Chapter 15

“It’s clear what we need to do. We need to restore the banks by lending money to them. They can collect the bad debts and repay the loans. That’s the quickest way to return to a regular economy.”

The man had been speaking in a tone of voice suggesting that he was talking to an ignorant school kid. His whole manner was dismissive of his audience, and that didn’t sit well with some of the people in the room. One person, in particular, was getting very irritated.

“Are you an idiot?”

The man bristled.

Trying to keep the meeting from degenerating into a shouting match, the President asked, “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

“Yes. I’m talking to the man who was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank. I emphasize the word was,” Betsy answered earning a dirty look from the man being discussed.

“He’s one of the most brilliant economic minds in the world. You should be a little more respectful,” the President said.

Rolling her eyes in disgust, Betsy asked, “Why is he here?”

“He’s my economic adviser,” the President answered.

“Golly gee, oh great Captain of the Titanic, would you give me lessons on navigating around an iceberg?” Betsy said sarcastically.

Chuck and Shelly snickered. Even the President cracked a small smile.

“Run home and play with your dolls, little girl,” the banker replied angrily.

Betsy wondered why everyone was calling her a little girl and telling her to play with dolls. She had never played with dolls and wasn’t about to start now. She glared over at the banker.

Wiping his brow, the President said, “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

“I don’t care who she is,” the man replied.

“She’s Betsy Carter. Her father, Ed Biggers, is the head of the Fusion Foundation,” the President said.

“So her father is an important man. Big deal. She’s a little girl and should run home to her mommy and daddy.”

Tapping the torque on her arm, Betsy said, “I’m a servant of the Two-Sided One.”

“Oh,” the banker said with a face like he bite into a lemon.

“So is my brother, William Redman Carter,” Betsy said.

“Oh.”

“So is my father, Ed Biggers.”

“I hate to say this, but I’m not impressed. You talk about the Two-Sided One as if I’m supposed to be frightened. I’m not. Your Gods and Goddesses don’t impress me.”

Chuck grimaced. There was no way he’d challenge the Gods and Goddesses like that. He’d felt a little of the powers of the Druids and knew what Betsy was capable of doing. Getting on their bad side wouldn’t bode well for the future.

Betsy said, “I wouldn’t want to speak on behalf of the Two-Sided One, but I’d be willing to bet that he isn’t all that impressed with you.”

“Damned religious idiots think all problems are solved with prayers,” the man said.

Betsy said, “Mr. President, let me give you some advice.”

“What?”

“Throw this jerk out on his ass,” Betsy said gesturing at the banker with her thumb.

“How dare you call me that!”

Ignoring the banker’s protest, the President asked, “Why should I do that?”

Pointing at the banker, Betsy said, “This guy was in charge of the banking system at the time when it crashed and burned. It came to a miserable end because it was corrupt and incompetently managed. He was one of the folks in charge of it all. Now, he’s trying to rebuild the system that existed before. We have proof that what he wants to do doesn’t work. His advice is idiotic. Toss him out of here and get someone in here who really understands economics.

“He’s a flat-earther who doesn’t believe the evidence that the earth is round. I wouldn’t trust him to make change for a dollar.”

“There’s nobody who understands the financial system of the world better than me. I’m the foremost expert in economics,” the banker said furious at her denigration of him.

Betsy looked at him in disgust. She asked, “Do you know what is the best thing to do with a dollar bill, today?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Restore it as the national currency.”

“Wrong! Use it for toilet paper.”

“How can you say that? It’s the dollar!” the banker said emphasizing the word, ‘dollar,’ as if there was something magical about it.

“How can I say it? Because that’s how much a dollar bill is worth – one square of toilet paper,” Betsy said. “Wipe, wipe.”

The President said, “It’s legal tender.”

“It’s paper that you can’t use to buy anything,” Betsy said.

“It’s the dollar!” the President said not willing to give up on what had been a constant in this country since its founding.

“Wake up and smell the roses. The economy that used to exist is dead. It is deceased. It is no longer alive. It is ready to be buried. The dollar is a symbol of that old dead economy. If you can’t see the truth of that, then I suggest you resign as President.”

“We’ll get the economy restarted,” the President said.

“The patient has been dead for four months. I hate to tell you this, but the corpse is starting to smell,” Betsy said.

The banker said, “I understand money and I can get the economy restarted.”

“How much are you worth?” Betsy asked.

“I’m a multimillionaire.”

“I bet it is all in stocks and bonds,” Betsy said.

“Yes.”

“Wow! I’m so impressed by your wealth. You actually own stocks in corporations that don’t exist any longer. That’s amazing. You own stock in what is now illegal in all fifty states!”

