If you have not yet read Part 1: If We're Going To Borrow Against The Future, Let's Borrow To Invest available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

But what if don’t invest in our future as outlined in part I?  What if the powers that be and system-wide inertia combine to simply deliver us more of the same going forward? 

What if we simply have a profound failure of leadership and none of that good stuff happens, and the next round(s) of QE simply fatten up the trading profits of large banks and hedge funds?

One sign you’ll have that we’re headed nowhere fast in the US is if the next election for president involves a Bush and a Clinton.  That will be a choice between status quo option A and status quo option B, which is no choice at all.

As Winston Churchill said about Americans, you can always count on them to do the right thing…after they’ve tried everything else. 

Unfortunately, we don’t have time in this story to try everything else first and if we don’t do things differently, then I see no other outcome besides a huge, systemic breakdown occurring across…