As the old saying goes, “We’re right down to where the hair is short.”

We’re broke. Let’s be honest – there’s no tomorrow if we don’t start using the brains God gave us. We need to create millions and millions of jobs, in a hurry, because things are already crashing down around our ears. Bailouts? Forget about it. They’ve never worked, and because these are the most critical times in our nation’s history, they won’t work now. Bailouts are a waste of time, effort and assets, and anyone who says otherwise is not telling the truth.

Remembering that the desperate Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Indonesians, South Americans and Europeans can undercut the price of anything that can be manufactured in this country, ask yourself what our options are. How can we put Americans back to work? How can we create the jobs needed to get this nation’s economy back on track? How can we create the jobs needed to restore our buying power, because without buying power we’re shackled. And hungry.

Are we hurting yet? Yes indeed. Today’s World Net Daily carried this report:

“The state of California has run out of money. Facing a $ 42 billion deficit, State Controller John Chiang told the Sacramento Bee he has already borrowed $ 21.5 billion to try to cover the state’s checks, but by Feb.1, there will be no more options left but to simply stop paying some of the bills – including tax refunds, welfare checks, student grants and other payments owed to California citizens …

“But even with the freeze beginning next week, California will still fall $ 346 million short for the month of February, forcing Chiang to consider something done only once since the Great Depression: issuing IOUs.”

“We have to make really horrible cuts, and we have to raise revenue,” assembly speaker Karen Bass told the Los Angeles Times. “We are just hoping whatever we get will help us avoid deeper cuts.”

But continued borrowing is not an option, Chiang said. If the cuts aren’t deep enough, California will be forced to issue those IOUs, he added. And California, Mr. Chiang reminds us, is often identified as the world’s eighth largest economy.

Well if that’s so, where does that leave the rest of us? Yes, we’re hurting. Today’s New York Times provided us with some grim economic news: New-home sales fell to their slowest pace on record, businesses cut their orders and jobless claims continued to rise …

“The data show clear declines in sectors as diverse as cars, computers, metals, and machinery,” Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a note. “The industrial recession is deep and broad, and there’s no prospect of any easing of the downward pressure anytime soon.”

At least he’s honest about it.

So is Paul Craig Roberts – but Mr. Roberts is also very blunt.

“A person might think that California’s plight would introduce some realism into Washington, DC, but it has not,” Mr. Roberts begins. “President Obama is taking steps to intensify the war in Afghanistan and, perhaps, to expand it into Pakistan …

“How long before Washington will be printing money? On January 28 Obama announced his $ 825 billion bailout plan. This comes on top of Bush’s $ 700 billion bailout of just a few months ago …

“As large as the bailouts are – a total of $ 1.5 trillion in four months – the amount is small in relation to the reported size of the troubled assets that are in the tens of trillions of dollars. How do we know that by June there won’t be another bailout, say $ 950 billion?

“Where will the money come from? Obama’s bailout plan, added to the FY 2009 budget deficit he has inherited from Bush, opens a gaping expenditure hole of about $ 3 trillion. Who is going to purchase $ 3 trillion of US Treasury bonds?

“Not the US consumer. The consumer is out of work and out of money …

“Not America’s foreign creditors …

“If not, there’s only the printing press. The printing press would turn a deflationary depression into an inflationary depression. Unemployment combined with rising prices would be a killer …

“All the Obama regime sees is a “credit problem.” But the crisis goes far beyond banks’ bad investments. The United States is busted. Many of the state governments are busted. Homeowners are busted. Consumers are busted. Jobs are busted. Companies are busted.

“And Obama thinks he has the money to fight wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“How can President Obama even think about fighting wars half way around the world while California cannot pay its bills, while Americans are being turned out of their homes, while, as Business Week reports, retirees will work throughout their retirement (assuming that there will be jobs), while careers are being destroyed and stores and factories shuttered …

“Before Obama gets in any deeper, he must ask his economic team where the money is coming from. When he finds out, he needs to tell the rest of us.”

Unfortunately, at this point, neither his economic team nor any other group of economists have even the slightest idea of “where the money is coming from.” They’ve hit a brick wall. There is no way out of this mess without an ace-in-the-hole. We’re “busted” and our “factories are shuttered”.

[It all comes down to building patented container ships, doesn’t it? There’s no other salvation.]