Government: Destroying Your Wealth a Trillion Dollars at a Time
by Thomas Del BeccaroRecent financial headlines provide a remarkable glimpse into America’s future if we stay on the same track we are now. From Bloomberg news we learned: “US Stocks fluctuate amid concerns European debt crisis hasn’t run course.” Meanwhile, the IMF predicted that the “US national debt will soon reach 100% of GDP.” Sadly, the World’s, the United States’ and California’s (16% of the US Economy and the 9th largest economy in the world) financial prospects are far worse than those headlines recognize.
The US economy is nearing $15 trillion in gross domestic product (GDP) per year. The national debt it carries on the books is nearly that high and will certainly reach it, and far surpass it, within 2 years given the trillion dollar deficits that are predicted as far as the eye can see. Of course, off the books, in accounting that would make Enron blush, the US government has $75 trillion or more in long term unfunded liabilities. On a more short term basis consider this: the US Government revenues are running below $3 trillion dollars per year – yet its debt is over $13 trillion and growing. In other words, the existing US debt is 4 to 5 times its current revenue.
Imagine if you will, if your credit card debt was 4 times your current income and the income you are likely to earn in each of the next 4 years. There is not a bankruptcy attorney in the country that would not tell you that it is time to declare bankruptcy. For its part, California is projected to have unfunded liabilities as high as $600 billion or 6 ½ times it current revenues. Sadly for the US and California taxpayers, bankruptcy is simply not an option.
All of which brings us to the European debt crisis – which has anything but run its course. Indeed, German Chancellor Merkel said this about the recent bailout of Greece: “We didn’t do more than buy time . . .” to get their collective government houses in order. Meanwhile, USA Today, whose financial reporting is rather blunt at times, featured this headline: US “Investor fears ignite sell-off.”
Within the article, US Today warns that:
“There’s no shortage of worries . . . David Kotock, chief investment officer at Cumberland Advisors blames government meddling. ‘Markets have stopped looking at Fed policy, interest rates, tax rates and economic data’ he says. ‘The markets are worried about politically driven decisions. Investors are always worried about political damage, but this time, there is a huge concentration of political risk.’”
In other words, to paraphrase James Carville: “It’s the government stupid” – or perhaps the stupid government which has bungled economics so badly that there is a crisis of confidence a la Jimmy Carter.
Of course, the troubles of Europe will lead to lower economic activity in America as their sliding economy results in reduced trade around the World. Even so, there is also one other stark result that cannot be overlooked: Amidst economic troubles around the globe, America should be a safe haven for worldwide investors – but it is not – and as a result, your investment portfolio is suffering, i.e. your wealth is being destroyed.
It is becoming a simple fact of life that America is no longer the gold-standard of investment. For a century America was the land of investment opportunity with the US dollar the currency of choice. As the US public debt has exploded over the last decade, however, headlines have reached the mainstream press to the effect that the US dollar may be dropped as the international standard, the far east is a better investment despite some of its communist/centralized government regimes and the US is heading in the same direction as Greece.
The Obama Administration, along with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid obviously do not take those warnings seriously – lest how could they seriously propose and enact budgets with trillion dollar deficits with no plan to reduce the mounting debt? Obviously they don’t and as a result, the US economy is treated as suspect and the investment dollars which are leaving Europe are not coming here and enriching the United States. So, as they fiddle while the US investment outlook darkens, government is destroying American wealth – your wealth – a trillion dollars at a time.
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The Obama Administration, along with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid obviously do not take those warnings seriously
The Hussein regime just ignores any such warnings as they're the orchestrator of destruction. Nazi Peelousy? This dingbat suggested that because of 'healthcare' people could quit their 'day jobs' to be 'artists'. That shows you just how impaired her judgment really is. For if said 'artist' was worth a damn their art would be their day job.
Thanks a lot American Voters.
You voted for HopyChange I hope your happy with it.
The rest of us who have a brain can take care of ourselves no matter how desperate the times.
I'm not to worried about me and mine but once you Hopychange nincompoops start to feel the real pain there is concern over what you will do. AKA Greece
Obama and the communists don't care what kind of money is spent and what damage through inflation, deflation, defeicts and pork spending. They are purposfully trying to take the US dollar and the world economy down with them, so they can use the crisis to create the world in their image. I might even go as far as beleiving that Obama hasn't helped in the oil spill just to blame it all on capitalism and greed, meanwhile killing the oceans. They blame the tea party for being violent, if the USA economy does fall I predict the worse violence and call to arms ever seen by human kind. With the White house and Congress and the senate in the cross hairs.
