The Muldavian Solution

Copyright 2009 by madengineer3

No similarity should be drawn between these fictitious characters and any real life people. This is simply a story.

*

The presidential election had been very one sided. The Muldavian press had picked a favorite, early on, and had done their part to make sure their man won. Their favorite was Kar Amabed. His eloquence was incredible. He had more charisma in his little finger than most of the top bureaucrats combined. He had a secret advantage. He had no track record. As some commentators said "He just seemed to come out of nowhere! How could we have missed him?"

This was a brilliant ploy. If you have no record you can't be pinned down by previous statements. You couldn't even find a place where he delivered newspapers when he was a young boy. Kar had been very well picked by the Syndicate that was set to be the "power behind the throne". Because of his presidential looks and grace the press loved him. Beside that, he seemed to be a good solid middle of the road liberal, with a big heart.

The press gladly provided an insulating layer between him and his handlers in the Syndicate. After all, firm associations and business relationships with the Syndicate had to be hidden. The press, to give them some credit, had only a vague idea that a Syndicate even existed. They just knew that any negative comments had to come from the far radical right, "nut fringe". They were sure that "The Syndicate" was an invention of the far right. The hints around the edge suggested that Kar might be the front man for a group of his marginal "friends". Behind some closed doors his "friends" were suspected to be marginal because they had dubious backgrounds with ties that seemed to tunnel off in all directions. And those directions were such that the media didn't want to try to follow them. After all, it could be dangerous. In time the president's friends were quietly called "the syndicate" when people were being, dangerously, honest. Nobody from his state got into a position of power without the Syndicate approving of them.

The media had Kar's back. They prevented the full story of his probable beliefs from being known by all but a few independent people who were willing to do a lot of research on their own. But what could these few people do? After all, the monolithic media wouldn't print or broadcast any information that could be harmful to Kar. It didn't hurt that some of Kar's critics, who knew the most about him, simply disappeared.

The Syndicate had a group of rabble that they used to "persuade" difficult people to "play ball". Using a name from a much older organization called the brown shirts, and the symbol of the Ecology Party (a green tree) they wore shirts with a picture of a beautiful green tree growing out of brown soil. You didn't want to cross the "Tree People" which is what his street thugs were called.

Kar had been smart in how he ran his campaign. He ran as a centrist. He wanted to clean up the corruption in the capital, but he didn't want to badly rock the boat. He wanted to save the planet from the latest ecological fairy tale horror. And, most of all, he wanted to make the government assure the protection for all citizens from cradle to grave. He was the "people's candidate".

At the same time this was going on, the candidate for president from the other party was, an old "war horse". He was a sitting duck. The media would never fully explain what he, or his party, stood for. After all, the same media that were for Kar were against anything that got in the way of his election.

The crowning piece of electoral sabotage was arranged by some of "the syndicate's" behind the scene's masters. The party had rigged a financial emergency that only needed a trigger to set it off. They took several years to make sure that, once triggered, it was almost unstoppable. The most humorous part of this was that it was Kar's party who designed and passed into law all of the little pieces that made up the ready to happen crisis. Just four weeks before the election the trigger was activated.

Since Kar was a member of the party that was against the sitting president, he could blame the fake emergency on the other party. It was sweet! They triggered it in a rather unique way. They had, over several years, strong armed some of the major lending institutions to make loans to people that would not be able to pay the money back. This was done in the name of fairness. These bad debts were quietly sliced up into smaller pieces and sold as a new class of bonds. Lots of people bought these bonds because there was a good profit to be made by holding them. Also, because the loans were spread out over several types of these bonds it was believed that the risks in buying them were very low.

Then, just before the election, one of the big financial heavyweights, who bankrolled the Syndicate, sold out all his bonds at a big loss. It was estimated that he lost one hundred million yedies (the local currency) in that sale. He did it in a very unique way. Instead of slowly selling them off so that people wouldn't ask what was going on, he dumped his entire bond holdings in one big sale and told his brokers to get out of those bonds because they had no real collateral behind them. He took a loss, but effectively he bought the election! Because the brokers talked, those bonds effectively became worthless.

Since the entire blame could be laid at the feet of the current administration Kar was elected easily. He was duly sworn in and was now in the place where the Syndicate wanted him.

President Kar was now presiding over the Muldavian nation. He had, at his disposal, the military, the intelligence agencies, the top level of state police, and the Muldavian Central Bank.

Up until this financial panic, Muldavia had possessed one of the strongest currencies in the world. That was about to change. As soon as Kar was sworn into office he ordered the Central Bank to start printing money. His approach was almost unique. He printed enough money to cover the entire national debt. He effectively monitized the debt. The new bills were backed by the treasury bills that were owned by foreign governments. The money printed had effectively nothing behind it, so the value of everyone else's money was diluted. This let Kar "pay off" much of the Muldavian national debt using "cheap money". When the citizens of Muldavia saw that Kar was paying off the national debt, they gave him all the power he needed to "fix the economy". And "fix" it he did.

The press had been very careful to keep the Muldavian people in the economic dark. They thought that the national debt was less than twenty trillion yedies. In fact the real debt was nine times as great. The government had "promised" that funds would be available for road projects, medical insurance, pensions, schools, aid to poor families and so forth. The problem was that the government had never set aside the money to pay for any of these items. Well, that wasn't completely true. Initially they had set aside money for the pensions but a later president (in Kar's party) had decided that he wanted to spend the money on other items; so he stole it from the rightful owners (the Muldavian people).

