What started with Cash for Clunkers has turned into a slew of government spending programs the likes of which we have never seen...

--Cash for Codgers--another $250 buy off of seniors who won't be receiving Social Security COLAs

--Cash for First-Time Homebuyers--the current program is riddled with more than 100,000 fraudulent applications, so by all means, please extend the program for any scammers who haven't had their chance get on board!

--Cash for Clubbers--allowing the purchase of road-worthy golf carts...no, I'm not kidding.

If you aren't convinced that the government's printing of money (backed by nothing more than thin air) for all these programs is not a catastrophe in the making, then please read "Lords of Finance," a book written by Liaquat Ahamed.

I'm reading it right now and it is fascinating.

It chronicles the financial misdeeds of Europe during and after World War I. And I suggest you read it during daylight hours. Bedtime reading may cause nightmares!

Did you know that before the US dollar, it was the English pound sterling, which was the reserve currency of the world? Printing "bogus" pounds to finance the war against the Germans led to the rise of a GOLD-BACKED dollar instead.

The book details how the collapse of the German mark and inflation brought the mark to over 1 trillion to the US dollar in the 1920's.

I believe we are headed in this direction unless we find some fiscally disciplined people to elect and soon. We are painting ourselves into a corner that only has two possible solutions:

1.) Deflation - which would throw hundreds of thousands more Americans out of work or

2.) Devaluation - which would make savers' bank and securities accounts worth even less than last year's stock market crash.

Since John Maynard Keynes is once again in fashion in Washington let me share a quote of his from his end of World War I bestseller, "The Economic Consequences of Peace."

"Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency."

Hey, Washington! While you're throwing around all sorts of Keynesian theories to justify your unbridled pork projects and voter bribes, you'd do well to remember this one.

Here are a dozen more ways the government is wasting your hard-earned money right now.