Smells better in here since the registration….
Obama and his ilk know exactly what they are doing. Cloward-Piven as a path to "enlightened governance". We have to get these clowns impeached… nothing'll be left in November at this rate. Union bailouts on the horizon…
Why is our deficit only important to democrat's when a republican spends money?
Am I the only one to notice that this debt never existed before January 2009? Until then the budgets were balanced and politicians were honorable and women were virtuous. Now what could have happened then to change America so drastically? What is only difference today from the 200+ years we have been borrowing money?
You got that right!!….(The nincompoops will be out on the streets in a heartbeat, looting, and
demanding their freebies..)
The dims get less of the pork pie, and they get jealously angry. Seems they want it all.
This has been the plan of the left for decades, to impair consumerism, thus de-facto spreading the wealth to the rest of the world. However, egalitarianism is completely devoid of real world logic, and like most things done by inexperienced eggheads, this will turn to shit, or Detroit. We have much work to do America!
I was planning on retiring. Now, who knows how much more blood money I'll need.
Current debt to GDP ratio: 90.57941%… 42,43,44,45… http://www.usdebtclock.org/
What's the difference when you are flying at an altitude of 5,000' or 35,000'
it's still flying,………..
I think you need a little oxygen,….ay Mickey
posted this elsewhere but I think it fits here as well.
I'm reminded about the scene in Godfather II when Hagen tells Michael that,………….
"Ross really played this one good",……………….
I will go to my grave believing this entire mess was orchestrated by the socialists of the world,…………
Obama's roll in this was to deliver America.
All we will have left for the survival of our families will be the Federal cheese they will be handing out,………
Than we will have no choice but to embrace the new world order.
"the REDS really played this one good"
Private pay shrinks to 41%….Who will be paying the taxes for all these handouts?… http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/income/2010...
The debt existed before 2009. The difference is in degree and acceleration. Stupid past practices do not make current practices any less stupid.
This is becoming more like the accepted idea of mine. Who can believe that Obama and his advisors are acting in a way other than to intentionally cause this.
The Stimulus, Health care bill, bailout, and car company purchases all spend the same trillion over and over again.
They must have figured "Americans think the government has an extra trillion dollars up their sleeve. They don't understand the concept of a trillion dollars. So we will keep spending one here, one there, and soon we will control everything and the private sector will have to ask us permission to stay in business."
No difference in spirit. But huge practical difference. This time the debt is one so huge, none of our lenders could ever believe we might ever pay back any of it. This time it could lead to the collapse of our dollar a la Weimar. Before, we were just an irresponsible borrower…now we're filing bankruptcy.
Let's think this thing through a bit. The euro is going away. The world with Barak the magic moron is becoming more unstable. Commodities are attracting more capital because they are real and useful, and denominated in dollars. Other than the government, with the printing press on full tilt, which in all likelihood will change hands in 6 months to Republicans, the dollar is going to become the worlds best bet in the short run 6 – 12 months. As Obama continues to spend their comes a point when even the dopiest Chinese communist will demand a higher rate of return for the risk, and that will be the progenitor of the next "crisis." If you were able to time travel and you were sitting on a NYC sidewalk in 1968 you would think we were not going to make it, we did, and we will. Right now the clock is ticking in our favor and Americans are realizing that betting on Republicans, however flawed in seemingly minor ways, are not liberals, closet communists, or open socialists. Yes this will get tough, the truth is, it will always be tough when you are the biggest kid on the block – even after this ongoing financial nightmare we still are.
At the time of this writing, the Dow is now down 350 points this week, and its only TUesday morning — pre-market open. We're now trading below 10,000. We're now BELOW the low point of the 20-min. 1000-point plunge a few weeks ago.
And with Obama now proposing MORE bailouts for teachers and unions, its just going to make the financial markets even more skittish!
They are INTENTIONALLY trying to sink the USA ship! What else could explain such brazen incompetence?
Unemployment is rising again. Meredith Whitney predicts 4 million small biz and local government lay-offs over the next 12 months. Wall Street titan Richard Russell tells his investors to get out of stocks because you won't recognize the country by year's end! All over Wall Street there is chatter of an impending crash! John Hussman says there are alarm bells ringing by important leading indicators of a crash of historic magnitude. If you have investments, move to all CASH ASAP, say these finance gurus!
