Who's gonna win?

[mvanwink5]

Look at the money supply for the last 80 years, oh ye of such intellect and insight.

And if you want to see how markets of sovereign debt work look at Greece. At some point no one will touch it.

[mvanwink5]

Who will bail us out? No one. If we fight a war and lose, will the victor nation build here? Get real. The government has to be downsized. The sooner it is begun the less painful it will be. MSimon is right, we have chosen path of pain. Sounds like Lord of the Rings...

[palladin9479]

Also the debt isn't what's hurting, not even close.

At this time... What happened to Greece was rating downgrades caused that cost to skyrocket. Rating down grades have already begun for us. By the time it gets to the land of Greece, it is too late.

To avoid the downgrades the borrowing of +trillion/year has to be stopped and reversed. That is what happens when reasonable debt is exceeded. Then what will you do? That is the whole point. Smaller government, now. But that is not what we are doing and have been doing especially these last 4 years. What is the chance that Mr. Hoops will do that? Zero.

Your still not getting it.

Ratings mean nothing to the US treasure. While federal bonds are still sold as investment options to brookers their no longer the primary borrowing method. We borrow from ourselves basically. The treasure sells bonds to the Fed at near 0% interest rate, the Fed pays for those bonds by leveraging it's holdings, which is basically the entire US economy. The Fed can keep doing this for as long as it wants, it's one step short of "printing money" as that debt must eventually be "paid off". That payment date isn't set and only the interest needs to be paid, since it was at near 0% it's really not much.

The USA has years upon years left of deficit borrowing / spending. Though I highly recommend we not go that route as the further you go the harder it is to fix.

See for a country to be constantly borrowing money it must not have enough revenue to cover it's expenses. There is something wrong, what we call a "root cause". Borrowing money is just a way to treat the symptoms rather then fixing the illness. You either have too much expenditure or too little revenue, or some combination of both.

So I'll say again, which is it? And what would any of you be willing to cut / remove. Give numbers not rhetoric. My personal belief, after much thought, is that it's a bit of both. The greatest receivers of the expensive safety net that is our military establishment are the corporate entities (and their owners) who's interests we look after. They should be paying for that consideration as without it they would be at the mercy of the Chinese and Russians.

At the same time we need to be looking in less expensive ways to maintaining that safety net, no more stupid expensive land invasions. Obama's handling of Libya was a good example. Got everyone else to do the hard work while we just threw missiles, took pictures and made grand speeches. Attained the goal, ensured the government will be somewhat friendly to the USA (if that's even possible) and wasted the fewest tax dollars / lives doing so.

[mvanwink5]

Do you honestly think you are so smart, "still not getting it?" They are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. They can't print their way out of the mess and they can't borrow their way out. I asked you to look at the exponential money supply curve for which we are on the puck end of the stick. Then the debt as compared to income is at the Greek limit.

Then you talk of years as if we weren't on the puck part or point of down grade. Then your only reference is what has happened to other countries for which we have been "secretly covering for. No one will cover for us, get it?

You can obfuscate all day long with "smart aleck" tricks of Fed speak, but it boils down to increasing the money supply, which as I said is on the puck part of the stick. The problem with the phantom Fed money using the multipier that is created through loans with fractional reserves is that it is an unstable system. A system wide recession causes a sudden drop in the money supply etc. The reverse also occurs when inflation suddenly roars back. Put that aside. We are already in the gauntlet.

The solution to this mess is not simply to cut expenditure. It goes to regulations, money meddling by the Fed, crony capitalism, and by regs, I am not talking about banks which regs are useful to prevent money supply expansion, I am talking about the regs that drive cost or delay or create uncertainty.

MSimon has pounded the drug enforcement laws, which are truly pointless and costly, but the whole medical industrial complex is at the heart of the desire for Obomination care because it makes the practice of medicine so expensive, for drugs, personnel, equipment, hospitals, and insurance. Then there is the EPA and the incredibly poor job they do, including the new ridiculous CO2 lunacy.

Privatize charity. Don't run welfare thorugh the government where ten cents on the dollar ends up in the pocket of hard cases. If you don't think Americans are generous enough give dollar for dollar tax breaks for "approved" charities. Then there are the government pensions, start with the president, judges and congress. The bloat and waste goes on and on.

Then there is the education system which is antiquated and full of bloat.

Anyway, nothing smart is going to happen just big lunacy. I hoped to avoid this craziness, but all I can do now is uselessly rant about it.

[mvanwink5]

Privatizing space was a start. Use that as a model to privatize everything but the criminal justice system, defense, and discharge limits. Once you look at the list of other "services" that could be performed privately, the current federal expenditure on layers of bureaucrats becomes laughable. Real estate would become reasonable again in D.C.

[GIThruster]

The treasure sells bonds to the Fed at near 0% interest rate, the Fed pays for those bonds by leveraging it's holdings, which is basically the entire US economy. The Fed can keep doing this for as long as it wants. . .

No. It can't. The interest on the debt is the problem, and will soon cost more than all we pay on national defense. This is a significant issue. When you consider that all nations have an obligation to provide for defense, but entitlements are rather a recent investment that they could do without entirely; and see that those entitlements are what put us in debt the interest of which will soon cost more than defense, just as the entitlements cost more than defense, you begin to see that we certainly cannot keep doing this as long as we want. It is this crazy idea that we can borrow as much as we like, without paying back, that is bankrupting the country. You're recommending acting completely irresponsible. You must be a liberal.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/05/news/ec ... /index.htm

[GIThruster]

So I'll say again, which is it? And what would any of you be willing to cut / remove. Give numbers not rhetoric.

