Max came in the back door and I said, “I see the Senate didn’t follow your advice on Fannie and Fred, Max. They voted to keep Chris and Barney’s playtoys alive and unreformed.”

“Yes,”he grumped, “and for the first time, McCain actually had a good idea on both those Frankensteins, shut ‘em down. And instead, Dodd, who should be in prison, wants Geithner to do something really radical and revoluntionary.”

“What’s that?” I asked, puzzled.

“Conduct a study,” Max answered in amazement. “What I want to know is just what the hell has Geithner been doing for the last year and a half, hanging out at the pool hall?”

“They are still bleeding money are they not?”

“Oh course they are!” Max almost shouted. “One hundred and forty-five billion and counting. And you know what that highbinder Dodd said yesterday, actually said on the sanctified floor of the Senate?”

“Something monumental I ‘spose?”

Max was getting more agitated. “He actually had the gall to say, ‘We all could have done a better job.’ A better job? That’s the biggest understatement since the Japs watched Hiroshima go up in a cloud of vapor and said, ‘Dang! We shouldn’t have attacked Pearl Harbor !’”

I said, “I don’t know how long taxpayers are going to put up with this stuff, Max. There probably isn’t a person in this country with higher than an eighth grade education that doesn’t want those two white elephants to go away. Debt has already up to 60% of our gross national product. If we don’t shut off the red ink, we’re going to go the way of Greece .”

Max sat down, looking at the floor and nodding. “You know something? Evan Bayh and Russ Feingold actually voted with all the Republicans for reform of Freddie and Fannie. Two Democrats.”

“I’m not surprised that Bayh voted for reform,” I commented. “He’s been one of the more level-headed Dems in the Senate for a long time. Apparently Feingold is afraid of what the country is doing as much as we are if he voted with McCain.”

Max was silent for a moment, then he spoke. “ Greece ’s debt to GDP ratio is 125%. Italy ’s is 115%. Germany ’s ratio is 77%. Greece owes $400 billion. Portugal owes $175 billion. Spain owes $819 billion and Italy , dear old Italy , owes $2 trillion. The European Union has pledged a $1 trillion fund to take care of the debt crisis. Somehow, that seems a bit on the skimpy side.

“And as I said, our own debt ratio to GDP is 60%.”

“Max made a laughing noise down in his throat. “If someone sneezes, we all are going to be in deep kimchi, my friend.”

“I wonder if the civil servants will riot in the streets like they did in Greece .”

“I don’t think so,” he replied. “the union won’t stand for it. I don’t think Congress will attempt to cut their salaries like the Greeks. They’ll just dig into the Social Security Trust Fund and raise taxes on the rich.”

I chuckled. “You’re being facetious again, Max. They’ve already raped the trust fund into non-existence. And of course, by the rich, you mean everyone who makes over $35,000 a year, right?”

“Of course,” he replied. “I live in the real world, not Alice ’s Wonderland.”

Max came walking up while I was mowing the front yard. Welcoming the interruption, I went inside, got us a couple of beers and we sat in the shade on the bench I bought on sale at Kroger’s last year.

“Did you see the paper this morning?” Max asked brightly, “ Venezuela is running out of coffee.”

“ Venezuela is running out of coffee?” I blurted incredulously. Then I stopped to think about it for a moment and said, “The Chavistas’ socialism, of course.”

Max laughed out loud. “Of course! It reminds me of that saying variously attributed to Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman or Mark Twain about the federal government being in charge of the Sahara desert. In five years there would be a shortage of sand.”

“I suppose it was predictable,” I mused. “What with runaway inflation and price controls; shortages follow as surely as night follows day.”

“That’s it in a nutshell,” Max replied. “According to the paper, inflation has been running 30% annually for the last two years. The people were getting a little ticked off, so Chavez imposed price controls. Therefore, the predictable happened. If people had to grow their food or coffee at a loss, they quit growing it. Those that did continue to grow coffee and food crops exported it across the border to Columbia so they could make some kind of profit. When coffee started to run low, Chavez had his troops invade two of the major coffee roasters and announced over his controlled airways that the shortage was the fault of the roasters and nationalized them.”

“He actually blamed it on the roasters?” I asked, laughing. “How can they roast what they don’t have?”

Nax shook his head. “With the arrogance of most socialist leaders, Chavez believed the poor knuckle-dragging slobs in the street would swallow his story. But back in April, one of the newspapers reported the 2009-2010 coffee crop had fallen 16.6% from a year earlier. It appears that Chavistas don’t know how to grow coffee any better than they can run a country.”