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."
Margaret Thatcher
The difference is that for the 25 years preceding January 2009 the deficit averaged 2.5% of GDP. After 2009, the deficit is in double digits, capiche? The adminstration is expecting 3.9% average deficits for the next 25 years, but basing that on average growth of 3.5%, and on the Commie-care costs phony numbers, which is as big a f*cking joke as President Clownie as come up with so far.
But of course, it ends in November anyway.
And we're making ready a place next to Carter on Mt. ShittyPresident.
Just a reminder for the stealth Obama supporters on this website who think the ILLEGAL PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES ought to get a free pass on his ineligibility!http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tCAffMSWSzY#...
HE PRAISES THE MUSLIMS AND APOLOGIZES FOR AMERICA!
This is most definitely the first ILLEGAL PRESIDENT to openly and in public display that he is beholden to a genuine conflict of interest and conflict of ALLEGIANCE! If his allegiance is in question then it's appropriate to ask…."Who is he loyal too?"
[...] Continued here: » Government: Destroying Your Wealth a Trillion Dollars at a Time … [...]
If memory serves we were a debtor nation to England until WW1. After WWII, we were much better off(we had cash and carry until FDR instituted lend lease). After the war the world owed us(war debt) It wasn't until say 1971 that the US truly began its down hill slide to debtor nation status. Now in 2010, we are the largest debtor nation in the world. And spin city keeps right on rolling the presses and spending that monopoly money, not backed by anything but thin air at this point.
1971 is when Nixon took the US off the gold standard for foreign debt repayment(possibly due to exhausted gold reserves) and we began to sell treasury bonds instead. It's been downhill ever since. We are financially bankrupt.
Conspiratorial nonsense. Communism was discredited 25 years ago and is no threat except in your mind. Like FDR, Obama was elected to save free enterprise from itself. It was the failure of unregulated capital markets that created this mess, not the Nazis or Communism or Socialism or any other ism. It was all us, and until we take responsibility for our actions nothing is going to change.
The US Debt clock will surpass $13 trillion probably sometime today!
Wonder if the "guy with fat fingers" screwed the pooch again.
LOL!
Most of us on Wall Street knew that the "fat fingers" story was a ruse all along! It was just too quick and too convenient. There were much more plausible explanations for that fast plunge.
Thanks for a touch of humor in what is looking like a more dour financial market every day!
The economic chickens are beginning to return home to roost! Dow is now down 200+ points again today!
Bada boom.
The debt under Roosevelt began climbing long before the Lend-Lease Act was passed in 1941. By then our gross federal debt was already over 50% of GDP. By the end of WWII the debt had shot up to 120% of GDP and declined under every post war president until 1981 when Ronald Reagan was elected. When Carter left office the debt had fallen to 38 % of GDP and has never been that low since.
The gold standard effectively ended in 1933 when Roosevelt outlawed the ownership of gold. After WWII the price of gold was set at $35 an ounce where it never changed until Nixon deregulated it in 1971. So even before then we had to borrow money.
Our currency is backed by the "full faith and credit" of the United States. But if that's not good enough for you I'll take any of the greenbacks you don't want off of your hands.
I guess the president could have cut spending and let the banks and the auto industry fail and let us slide into a depression, but that wouldn't have made anyone other than right wing purists happy. The deficits are a direct result of the economic collapse under GWB. So if you don't like them, you shouldn't tank the economy.
Watch that filthy mouth.
Then you need to steal it. Obama is working on step two.
Get your "Next Time, Vote American!" and other great anti-O stickers and gear athttp://www.keep2theright.com
Here's the bad news: Our economy is not in good shape.
Here's the good news: Everyone else is in much worse shape then we are.
Just out of curiosity, what are those other plausible explanations?
I don't believe that. Everything feels bleak when the economy is not creating jobs. But it is growing again and the stuff we have put off buying for two years is wearing out. We can still grow our way out of this debt just as we did after WWII.
This administration spits in the face of the common American and there is not a damn thing that can be done about it. Without a complete removal of those that infest and infect, America is doomed to be like the rest of the world. Mediocre.
[...] the original post here: » Government: Destroying Your Wealth a Trillion Dollars at a Time … Read full story » 25. May, [...]
