It seems like we’ve been here before—disgruntled Americans sending an unmistakably clear message to an unpopular president just as he embarks on the last two years of his term in office.

In 2006, American voters were dissatisfied with the lack of progress in the war against terrorism—particularly in Iraq. So they punished President Bush during midterm elections and ushered in a new Democratic majority in Congress.

Leading the antiwar charge was Nancy Pelosi, the radical leftist from San Francisco. The new speaker of the House had lambasted President Bush and his policies as being “incompetent” and “immoral.” Her solution to the Bush “freak show,” as she called it, was to appease terrorists and cut and run in Iraq.

As for the bloated federal budget, Pelosi promised to curtail the Bush administration’s out-of-control spending and reduce the astronomical debt burden. “After years of historic deficits, this 110th Congress will commit itself to a higher standard: Pay as you go—no new deficit spending,” Pelosi said. She made that gem of a political promise on her first day as speaker of the House, in January 2007. (Since she made that statement, Democrats have added about $5 trillion to the national debt.)

In 2008, a little-known senator from Illinois named Barack Obama rode this tidal wave of antiwar sentiment all the way into the White House. He campaigned on the platitudes of hope and change for America. He promised to abandon Iraq and focus instead on Afghanistan, where he said America would crush al Qaeda. He vowed to reach out to American allies that had been alienated by Bush’s “unilateral” policies. He said he would extend an olive branch to American enemies—like Iran. And at home, Obama promised to overhaul a U.S. economy that had just been rocked by a global financial crisis. Additionally, he guaranteed health care for everyone, while promising to eliminate waste in federal spending and to reduce taxes for most Americans.

Over the past two years, the Obama economic overhaul has resulted in trillion-dollar spending programs, record debt, rising unemployment, government-run banks, insurance firms and car companies—and soon-to-be universal health care.

This liberal-socialist agenda helped fuel a fiery backlash against President Obama and Speaker Pelosi, culminating in the stunning Republican rout on Tuesday. The party picked up more than 60 seats in the House of Representatives—far more than it needed to win a majority. Not since 1938 have Republicans made such massive gains in the House.

On Wednesday, a humbler, more introspective President Obama conceded that the elections represented a “shellacking” for Democrats. But he refused to admit that the blowout reflected a repudiation of his liberal agenda.

“If, right now, we had 5 percent unemployment instead of 9.6 percent unemployment, then people would have more confidence in those policy choices,” the president said. His administration was in such a hurry to get things done, he explained, that it didn’t change how things get done.

The newly emboldened Republican Party was quick to criticize Democrats for not being conciliatory enough the day after the drubbing. “Listening to what they’ve had to say this morning, they may have missed the message somewhat,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday.

Exit polls, however, indicate that voters feel like they are out of touch with politicians in general—Democrats and Republicans. Seventy percent of Americans now believe America is on the wrong track. Almost as many believe we are facing a “crisis” in leadership. Approval ratings for Congress are at near-record lows. And some surveys suggest that Americans are more dissatisfied with Republicans than they are with Democrats!

Voters may well have handed control of the House over to Republicans on Tuesday, but the Tea Party, not the gop, surely deserves much of the credit for this huge momentum shift. This conservative movement sprang into action during the first summer of Obama’s presidency largely because it felt abandoned by the Republican Party.

Soon-to-be House Speaker John Boehner admitted as much on Wednesday. “We are witnessing a repudiation of Washington, a repudiation of big government, and a repudiation of politicians who refuse to listen to the American people.”

Meanwhile, as politicians on both sides of the aisle dig in for what will assuredly be two years of nasty gridlock, big government just keeps getting bigger. The impending standoff between political parties may have pushed Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to move on a desperate, last-ditch effort to jolt the American economy back to life.

On Wednesday, the same day many Republicans were vowing to shrink government and reduce federal debt, the Federal Reserve unveiled a plan to buy $900 billion of U.S. government debt over the next eight months. In essence, the Fed will simply print money to “buy” debt.

Ordinarily, the central bank spurs economic growth by lowering short-term interest rates. But with those rates already hovering around zero, the Fed is left with no other option, except devaluing the currency by flooding the world with dollars in hopes that U.S. exports become less expensive and imports more expensive.

“Economists have a useful term for describing how much central bank money flows through an economy,” the Financial Post explains. “They call it the monetary base. This refers to money in public circulation or in commercial bank deposits held at the central bank. Does the tidal wave of unbacked U.S. dollars now flooding the monetary base of the United States really reflect greater confidence in the dollar’s value? This amount has soared from 800 billion to a dizzying 2.2 trillion dollars since 2008” (emphasis mine throughout).

The number of dollars in circulation, in other words, has nearly tripled in less than three years.

“The Fed’s plan has only one predictable consequence: inflation,” a senior economist at Euro Pacific Capital told the Washington Times. He called the plan a “snake oil” remedy.

Bill Gross, who manages the world’s largest mutual fund, said the Fed’s action put the dollar in danger of losing 20 percent of its value over the next few years. Said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), “Diluting the value of the dollar by continually increasing the supply of money poses an incalculable risk.”

Besides inflation, as we wrote on Wednesday, the other more dangerous risk there is in mass money printing, is trade war. China, which happens to own most of America’s debt, issued this stern response to the Fed’s action yesterday: “As long as the world exercises no restraint in issuing global currencies such as the dollar … then the occurrence of another crisis is inevitable, as quite a few wise Westerners lament.”

Once the world abandons the dollar as its reserve currency—and make no mistake, that is where this is headed: The U.S. economy is finished.

On Wednesday, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, from New Hampshire, said on cnbc that if the U.S. didn’t reduce deficit spending and pay down its debt, we will end up just like Greece. “Our status as a nation is threatened by what we’ve got coming at us in the area of deficit and debt. And it’s only a few more years, at the most, that we have to work with here before the market says, Sorry, your currency is something we cannot continue to defend.”

Senator Gregg, who serves as a ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, decided not to seek reelection this year, after serving 30 years as an elected official. “It’s time for me to move on,” he said during a television interview yesterday. Perhaps he knows there is little else that can be done to address the problem—except sound the alarm.

No Hope in Man

After the midterm elections of 2006, when the antiwar movement powered a Democratic takeover of Congress, we wrote that the “election results prove we are witnessing the demise of American global leadership. President Bush will not be able to accomplish anything of substance again.”

The same could be written about the latest election cycle. This time around, concerns about the economy were roughly twice as important as any other of the many problems facing America at home and abroad. And just like the last two election cycles, Americans voted for another dramatic shift to the other side of the political pendulum.

After his senatorial victory on Tuesday night, Tea Party favorite Rand Paul told an elated crowd of supporters, “We’ve come to take our government back!” For all we know, Paul may have borrowed that line from then Senator Barack Obama, who vowed during a 2008 campaign rally to “bring both parties together to rein in their power so we can take our government back!”

Yes, change is again coming to Washington. But no amount of change in human government will fix what is already broken. Very soon now, we can expect the accelerating pace of prophetic events to fully expose the fact that mortal men cannot solve the colossal problems facing America.

Jeremiah 17 says it is a curse to place our faith and trust in men. There is no hope in man! Our only hope is in the great Creator God who will soon set up and establish His Kingdom to rule over all the Earth during the wonderful World Tomorrow.