“The real tragedy is that the Venezuelans are suffering and all this was so predictable when they elected him,” I said. "Are they heading for economic collapse?"

"Unless someone bails them out, the concensus is that they are," Max answered.

“The kicker is the gross national product. Chavez has been taking over more and more means of production as he goes along. Now, when the GNP of South America is growing, the International Monetary Fund says that Venezuela’s will contract this year by 2.6%. Confiscations of private businesses are still growing but the Chavista socialists have no idea how to run them. They are even putting 12-year-olds to work.”

“Hell’s kitchen,” I exclaimed. “And I suppose Ahmandenijad is just standing by in anticipation, ready to take over. Chavez has been licking him and the Cubans all over like new calves and selling his soul to them. It looks to me like things are going to get much dicier before they get better. Whatever happened to the Monroe Doctrine?”

“I don’t think the current proprietors of our national store are too concerned about what happens to our southern neighbors, Max said. “ Honduras proved that.”

“In spades,” I agreed.

You remember when we were talking about the public employees in California ?” Max asked.

“Sure, I remember,” I replied. “We were talking about the deficit hole the Golden Staters have dug for themselves by failing to summarily execute several politicians.”

“Ha!” Max cried. “You must be a Tea Partier, advocating violence, water boarding and the worship of Hitler and David Duke?”

“Max, have you been hanging around the Democrats’ Ministry of Propaganda? Why are you asking me about California anyway?”

“Well sir, as one columnist put it, ‘We have seen the future and it works – for certain people,’” he announced. “He was talking about the San Francisco city employees.”

“Are they making the big bucks? I asked.

Waving a copy of a newspaper, Max said, “The San Francisco Chronicle did a story on just how overpaid the city's employees are. Their average yearly salary is $93,000 before benefits, mind you. A newly retired deputy police chief (not even the city's top cop) made $516,118 in one year and bear in mind hizzoner the mayor made only $250,903. In fact, 28 city employees made more than the mayor.”

“Hizzoner is having to make do with a quarter mill, huh?” I remarked. “Tough!” I added.

Max snickered. “You recall they calculate retirement at 90% of the final year’s total pay? Before Deputy Chief Charles Keohane retired, he saved up vacation time, comp time and sick days and got paid off for them during that final year. All told, he was paid something over $500,000 for that final year. Happy retirement, Chuck!”

“And how about this?” he went on pointing at the newspaper. “Firefighters in San Francisco have a base salary of $102,648, while even lowly payroll clerks start at $54,314.”

Max put down the paper and leaned back in his chair, folding his hands on his chest, fingers interlocked. You know, liberals have raised hell from time immemorial about "corporate" greed. For the sake of argument, the public employees are supposed to be dedicated to working for the public good. But if you say a corporation can feel the very human urge to acquire inordinate wealth, wouldn’t you admit that that such a thing as ‘government" greed exists?”

“Max,” I said, “the public-sector unions are no different from industrial unions. They leverage their money and membership to enrich legislatures, city councils and county boards that are usually friendly to them. Those politicians and bureaucrats, in turn, lock governments into contracts, particularly where pensions are concerned, that are almost impossible to break.”

“You ain’t kidding, Max said, smiling ruefully. Oh by the way, the city by the bay is trying to figure out how to live with their current $483 million budget shortfall. It is instructive to see that some other cities in California have had to cut real services, such as policing, in order to stay solvent. The higher paid employees don’t lose anything, but the lower-paid employees are being cut back. And the private sector is suffering, laying off much more than the public sector because they have to worry about meeting payrolls and paying the light bill and just surviving.”

“Not to mention competition,” I said smugly.

“What did you say?” Max asked.

“The private sector employers have to compete in the marketplace while the public sector doesn’t,” I pointed out. “The lack of competition means the public sector doesn’t have to worry about keeping their costs to a competitive range. They can pay anything they please, and apparently they do, rolling over for union demands like those 90% retirement plans. Now the states and municipalities are learning they have finite resources with which to meet demands that have become virtually unlimited. Now they are getting cold chills realizing the halcyon days are over. If they keep increasing taxation to meet non-discouraged demands, one day they will hit a sticking point and get voted out of office or perhaps they’ve already arrived..”

“That is, unless it’s San Francisco where the masochistically-inclined taxpayers don’t mind making municipal employees into royalty and maintaining a workers’ paradise,” Max said.

“Good point,” I conceded.