Puerto Rico; The Canary in the Mine
Puerto Rico, the American territory in the Caribbean Sea, has
become an economic basket case, a la Greece.
It is now the butt of jokes for television comedians, and it is being used as a
Boogie Man to sell alternative investment instruments. The sad part of this story is not the hardship
that the Puerto Rican people will inevitably endure but the failure of the
American population to grasp the simple fact that Puerto Rico is but the canary
in the American national mine. The irredeemable
Puerto Rican national debt, or Greece's for that matter, pale by comparison to
the $19 trillion American debt. It is
not a question of what Puerto Rico, Greece, and others will do to save themselves but what we can all do together to save humanity from another
universal economic depression and to alter the please-everyone management style
of modern governance.