Bailouts merely extended the inevitable failure of unsustainable economic practices.
I don't recall the country spiraling into chaos when Studebaker and AMC folded. Is your contention that had companies been allowed to fail, no companies would have rushed to fill the void? Really?
"………….It was all us………….."
I sure wish you were right on this one there Mickey,.but,……….
with all these screens and keys that our modern world has evolved into,………
all of us has lost its' identity.
Today life is like a gang fight (free for all),….
ya gotta keep on eye on the overall situation as well as the guy in front of you,…………
even though you are kicking ass, being cold cocked puts you back to square one.
and ink is so easy to replenish.
"Stupid past practices do not make current practices any less stupid." They do when you're counting on perpetuating the lie that your political opponent's sins are worthier than your own, of condemnation, in the relentless pursuit of the political upper hand. 'Sort of like "Wuh, wuh, you're a BIGGER poopyhead!"
I sure get tired of the rhetorical contortions these jackasses try to put the rest of us through as they try to make us live with THEIR delusions–like it's not getting hard enough to find the truth. But, then, I guess that's the plan.
It's a diversionary tactic, that the left has perfected because, coupled with the debasement of education, the public usually falls for it. Hence the ability to project blame backwards as you're royally making things worse today.
President Obama's New Czar, Alfred E. Neuman of Homeland Insecurity says not to worry about the problems. His new programs will put people in a state of numbness, so it just won't matter!
http://spnheadlines.blogspot.com/2010/03/homeland...
Keep smiling!
Sorry Mickey,…..this is different and you know it,…………
even when we were experiencing the full effects of the Carter administration,………..
I never felt the same way, I dare say, most of us are feeling now.
Somehow I always believed that thing would turn around,………….
that faith allowed us to grow our family.
what about your,….. "200' year,…… take in the beginning of this thread,….there Mickey
even Obama doesn't blame Bush for what happened 200 years ago.
you are one funny guy.
You are older now so if feels more threatening. I still have faith in the system. I believe that well regulated capital markets are the finest economic engine designed by man, and even though we have lost our way for the past 30 years, we will bounce back. And we will be smarter and stronger on the other side.
You make no sense… again.
I'm sure you would agree the debt is out of hand. There has been a metamorphic change in many of us who now are paying a lot more attention to politics. You can thank bush II and obama with their corporate bailout's. Nothing like a little shaking to wake someone up. Your argument on "when" the debt became an issue is irrelevant. If you truly care about this country you'd drop that rhetoric and move to a position to supporting those in political office who will fix it.
you mean like when Coolidge and Harding cut Gov't spending by 50% and reduced the unemployment from 12% in 1920 to 2% in 1923? Study some ACTUAL history, and you will see that after FDR took office, the ONLY thing that ended the Great Depression was WW II. NOT the New Deal; it made things WORSE.
Different time, completely different situation.
The problem with the New Deal is it didn't provide enough federal spending. It took the greatest government spending program in the history of the world (WWII) to get us back to full employment and out of the depression. You make my point for me.
How can all the geniuses within the beltway not see that spending appreciably more than you have is the road to self-destruction?
Most people I know carry a little debt, but it is in proportion to their earnings. They don't go out and max 10 different credit cards within a year's period and then expect the tooth fairy to pick up the tab.
I think shooting for "mediocre" right now would be an accomplishment, actually – I'm afraid the free-fall we're in is aiming lower than that.
The bigger they are, they harder they fall.
The "hopeychange" nincompoops honestly are oblivious to our impending fiscal disaster. They showed up to the polls because they were bedazzled by the promises of a propped up charlatan.
I don't know about the other explanations, but I do know that any sale of shares as large as the one that was "mistakenly" made would have prompted an "Are you sure?" safety feature in the computer. In other words, the "fat finger" theory is utter nonsense. As to the real cause, I don't know. There isn't enough information, but to say it was "accidental" is pretty darn naive.
My concern is that when events such as this fall out of the news cycle, under the rug they go. As someone that saves and investe, I find it critical to stay up on tyhis stuff. Conspiricy theories and all.
Something was definitely amiss in that situation, but I agree, under the rug it goes. I'm waiting for the same thing to happen with this Sestak bribe-gate. The MSM will try to wait it out.
hope you are so right about the other side there Mickey,……but,……….
this clown does not want to take us there,……………
he wants to take us where,…..