The problem that Kar now faced was that the government would soon need to either pay off the debt (which it, currently, couldn't do) or default on the loans (which would be political suicide). Kar, however, had a plan in mind that would solve all of his personal problems. The fact that it would destroy the economic standing of almost every Muldavian citizen was of no concern.

The global economy had used the Muldavian currency as the basis for trade for years. The reason? Muldavia was rich and the value of their currency was stable; whereas other countries currencies varied all over the place. When the other nations saw that Muldavia was going to be in trouble, they started looking for a more solid currency. After much discussion many of the other countries decided that the currency of Chin was likely to be the most stable in the world. Why? Because without fanfare Chin's gross national product was greater than that of Muldavia. Chin only had a very small national debt. It was way less than ten percent of their gross national product. They had kept their currency, the "golder" of very low value compared to the yedi.

Kar decided to "deal with the devil" and set up a "gentleman's agreement" with the president of Chin. Chin would be pressured to raise the value of its golder and Kar would gut the value of the Muldavian currency. This was a win-win. Kar would be able to avoid defaulting on the Muldavian national debt and Chin's currency would become the new world standard "reserve currency". The fact that anyone who received a government check, had savings, owned most stocks, and such, would be forced into poverty was of no concern to Kar. After all, he was a socialist and almost all socialist revolutions came about during times of economic crisis.

Kar knew of only one, seemingly minor, problem. A large handful of the Muldavian people loved their country. In fact he actually had one minor and two major problems. He was totally unaware of the really dangerous problems.

Kar had set a date for the economic crash. It was to be five weeks before the next Muldavian presidential election. Unknown to Kar some of the most patriotic public servants worked around the president. They were the Protectors, the equivalent of Rome's Praetorian Guard. They were to be willing to take a bullet that was supposed to kill the president. They loved their country more than their own lives.

The Protectors had very close ties to Muldavia's military. They weren't close to the very top brass, as they were called. Most of those people were actually politicians at heart. But the vast majority of the troops were duty sworn to protect the Muldavian Charter, the rules that defined how the government was to operate.

The coup was well planned. The presidential helicopter was outfitted with remote controls, ostensibly to safely land the chopper if something happened to the pilot and co-pilot. Kar usually went to his private retreat on most weekends. There he was free from the observation of news types and he was safely surrounded by his guards. On the weekend that he was getting ready to pull the plug on the Muldavian economy he invited the vice president and his family to join him at the retreat. Since the vice president was in on the treasonous action that Kar was about to take he was glad to get out of the Muldavian capital.

The presidential helicopter had a true wall between where the pilots sat and where the politicians sat. After all the pilots shouldn't be listening to the political discussions of the passengers. The wall also prevented the presidential party from realizing that the pilot and co-pilot were animitronic stand-ins.

The chopper took off on schedule and was joined by the other choppers that were to act as decoys. The flight to the retreat was a short one. It was only about thirty minutes flying time. Kar noticed nothing until about ten minutes into the flight.

The Muldavian capital was a large city. It required vast supplies of heating oil, gasoline, natural gas and other items. To supply these needs there were two "tank farms" just outside the city. Each of them held about a month's supply of fuel. The most dangerous of the "tank farms" was that which held gasoline, aviation gasoline, and jet fuel.

The presidential chopper was almost over the gasoline "tank farm" when Kar noticed the problem. The presidential chopper, as well as that carrying the vice-president, went into steep high speed dives. The remote control pilot focused his attention on the tank with the X (Roman numeral Ten) on its top. It was the tank that had been equipped with capped Semtex explosives and an impact ignitor. The choppers crashed directly into the center of the X. The fireball could be seen fifty miles away.

At the same time that Kar's chopper went down the entire Supreme Court, cabinet, Czars, and members of the top military staff were quickly taken to "safe" locations. In fact they were now prisoners until the damage that Kar had done was taken care of. As a precaution, the military was put on high alert to prevent Chin from using the disruption as an excuse to "get even" with its small neighbors.

The other detail, that was not immediately made public was that the leadership of the media, that had been in Kar's pocket, the heads of the entertainment industry, and the far left leaning heads of academia; were arrested by the Federal Police for suspicions of treason.

It took a year of the new news media telling the people what Kar and his party had done and what they had been about to do before most of the people in the country understood that their poor voting choices had almost destroyed the country and the future of their children and grandchildren. As for Kar's followers who had been in on the treason they were given a very fitting sentence. There was a large stretch of unused land that was suitable for farming. It had been triple fenced and land mines had been placed between the fences. Good early twentieth century tools and farming implements had been provided. They had all the leadership upon which Kar had depended. To help them become self sustaining a large contingent of Amish farm people volunteered to teach them the joys of simple living. After all, working with your hands beats the firing squad.

It was then that the educational establishment began to again teach the fundamentals of Muldavian history and stress the responsibility of all citizens to vote carefully and prayerfully.

Could this happen? Would a nations citizens become so ill informed and lazy that they didn't care who they elected as long as they were promised things?

I'll let you be the judge of that.