RYAN SHOULD DEBATE: STAGNATION TO 2018

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Human Events:

The International Monetary Fund has identified what should be the major focus of this Thursday’s Vice Presidential debate.

The IMF’s chief economist warned Friday that the global economy was likely to stagnate until 2018.

If true that means little or no economic growth for six more years.

This would be a disaster rivaling the Great Depression.

Robert Samuelson, in a column entitled “The Great Reversal,” warned Monday of the dangers we are running from such a long period of economic decay.

“What we are witnessing in Europe — and what may loom for the United States,” he wrote, “—is the exhaustion of the modern social order. Since the early 1800s, industrial societies rested on a marriage of economic growth and political stability… Over time, prosperity fostered stable democracies in the United States, Europe and parts of Asia. The present economic crisis might reverse this virtuous process. Slower economic expansion would feed political instability and vice versa.”

Everyone focuses politically on the pain currently felt by the American middle class.

This level of economic decay, however, has its greatest impact on the poor, both here in America and around the world.

Consider the impact of economic stagnation on Egypt. Because Egypt has no great oil wealth it has no energy exports to rely on for income. The political chaos of the last year has stifled the Egyptian economy. The result is a growing crisis of basics. Food, electricity and gasoline may all become hard to get in the near future.