We face catastrophic consequences if we fail to pass the economic stimulus bill, President Barack Obama warns. President Obama is absolutely correct!

But his solution is also absolutely wrong!

The United States faces catastrophic collapse no matter what President Obama does. The scale of America’s problems goes far beyond what an ever increasing number of trillions of dollars can patch over. There is nothing any person can do to stop the meltdown.

And President Obama’s plan may actually make matters much worse.

Here is the sad fact: U.S. taxpayers have committed $8.7 trillion to fixing the system, and we haven’t even made a noticeable dent!

Take a few seconds to reflect on what $8.7 trillion means, and see if you can really make the case that this crisis is survivable.

If you took the total cost of the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, the race to the moon, the savings and loan crisis, the Korean War, Vietnam, the Iraq wars, nasa’s all-time budget—and adjusted them all for inflation into today’s dollars—you would come to only $3.9 trillion. You could even throw in every dollar spent on World War ii, and you still would only get to $7.5 trillion!

“It seems safe to say that, adjusted for the usual government underestimates, by oh, mid-2010 the bailout will have cost more than all of American history combined,” quips columnist Mark Steyn. “And by then we’ll probably need a new round number.”

What does come after a trillion? I am guessing that many people don’t know. Up until this point, numbers so large were largely left to the realm of astronomers. Now, politicians and their economists tell us that if we don’t borrow trillions, we are facing “financial Armageddon”—Day After Tomorrow-style complete social breakdown. “Anything much less than $1 trillion,” says Rep. Lynn Woolsey, “would be like trying to put out a forest fire with a squirt gun.”

A trillion dollars is a squirt gun?

To be fair, only around $3 trillion has been spent or lent already. The rest is money waiting to be spent or money that the government has said taxpayers will use to guarantee banks and other financial institutions in the case that they fail or find out that their investments are worth less than they are pretending their value is. And if there is one thing this financial crisis has revealed, it is that bankers are either incompetent or very good liars. The fact remains: $3 trillion has vanished with no visible improvement in the lives of anybody besides some lucky bankers, the proud new owners of $18 billion in bonuses—paid for by taxpayers, the people that politicians claim the bailout is supposed to be helping.

Now taxpayers are expected to foot the bill for hundreds of billions more.

But that is not the most dangerous aspect of this stimulus bill. Nor is the fact that politicians justified borrowing $300 million to slow the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, $245 million for Hollywood movie producers to buy film, $650 million to help people convert to new television sets, and a veritable smorgasbord of other special-interest pork—somehow tying it in with fixing the economy. It is not even the fact that government economists are now so desperate that the government plans to borrow money to pay people to purchase homes. That’s right; the government will cut a check for up to $15,000 for anybody who buys a house.

No, the most dangerous aspect of this stimulus bill, and all the finagling over cutting a couple of billion here or there, is that it distracts from the fact that America is broke. We act as if we have $8.7 trillion to spend in the first place.

All this, “Spend, spend, spend …” and barely a voice asking what you would think was the burning question: How do we PAY for it?

The really crazy thing is that America was broke even before the financial landslide started hitting Wall Street last September. But back then we just borrowed hundreds of billions, not trillions.

Can anyone legitimately argue against the simple truth that most politicians don’t have a clue what we need to do to fix the economy?

Economist Roger Babson became famous for warning that America faced “the worst business depression that our generation has ever experienced.” That was in 1920 and early 1921. When he predicted it, people were amazed because America was cruising down the inner grove of prosperity. Babson knew something they didn’t.

“The test of a nation is the growth of its people—physically, intellectually and spiritually,” Babson said. “Money and so-called ‘prosperity’ are of very little account. Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Spain and France all had their turn in being the richest in the world. Instead of saving them, their so-called ‘prosperity’ ruined them.”

Prosperity ruined the Roman Empire, and it is ruining America too.

