Lawrence Kudlow came out recently with a Chicken Little article ("A Job for McCain" --- http://www.nysun.com/article/72358 ) about the weakness of the U.S. dollar, assigning a Land-of-Oz president McCain the task of restoring its power. The dollar is falling, America is irrecoverably in decline, and our "prestige" is on the floor, Kudlow says.

Let’s see whether all this can be sorted out with some Economics 101 basics . . . and, hopefully, without making a complete Rube Goldberg contraption of it.

If the dollar falls further down, American products (goods and services) become cheaper to foreign buyers, who then would buy American in higher volumes. Then, American enterprises will accrete more profits, part of which will be invested (I talk about taxes a few paragraphs down) in producing more, better and cheaper goods and services going to foreign markets, and the cycle will keep repeating, on and on: good for our balance of payments . . . and for our "prestige".

Setting temporarily aside the issues of taxes and cost of energy, since the dollar would be further down, in many instances it would be more expensive for American enterprises to operate abroad than operating here, thus they would bring back to America part of their overseas business operations.

At the same time, imported products would become more expensive to Americans, who would prefer to buy domestic, thus helping to sustain those jobs brought back home. Purchases of foreign consumer products that are not a need, but mostly a want, will go down. Good for our balance of payments and, given the abundant supply of domestic products, inflation would tend to go down . . . and our "prestige" will go up.

Then, sound jobs will be created in America, which so dangerously is slipping down to becoming a services-mainly economy, where all what we will be doing is scratching each other’s back in---no disrespect meant---mostly a society of barbers, nail polishers, massagers, hair stylists, decorators, health providers, morticians, politicians, government employees, etc., ah! . . . and lawyers. That’s where America’s real danger resides.

Nevertheless, operating on American soil might still not be attractive enough to enterprises, if taxes are not addressed across the board, and if transportation energy costs are not brought down. Furthermore, if those two issues are not tackled properly, American consumers won’t have the desired purchasing power to help sustain the inodus (with your permission, my personal inverse of exodus) of enterprise operations back to America.

So, it is apparent that what needs to be done is (1) bring taxes down to a practical minimum (that is, the absolutely-necessary to keep the national infrastructure working fine and dandy), and (2) bring transportation energy costs down to an absolute minimum (that is, close to dirt-cheap).

America’s economy will then unleash its inherent phenomenal endogenous power to raise herself to much higher levels of economic wealth, which is something that only the Democrats and the rest of the domestic Left, along with the RINOs in the Gang of 14 in the U.S. Congress know very well how to trample to a crawl. (Note: the infamous number 14 will remain; they’ll find a substitute for McCain, if necessary.)

And, wait a minute! What about if American workers, instead of giving their money to the government’s pyramid scheme called Social Security, rather contribute their bi-weekly deductions to personal investment retirement accounts that are invested in indexed stock portfolios, such as how the Rise Up America (www.RiseUpAmerica.us) movement advocates? America would then count on another source of massive capitalization, rather than dragging from her neck the heavy albatross that the close-to-bankruptcy Social Security actually is.

And then, you know what? The dollar will go back to its lustrous power, but this time based on tangible wealth, not on false perceptions, or on hubristic "prestige".

But even if the dollar doesn’t go up, hallelujah. It would not affect us that much, simply because we would be again the self-sufficient economy of yesteryears. As for the "prestige" of a dollar that unnaturally would remain low, even under those bountiful circumstances . . . why should we care? I would be laughing my head off on my way to the bank with wads of greenbacks in my pockets, ready to invest right and left, ready to buy lots of domestic goods and services, and ready to buy those dispensable foreign products that I badly want and which I can amply afford. That would actually be "The Shining City on the Hill"; that's the "prestige" we all should strive for.

Ah! But all those boxcar-loads of dollars held abroad in the form of cash and bonds would be dumped causing an implosion in our national economy. Hogwash! Dollar holders abroad would not dare, for "when America sneezes, the world gests the influenza." Just let those dollars float abroad in the seas of frustration. Maybe dollar holders abroad decide to burn them instead! We could then send them, with one-way tickets, all those ELF-ALF pyromaniacs to lend them a hand.

If taxes are brought down to a practical minimum, and transportation energy costs, to an absolute minimum, then we can relax.

(Caption: electricity costs must be brought as well to an absolute minimum, for, along with transportation, they both constitute the vascular system of our hectic economy.)

How to bring taxes down? There is a garden-variety of choices here, but while the Democrats along with the rest of the domestic Left and the RINOs of the Gang of 14 controlling the U.S. Congress, that seems a feat impossible to accomplish. Not even if a tax-cutting---aqueous dreams!---McCain is elected president---a more remote eventuality!---tax cuts would materialize with the current order of battle in the U.S. Congress. Tax enslavers are in the majority there.

How to bring transportation costs down? The name of the game is a transition to electric motors (visit www.TeslaMotors.com for a taste of a sizzling-hot, sexy electric car: The Roadster! Which goes from 0 to 60 mph in 4 seconds!) for dry-surface transportation. And, in the interregnum, we should use ALL domestic energy sources, green or not, renewable or not, conventional or not, fossil or not, nuclear fission or not, whatever or not.

That interim should be understood, of course, as a transition period towards commercial nuclear fusion, "the mother of all forms of energy", the process whose energy yield makes all other sources and processes, with no exception, look like morsels. Commercial fusion is the process whose fuel is virtually inexhaustible (read on the web about Deuterium, Tritium, and, much more important, Helium 3), the electricity-generation process that, once full fledged and fully deployed across the nation, would bring the price of the kilowatt-hour to a fraction of a penny.

Then we would be breathing the fresh breezes of true energy independence.

By the way, a paradigm of entrepreneurial advancement toward commercial nuclear fusion is the case of General Fusion, Inc. (www.GeneralFusion.com), a Canadian pre-IPO startup engaged in work geared toward the production of a first-generation of commercial fusion reactors in about five years.

But, again, the Democrats along with the rest of the domestic Left and the RINOs of the Gang of 14 controlling the U.S. Congress would block that monumental pro-American move.

Thus, what can we do?

One of the things we could do is joining Newt Gingrich---that is, if what he pursues is not just selling more of his books---in his American Solutions for Winning the Future movement (www.AmericanSolutions.com) and work hard to, as he proposes, bring together all those true Americans who really care about this great nation.

Yes! If Rise Up America and American Solutions for Winning the Future come to a successful fruition by 2010 or 2012, we would have then pulled the rug under the feet of the anti-American Democrat nomenklatura of leftist ideologues and professional leeches . . . and under the feet of the Gang of 14 RINOs as well.

By the way, the grassroots conservative associations across the nation proposed in a previous article (http://www.NewMediaJournal.us/guest/guerra/2008/02132008.htm) could help provide some part of the physical infrastructure to support both, Rise Up America and American Solutions for Winning the Future.

No! That’s not a job for a chimerical president McCain; it is an arduous job for us, "We The People," the ultimate sovereigns in "the land of the free and the home of the brave." We are the ones to make it happen.

Here, with you and me, here is where the buck stops.