"…..the finest economic engine designed by man….." is eliminated.
"…..Am I the only one to notice that this debt never existed before January 2009? Until then the budgets were balanced and politicians were honorable and women were virtuous. Now what could have happened then to change America so drastically? What is only difference today from the 200+ years we have been borrowing money……."
ah,…… memory,………. it puts a burden on people sometimes.
Markets without rules are not free, they are chaos. And if you don't regulate the bad behavior out of the markets you risk becoming a victim. We were victims of unregulated banking behavior in 2007 and that needs to change so we don't have a repeat ten years from now.
I have looked high and low and can't find an answer to either of these questions:
1) What happens when a nation does go broke? Zimbawe?
2) what happens if the global economy collapses simultaneously? Is it just a matter of the tide lowered all ships, and everything is still as before essentially?
Please, help me figure it out, because I can't find anything beyond it will be "bad", "dire" etc. what exactly that means, no one is hazarding a guess.
The market eschews bad behavior went government isn't distorting said market.
But let's examine your 2007 remark: what were these toxic assets? And what regulation (hint: think 1977) allowed for those toxic assets to even exist? Also, do you deny the link between regulation of Democratic congresses and banks being pressured to give mortgages to people who, by any accounting standards, had no business receiving them? Or is there no link?
You missed my point and then failed to make one of your own. So what is different now?
Hint: It's the black president.
Ah, the tired old "racist" meme. Rich.
By 2007 we had less government regulation in financial markets than at anytime since the Great Depression. The results cannot be denied… a banking meltdown.
So we tried to let the marketplace ferret out the bad actors and it didn't work.
As one of my favorite local talk show hosts, Lee Rodgers, used to say, "If Obama really is trying to destroy the economy, tell me, what would he be doing differently?"
I'll bet you are. You need to find new friends.
Yes! Now if we step in troll poop, we at least know which troll!
Wait a minute…I thought our economy was courageously pulled back from the precipice of disaster? And if it wasn’t for the heroic actions of ‘this administration’ we would have entered an even greater depression? You don’t think we would have been misled, would you? Nah!
Don’t assume Greece can’t happen here. If people riot when their team wins a championship, imagine the response when the government starts handing out IOU’s to the welfare state.
The nations we owe come to collect on their debt is what I see happening once we have passed the point of no return. China will line up the oil tankers along the Kalifornia Coast for drilled oil. Cargo ships will fill with timber including the Redwoods and barges will fill up with commodities mined from the mountains as well as wheat and corn and all other stable agricultural commodities. The ships will return with new reading materials from mainland China most notably Chinese for DUMMIES and new Propaganda posters extolling Communism. Our universities will be required to teach in Chinese and all the Hotels will be filled with vacationing Party Leaders from the new MOTHERLAND. They will attempt to melt down all guns and take control of all military equipment. The jails will have seditious dissidents to overflowing and executions will become very commonplace.
Please explain how taking money out of one pocket and putting it another pocket makes a difference? Does it work for you? Are you your own ATM? Just keep shifting money pocket to pocket and think you've got more money?
Your argument lacks logic. It assumes that lack of regulation alone caused the crisis, which is stunningly ignorant of the complexity of what happened. It also assumes that regulation is necessarily good, and that free markets are necessarily bad, two assertions that defy logic. Regulation would only be a good if it was carried out by saints, but the reality is that politicians are on the other end of the behavior spectrum.
The crisis was caused by politicians being ignorant of generally accepted accounting principles, compounded by the exploitation of the market by politically connected insiders (Goldman Sachs, I'm looking at you) who were able to exploit loopholes that were created by–you guessed it– "regulation". In a free market, the businessman trying to cheat people has no customers, because without politically created loopholes to exploit, their cheating would be exposed to the light of day. Companies that should fail would, allowing stronger, better managed companies to step into the void. Regulation distorts every phase of the market, and opens it to manipulation by those who fill campaign coffers.
You'll bet I am what?
At whose cost were all those bailouts? Who bears the burden? It would seem consumers(taxpayers) are just going to fork over more for higher priced consumer goods and an eventual increased tax burden to bailout the government. The "bailouts" are more realistically nothing more than an additional debt burden that we will be forced to carry. No matter how you spin it.
What do you think an economy is? When you spend a dollar the impact is far more reaching than just your dollar going into the pocket of a merchant. It cycles through the economy and might get spent 15 times, and each occurrence increases our GDP output.
