Watching the debate two days ago, I was struck by some things. First, Americans have turned the entire electoral process into a reality TV show like American idol. All that is missing is a panel of judges to give criticism and pointers to the contestants. Well, media spinners fill that role.

Second thing I noticed, both candidates are incapable of offering anything new. They keep flogging the same dead horses. Tax breaks for the rich, Obamacare, a burgeoning deficit (for which they blame each other when in reality decades of rule by both political parties are to blame for it), etc.

However, the third thing, and most alarming thing, is how economically inept the candidates are. Both are incapable of addressing the real root causes of the economic problems affecting the United States. The candidates were incapable of mentioning the simple fact that the American economy is in trouble because the United States consumes a lot more than it produces and satisfying that hunger for consumption means that the USA must manufacture products and produce commodities overseas.

Among the more stupid comments I heard was this Romney quote:

"But I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for."

This kind of quote is a reflection of the economic ineptitude of Romney and those who advise him on econmic matters. To say that the USA "borrows" from China to pay for the deficit is ludicrous. The real reason why the USA owes money to China is because American consumers buy 50 billion dollars of Chinese-made goods per month, while China barely buys any American-made goods. In order to balance the trade accounts, the American government is forced to issue billions of dollars in treasury bills to China. It is either that or hard currency (such as gold). Consequently, why would China buy American-made goods when they manufucture cheaply everything themselves? This is not about market protectionism, but about a simple economic reality that the manufacturer of goods has the economic power in his hands as opposed to the consumer of goods.

Mitt Romney is disingenous in playing the fear-mongering game. He never told the public that what they should really do is to stop buying Chinese-made goods. He also never told the public that the real problem is that American manufacturers continue to manufacture in cheap labour markets with lax legislation.

By Romney's logic, the USA is also borrowing money from Canada and Saudi Arabia to pay for the deficit. After all, those two are America's largest suppliers of oil and natural gas and every American is consuming those commodities. Should Romney tell people that the USA should stop borrowing from Saudi Arabia or Canada? There are other countries that sell commodities to the USA too.

Obama's ineptitude is evident in the fact that he was incapable of rebutting to Romney's comment. The closes Obama came to that was saying that tax breaks should go to companies that create jobs in America and not overseas, and this comment was largely ignored by the Media and dismissed by Romney as something that would hurt businesses.

This is not surprising since Romney himself "outsourced" production from his companies to overseas in the past and at least part of his multimillion dollar fortune came from profits derived by dismissing American workers and producing in cheap labour markets. Romney the hypocrite fear-mongers about China and makes a killing producing cheap over there. Why is it that Democrats say little about it? Because they are just as guilty of the same and nobody wants to kill the hen that laid the golden egg of maximum profits though cheap labour, and subsequent American unemployment.

Like I said before, this election (like most elections after Kennedy's death) is a choice between bad and worse, and politicians count on an apathetic and uninformed public to make the worst possible choice.