“It is still worth millions of dollars,” the banker said stubbornly.

“I’ll swap you a can of beans for your whole portfolio,” Betsy said.

“The corporations will exist when we get the economy restarted,” the banker said.

“They don’t exist. Every state has passed laws disbanding corporations. Half of the buildings they were in have been burned to the ground. Their records have been destroyed. They have no employees. They have no products. Other people are running the factories.”

“Those people are criminals.”

Betsy whistled. “I didn’t realize they were criminals. I guess I better tell them to stop doing what they are doing.”

“You bet!”

“There goes the food,” Shelly said staring at the banker in disgust.

“Why?” the President asked knowing that Betsy’s father had threatened him with shutting down deliveries of food by the Fusion Foundation.

Betsy said, “With a couple of phone calls, I can get all of those criminals to stop producing food on what were once corporate farms. I can have the criminals operating the food processing plants shut down, until their corporate owners return to take charge. I can have all criminals running the dispatching companies shut down, so that no products will move from where they are to where they are needed.”

“You can’t do that. You don’t have the power to do that,” the banker blustered.

“Yes, I can. Who do you think has been paying them?”

“You?” the President asked staring at Betsy.

“Me. I hope you enjoy going hungry, because I’ll be shutting down sixty percent of the food supply,” Betsy said.

“Sixty percent?” the President asked feeling sick to his stomach.

“Yes. I figure that my businesses are feeding about a hundred and fifty million people. A lot of that is going to the Fusion Foundation. Let’s not even talk about the riots that will result when the Fusion Foundation stops delivering food,” Betsy said.

“That’s blackmail. You’re a criminal,” the banker said.

Betsy said, “No. I’m a business woman. I understand how things have to work in this new economy. Right now, our legal tender is cell phone minutes. I swap food for cell phone minutes. I use cell phone minutes to pay wages and to buy other products that my businesses need in order to operate.”

“You wouldn’t shut down sixty percent of the food supply,” the President said.

Sounding sweet and innocent, Betsy said, “I don’t see any choice.” She batted her eyes. “I want to be a law abiding citizen, Mr. President.” She looked over at him with wide innocent eyes. “According to what your adviser says, I’ll be criminal if I don’t shut it down.”

She frowned and pouted.

Chuck looked off to the side attempting to hide his smile. She was really laying it on thick.

“You can’t do that,” the President said.

“She’s a criminal. Arrest her,” the banker said.

Pretending to wipe tears from under her eyes, she said, “Please don’t arrest me. I said I’d stop. I’ll even tell every one of those criminals to stop working.”

The President said, “You can’t do that. It would destroy this country.”

“Now you’ve got the idea. If I do what this idiot is telling me to do, it would destroy this country. He thinks a dollar is still worth something.”

“Now see here...”

Betsy tossed a hundred dollar bill at the banker and said, “Come back after you’ve exchanged that for an apple.”

“No one takes dollars at the moment,” the banker blustered.

“DUH-uh!”

The President stared at the banker for fifteen seconds. Betsy had made her point. No one takes dollars at the moment. He doubted they would ever take a dollar again.

“Please leave.”

“Who me?” the banker asked.

“Yes. She’s right. Your advice is idiotic. If you can’t buy an apple for a hundred dollars, then a dollar is worthless.”

“But...”

“Please leave.”

Betsy watched the banker walk across the room to the door. He turned and glared at her.

He said, “You haven’t seen the last of me. When the economy recovers, I’ll bury you.”

Betsy made a little hand puppet gesture with her fingers moving up and down over her thumb, while she said, “Blah blah blah.”

He stormed out of the room.

The President said, “You made a powerful enemy.”

“Not really. He’s not powerful any longer. He’s an unemployed man who won’t be able to find a job, unless he’s willing to roll up his sleeves, and work with his hands,” Betsy said.

“You might be right,” the President said thinking it was sad that a man that smart would be reduced to being a day laborer.

Betsy said, “Let’s get to the heart of the matter. Your government is flat broke.”

“I know,” the President said.

“You need to collect money for the government to operate,” Betsy said.

“Don’t you think I know that? There’s no money for us to collect as taxes. I’ve spent nearly every waking hour trying to figure out how to restart the economy so that we can collect tax revenue. The problem is, how can I do that?”

“Well, you can tax the states or you can tax the people. If you’re thinking about taxation, that’s about your only choices,” Betsy said.

“I’ll have to think about taxing states,” the President said.

Sitting back in her chair, Betsy looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully.

She said, “You know, when this country was first founded, the federal government was supported by the states and donations. Unfortunately, the states got to decide how much money they were going to give to the federal government. As you can imagine, they didn’t like giving away their money to the fed, and things were pretty desperate for a while. In fact, the federal government almost had to declare bankruptcy.