That is why stimulus is so important in a recession. When consumers stop spending and bands stop lending and employers stop hiring, the government becomes the spender of last resort.
Tired of the racist "meme"
It's our economy. We ignored the bad behavior of the banks so we get to pay for it. We can't allow them to destroy it. There is no one to blame but ourselves.
Yeah. It's one of the more intellectually lazy arguments I've ever come across. Nothing more than a diversionary tactic to discredit a person with an opposing viewpoint. Why debate the message when it's easier to go shrill on the messenger.
In other words, the "racist" meme is the last resort of those with nothing better to say.
That doesn't change the fact that I truly believe that racism is the heart and soul of the teaparty. They don't show up until a black man is elected president. They have no qualms about describing their displeasure with him in the most racist terms, and they are 98 percent white and care nothing for the opinions of people who look different than themselves. Nothing I've seen on this list has changed my mind about this.
Yes we were at a relative high percentage of GDP due to the fact we were recovering from the depression and FRD was instituting his social programs.
Lend lease was initiated due to the fact that England was on the verge of bankruptcy and could no longer pony up the cash for war materials and food stuffs. Russia also became part of the same act; and when time came to start paying back what they owed, Stalin refused.
The 120% figure was due to the cost of WWII. Shortly thereafter, factories geared up production for consumer products both internal and external consumption. It was during this period that we became a net income nation. We had the money.
Yes, the gold standard ended in 1933 as a backer of currency, and we went to the silver standard. But my sources indicate that gold bullion was used on the international market to repay international debt until Nixon pulled it off the market in 1971. I agree we were borrowing or printing at that time due to trade deficits, primarily oil, and we were still involved in a very costly war in Vietnam.
Yes, our currency is a promissory note guaranteed by Uncle Sam. However, world banks are holding so much of our debt in treasury bonds that we are looking at a down grade of our credit rating. If these banks, especially China, dumped our debt, we don't have anything to buy it back resulting in high inflation, making it virtually worthless externally. We currently don't own this country. The rest of the world does.
First sentence: What you believe isn't a fact. It's a belief.
What racist terms? Please cite examples
98% White? Please cite the figure.
You've just proved my point completely. Your are too lazy to consider that the difference is economic ideology/work ethic, and not race. Because admitting that they have policy, not racial, complaints would force you to acknowledge those differences in opinion, talk about the well-documented failures of Keynsian economics, as well as the failures of the welfare state as it exists here.
Much easier to dismiss them as racists.
You're transparent. And I have you pegged.
And now the further bad news: We are not to be outdone and are moving at breakneck pace to cathc up with the rest of the world. Everyone get in the wagon! Wait, who will pull the wagon?
That's simply dependent upon whether or not you buy into Keynesian economics. Consumer spending has already risen, though the dollar value, unemployment and stock markets remain unstable. Consumer spending helps, yes, but only in Keynesian economics is it the end all, be all. If all other factors outweigh consumer spending, then the increased consumer spending is all for naught.
Actually, markets without the rules of "business regulation" are not markets without recourse to law. We already have market-oriented laws…the prohibitions against theft, fraud, and vandalism.
Now that is fantastic news,….there Mickey,…
so now, we \”regulate the bad behavior\” and will never,……..
have to worry about Fannie and Freddie again,.?????.
Your "sources"? What are you a bookie… do you have some secret inside information the rest of us can't see?
You could have saved yourself a lot of typing by simply saying, "You are right and I'm sorry".
Granted, I believe we still may come out of this. But it will be on the backs of top tier tax cuts that reignite an interest in hiring and spending cuts that could add value back to our dollar and national credit. I do not believe the current practice of "stimulus us out of recession" or "blame-big-business us out of recession" is tenable. Obviously, it's not financially sound. But, the upside is that I don't believe it is politically sound either. We WILL come out better and stronger, because we'll be less likely to fall for anti-business tripe and entitlement-promise rhetoric.
They eventually expose themselves. Rand Paul is going to spend the next six months trying to walk back his reasons for wanting to change the civil rights act. Problem is he wasn't lying. All of you people believe the government has no right to compel businesses to treat their customers equally. That's fine, but the rest of us see that as a racist position.
Everyone trashes Keynes until they get into economic trouble then they come running back to him. And it doesn't matter if they are Republicans or Democrats.
