The Stockman article is worth reading. It’s called “Sundown in America.” He makes a lot of good points. But I think what Williams is making out of it blows it out of proportion. First of all, if you read the article, you find that Stockman blames Ronald Reagan for the problem as much as anybody else. He says Republicans are more hypocritical about debt and spending than Democrats. Now, I don’t know if the problem is as scary as Stockman thinks. As Paul Krugman and some others have said, we can’t really have inflation now as a result of the Fed printing money because there isn’t enough demand. People lost money during the Great Recession, and now they’re trying to save, so they’re not buying as they did in the early 2000′s. So Krugman says that’s why the government and the Fed have to stimulate the economy, because no one else can. But there’s still a lot of what Stockman says that I take pretty seriously. He could be right about a lot of things.

What Williams says about Biden’s speech is pure fantasy. Biden doesn’t say anything about getting rid of the Constitution. All he says is that we should try to find a “level playing field” so everyone in the world can prosper. China’s prosperity shouldn’t be at our expense and so on. I don’t think there’s anything outrageous about that.

Williams focuses on this one statement on the first page of Stockman’s article: “When [the bubble] bursts, there will be no new round of bailouts like the ones the banks got in 2008. Instead, America will descend into an era of zero-sum austerity and virulent political conflict, extinguishing even today’s feeble remnants of economic growth.” Now, I think all Stockman is saying there is that he doesn’t expect America to have the resources again to bail the economy out when this next bubble bursts. But Williams wants us to believe, based on his anonymous tip, that the “elites” have actually decided they won’t allow a bailout. That’s a rather different claim that I doubt Stockman would agree with. If the “elites” were really planning something like that, why would they tell Williams?