Historian J.P. Bauzon, in his book Roman Civilization, notes that in Rome, by “the third century, the silver coins had become copper pieces washed in silver, and issues of gold had virtually ceased.” Little by little, the Roman emperors cheated their citizens and creditors, paying bills and debts with coins that had reduced precious metals content. Debasing the coinage ruined the prosperity of its citizens.

America is doing the same thing today. Just look at the dollar. It has lost 90 percent of its purchasing power since the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913. America is debasing its currency to pay the bills too. Every time you hear a politician use the term stimulus, or bailout, or borrowing, or monetizing, or more debt, what it means is that the government is devaluing the currency a little more. Every dollar of debt makes the greenback worth a bit less. The dollar’s purchasing power is being compromised. When the current short-term dollar rally runs out of steam, expect the price of commodities and other imports to jump again.

In America, just like how it was in Soviet Russia, King Louis xvi’s France, 11th-century China, and the empire of Rome, prosperity is no longer synonymous with actual wealth. Prosperity goes by an entirely different name today: debt!

America’s standard of living is financed by debt. The economy is financed by debt—even our so-called bailouts and stimulus packages are financed by debt. America is addicted to debt. Debt is strangling America.

“Money will not save us,” warned Babson. “We must be filled with the desire to render service, to seek strength rather than security, to put character ahead of profits.”

“Only a sane, spiritual revival which changes the desires of our people will save us.”

Character ahead of profits. How many economists do you hear speaking like that today? Saving instead of spending, producing instead of consuming—these are badly needed reforms. But the ultimate source of America’s economic problems is a deeper fundamental problem. As Babson said, a whole new way of thinking is needed.

After the depression Babson predicted struck, he gave a speech at a conference in Chicago. His words carry a stark warning for America today.

“It is now mid-winter,” he said. “If I want to know what the temperature is, now, in this room, I go to the wall and look at the thermometer. If I want to know what it has been, up to now, and the existing trend as of the moment, I look at a recording thermometer. But if I want to know what the temperature in this room is going to be, an hour from now, I go to the source which determines future temperatures. I go down to the boiler room and see what is happening down there.

“You gentlemen looked at bank clearings, indexes of business activity, stock car loadings, stock market quotations—you looked at the thermometers on the wall; I looked at the way people as a whole were dealing with one another. I looked to the source which determines future conditions. I have found that that source may be defined in terms of ‘righteousness.’

“When 51 percent or more of the whole people are reasonably ‘righteous’ in their dealings with one another, we are heading into increasing prosperity. When 51 percent of the people become ‘unrighteous’ in their business dealings with their fellows, then we are headed for bad times economically!”

That’s right. Righteousness.

Trillions of your tax dollars are being spent to conjure a bailout and keep taxpayers preoccupied just a little while longer, too confused to question the system. Politicians and Federal Reserve officials have sent trillions to banks and financial institutions, and, in many cases, even at the risk of inadequate oversight. Billions are unaccounted for. And taxpayer money is being spent in ways that were not approved by Congress. And now politicians are trying to pass an $800 billion—and rising—stimulus package packed with all kinds of ridiculous, non-essential, self-interest-motivated spending.

The origin of America’s whole economic crisis can be characterized by three words: fraud, greed, and corruption. Ironically, the proposed bailouts are more of the same.

You can begin to see why Babson looked at what he termed the righteousness factor.

If you can honestly opine that the fundamentals of our economy are sound, despite America’s very visible collapse, then you are welcome to join the chorus of commentators and citizens who believe we are just one more spending bill, one more decision, one more quarter, one more election away from economic stability. But if your honesty dictates that you admit the obvious, that our economic fundamentals themselves are the problem, then America’s condition finally begins to make sense.

Only by understanding the cause of the problem can it be fixed. Borrowing and spending vast amounts of money may be part of the cause of America’s economic problem, but as Rome found out, it is certainly not the solution.

Nevertheless, God wants people to prosper. And despite America’s rapid decline, individuals still have the opportunity to be blessed. Read “How You Can Prosper in a Recession!” and The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like.