“Outside of two short periods of time, this country functioned from its founding to 1913 without having an income tax. Before the IRS was created, almost all of the federal income was from tariffs and excise taxes on specific goods. The taxes on alcohol represented nearly 40% of the federal income.

“Did you know that the federal income tax wasn’t created because of debt? It’s true! It was created because of the fact that so much of the income was from alcohol. The income tax was pushed by prohibitionists, who wanted to replace the revenue that would be lost from the taxes on alcohol, once it was banned. Going back to how things were once done, is not necessarily a bad option.”

“There’s no way we could run a government only on excise taxes,” the President said.

Betsy smiled and said, “That might be true. I don’t know. It’s not up to me to solve your problems, only to get you working in the right direction. You and Congress might want to really focus on how to fund the government, and how much government you can get for the funding you can raise.”

“You’re saying that we’ll never be as large a government as we were,” the President said.

“Well, you’re going to have to prioritize the government services.”

“I suppose that the first priority is social security,” the President said.

“No.”

“No?”

Shelly said, “The military. Without a standing army, you’ll have assholes carving out bits of the country.”

“Of course, we’ll have a military. It just doesn’t need to be that big,” the President said.

“I don’t know about that. If you aren’t careful, you’ll have to deal with invasions,” Betsy said.

“What country would dare invade us? What country is even in a position to invade us?” the President asked.

“It doesn’t require a country to carve out a kingdom from American territory. There are tons of people who are ‘warlords in waiting.’ Their choice is to fight among themselves, or head to easier pickings. Without a strong military, the US will be the easiest pickings around,” Betsy said.

“What warlords?” the President asked.

Betsy said, “Some of the ones who have taken over regions of South and Central America.”

“They’re too far away to be a threat.”

Betsy said, “You never wait for the threat to appear, before getting ready for it.”

“You’re right,” the President said.

The President wasn’t a stupid man, although a lot of the discussion between him and Betsy might suggest it. The fact was that he had been wrestling with the economic issues since the day of the collapse. As usually happened during a crisis, almost all other issues had been relegated to the background. With the sudden disappearance of government employees, he wasn’t receiving the kind of detailed briefings that had been given to him before the fall.

His interactions with the military, since the fall, had focused primarily upon getting personnel out of war zones. Then it was finding the means to feed and pay soldiers. That always turned attention back to economics, rather than the military issues of national security. He knew that an army does not survive without proper funding. His problem was that until the economic situation was straightened out, there couldn’t be any support for the military. That constraint on him had led to a lot of nasty discussions with the top staffers of the armed services.

The result was that the military was being cut back to a bare bones organization. A lot of servicemen had been sent home to weather the crisis. It helped their families, and it avoided the issues of feeding them and paying them. Her comment about warlords moving into where it was easier to carve out fiefdoms, required him to rethink his current approach to dealing with the military budget.

Betsy said, “You might want Congress to review all of the laws of the land. A bunch of government agencies are no longer needed. When you decide what agencies you need, you’ll have to have people review all of the past regulations. There’s a bunch of crap that just doesn’t apply anymore. Still, there is stuff that is needed.”

“It just might be easier to start all over again,” the President said.

She was telling him things that he already knew, but didn’t want to face. Without corporations, there wasn’t a need for the SEC. If they went with a new means of acquiring revenue, the IRS was useless. With a limited budget, there might not be money for a Department of Education. It wasn’t really needed anymore, anyway, since the cost of educating the young was born at the local level. He was sure that there were a number of other agencies that would be killed off.

He thought about it. Before stepping into office, he hadn’t been aware of just how many agencies, departments, and commissions there were in the Federal Government. There were a lot of them and many had long outlived their original purposes. A lot of them were social programs, AbilityOne, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Aging, Administration on Developmental Disabilities, and so on. They were great programs, but they couldn’t afford them any longer. A lot of agencies could be consolidated into a structure that was more manageable. He had a feeling that most of them wouldn’t survive in any form. The idea saddened him.

“While it isn’t the scheduled time for a ‘State of the Union’ address, I suggest that you give a speech like that to Congress. Don’t make it a political speech, but a real and true assessment of the state of the Union. You and I both know it is a pretty bleak picture. It is up to you to provide leadership and to make known what you need, to administer the country.”

“That’s going to be a lot of work,” the President said.

“No one said it was an easy job,” Betsy said with a smile.

“Even in the best of times, it isn’t an easy job,” the President said dryly.

Betsy rose from the chair and said, “I’m going to swing by Congress and chat for a bit with a few of the representatives of the people.”