Murphy's law-or shit happens

Last fall I wrote this post in which I decried the U.S. government bailouts of banks and generally the whole idea of an expensive stimulus package financed by deficit spending, as I argued there might be an unexpected catastrophe to deal with in the coming year. This is called Murphy's law-disasters tend to happen in series. In particular, I mentioned the possibility of a flu pandemic.

Well, here it is. It is not yet entirely clear if the current outbreak of swine flu in Mexico will indeed turn out to be the next flu pandemic, similar to the "Hong Kong" flu of 1968 that killed roughly a million people. But at the very least, this is a good reminder that, in the words of Forrest Gump, "shit happens," and precisely, the government's main job it is to take care of this. Any expenditures other than public health, education, transport, law enforcement and public safety should be avoided at all cost.

If the swine flu does indeed turn into a pandemic, this could cost the U.S. government far more than either the economic stimulus package or the bank bailouts and ultimately sink the U.S. economy even further. The problem is, the U.S. government is now completely broke and may simply no longer have the resources to deal with a massive outbreak of flu with hundreds of thousands of potential casualties...