For better or worse, we live in a consumer driven economy and our economic fate is driven by American consumption. It will have to lead us out of this recession.
From what I've seen so far, the banks were allowed to melt down the financial markets without breaking any laws. Shame on us for not taking better care of our markets.
Does this help?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_res...
That's the easy one I have more.
Yes, there is. Both Clinton and bush tried to initiate regulation, but in both Clinton's an Bush's case our esteemed congress said no. It's real history.
We, This is part of NObama's game plan. Tear it down so he can rebuild it… We've been a sociaIist nation for some time now… it will just become official.
Paul actually said he had no interest in repealling or changing a law that was passed when he was 2. He said he had constitutional issues with parts of it, and that necessarily makes it a legal, not racial, issue. You're right, he was honest about his legal reservations about government dictating how a private business operates. It isn't their place.
The rest of you see it as a racist position because that makes it easy for you to understand. The nuances of constitutional law and the framer's intent then gets conveniently brushed aside so you can condescendingly snark on about how they are all closet bigots. But that bigotry is merely projection on your part.
Sorry life is too complex for you.
Yes, let the banks and auto industry fail and we would have had a sharper decline that would last a much shorter amount of time. The bailouts REWARD the bad behavior you want to regulate against. For my part (since a recession is technically defined by time, not severity), if we'd allowed those businesses to fail, I don't believe we'd have had a recession.
And, no, the deficits are NOT a direct result of the economic collapse under GWB. That's a misrepresentation of what a deficit is and a misrepresentation of the definition of the word "direct". A deficit is more outgoing money (spending) than incoming money (revenue). A recession can cause a decrease in revenue, yes, but the DIRECT cause would be the failure to apply intelligent decisions to the change in situation. The DIRECT cause would be an administration that planned to combat a decreased incoming money pool by INCREASING the outgoing money.
Notice I'm not defending GWB here, either. But the current financial practices are worsening the problem when I believe Bush would have, by now, reversed course and increased revenue (this part is confusing to some) by cutting corporate tax (thus creating jobs) or by instituting (finally) a flat tax that exempted NO ONE (excepting, of course, non-earners.) Of course, there are still the obvious spending cuts we could have implemented, but we've talked that issue to death to the point that EVERYONE has heard it. Of course, the unpopular but practically correct point here is that the cuts would have to come mostly from social security. Welfare and food stamps aren't a big enough chunk to make a difference (though cutting those would force some families back to work and increase revenue more) and I couldn't get behind a large military budget cut (but some cuts of waste-spending, like airplanes the military didn't even want, would be nice on principle).
Yes, sources are what intelligent people look up to investigate an issue, providing information, which can then be weighed and verified, allowing for a conclusion to be drawn.
But it's way easier to just yell "racist!"
Now you've come to facetious argument. No, "faith and credit", is not good enough, but we CAN'T get rid of those near-worthless greenbacks because ACTUAL CURRENCY has been made illegal. We're stuck between a rock and a hard place where currency stands and you posit the argument that if getting crushed by the rock isn't good enough, we should get crushed by the hard place; when we are arguing for finding a method of getting us out from between the rock and the hard place.
It is not OUR ECONOMY, unless you're a full-on collectivist that believes "no man is an island," when years of psychological, biological and historical fact show us that, basically, EVERY man is an island….with a port of call. We have an instinct for self-preservation and and instinct for survival of the species, making us all selfish, yet more-or-less compassionate (NOT A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS. One can care about others, while still looking out for self FIRST.)
That being said, most of us didn't ignore the bad behavior of the banks; most of us were UNAWARE of it. Furthermore our very own government facilitated and rewarded such bad behavior with the CRA. We taxpayers should not be burdened with the mistakes of a few, nor should we allow the economy to falter either. We should FIX THE PROBLEM. Which means, allow bad businesses to FAIL and no more regulations that remove the risk of failure. Increasing taxes and the cost of living is not fixing the problem, it is increasing the negative impact the recession has on individuals.
I disagree. Government must be strong enough to contain the global corporate interests or we will be their victims. We don't get a vote when they decide to close up a shop and lay off hundreds and move off shore. There must be a price to pay for that kind of behavior.
We tried it your way and the economy melted down and the financial markets froze. We can't allow banks to privatize their profits and socialize the risk. It is a moral hazard that should not be borne by the tax payers.
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