You still don't understand. What any one of us would do or recommend is not a solution. Any real solution will have to be what congress agrees on. The left will not cut entitlements and the right will not cut defense. Sequestration however, will cut both. That's our only hope now. If congress continues to prove it cannot act responsibly, then when the law kicks in, they'll have no choice.

IMIHO, it's embarrassing and shameful before the entire world that the only way we can act like adults is be forced into it by our own refusal to act like adults, but that's about the best we can hope for now.

[GIThruster]

Okay, so there are no winners. After 4 years of the federal government operating as irresponsibly as any in human history, running with no federal budget, running record deficits, adding $5 trillion in debt, adding 15% of the nation's GDP to the government's control, we voted to reelect the same irresponsible people. Seems they have carte blanche to do whatever they like to this country--which is certainly not going to include suddenly acting responsibly.

Lets call it what it is: "Grotesque Decadence".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMvztdNh ... r_embedded

[Diogenes]

My family is a long line of I'd guess you'd say Lincoln Conservatives. We have a long history since pre-civil war helping slaves escape as part of the underground railroad.

So do you believe the government should legislate morality regarding slavery? (I framed the question this way to make a point. )

We were quite fiscally conservative before the Great Depression and rode through it rather successfully. We all hold those same values, we just think the Republican party stopped evolving a long time ago. Now the family is split evenly, but I view it as a balance. In my opinon, the nation is simply too far radically right (not radically) and Obama is the exact result of that hard right fanatically swing.

You are obviously young. The country has undergone a constant slow motion slide to the left for the last 60 years. Apparently from your perspective, we just haven't moved leftward as fast as you would like. It is, like drug addiction, a logarithmic effect. It will accelerate it's acceleration.

As far as we as a family are concerned though, both parties are one in the same, regardless of whatever histories they may have held at one time. As for me, I'm voting Obama because I think he as an individual is quite intelligent and has made ample attempts to reach across the aisle, but when the other side is too busy making comments like "our sole focus is to remove him from presidency" before the man has even served is ludacrous in every way.

Like I said, you get your news from Liberal Union Democrats hired from a city that voted for Obama by a 79% margin. (New York) Nowadays, nothing gets on the air without going through their filter, either in News or Entertainment.

Obama is a moron that has never successfully ran so much as a hamburger stand, but all of his idiocy is neatly covered up by the New York Democrat media pool. Were he a Republican, the media would have focused for six months on how bad the economy was and how high gas prices were, the way they did to George HW Bush back in 1992.

I remember every broadcast led off with how bad George Bush's economy was till the day after the election when Peter Jennings announced "The Economy recovered back in March! All the economic news is Wonderful!"

The media is a propaganda arm of the Democrat party, and you think what you do because they work very hard to get you to think that way.

[Diogenes]

Hmmm I'm not normally one to say this but..

I told you so

Eh, so you did. You obviously have a better grasp on the moron vote than do I.

President Obama only had to win a few battleground states to get the 37~40 extra ECV's needed to bring him to 70. Governor Romney needed 64~70 extra ECV's. Isn't much of a "race" when one person starts halfway to the finish.

Thank you New York and California. May your policies destroy you faster than they do the rest of us.

Now lets see if the GOP can pull their collective heads out of their fifth point of contact and get sh!t done rather then focusing on being obstructionists. Their spent four years of head work trying to deny President Obama a 2nd term and they just failed, what a waste of four years that they could of spent actually fixing things and making progress in the world. No wonder Olympia retired.

Yes, let's cannibalize our ship to feed our fires.

Now chime in with all the cries of "fraud" and "they dun stole our here election". You'll sound just like the Democrats did in 2004.

Fraud isn't exactly the correct word. What the media does might be a form of fraud, but it is not the sort your would normally regard as "election fraud."

The Media (Liberal Union Democrats hired from New York) influence the election by what they do and do not cover, and how they do or do not cover it. Had Bush pulled a Benghazi, the media would not have stopped talking about from Day one, complete with interviews of the grieving parent (ala Cindy Sheehan) and leaked classified information.

Had these been Bush's gas prices, and Bush's unemployment, we would have had to listen to a constant barrage of how intolerable it is and why it's Bush's fault. Every election, the Media give the Democrats the equivalent of a billion dollars worth of free advertising and opponent demonizing.

People think the media are like referees at an NFL game, but what they are in fact, is players for one team, pretending to be referees.

[Diogenes]

You must get your news from Liberal Democrats, hired from New York City (79% for Barack Obama) and who join a Union.

Might as well ask the opinion of KKK members about blacks. You won't get the truth from that crowd.

Nope. Generally spending goes up under Rs and the Ds hold the gains. Can't find the charts now but I saw a nice one on the subject tonight. Obama is the exception.

Never heard of Lyndon Baines Johnson? His war on Poverty has costs us many trillions of dollars. It is the gift that just keeps on giving. He may be gone, but his spending is still here.

But lets face it though, if your only tool is a hammer, all your problems start to look like nails. Government's methods are primarily taking money and spending it. Some Republicans may start out wanting to lessen this, but the natural forces within those circles all work in the opposite direction.

Term Limits would have probably been the only viable solution, but we don't need solutions anymore. We've decided to let nature thin the herd.

[Diogenes]

You must get your news from Liberal Democrats, hired from New York City (79% for Barack Obama) and who join a Union.

Might as well ask the opinion of KKK members about blacks. You won't get the truth from that crowd.

Nope. Generally spending goes up under Rs and the Ds hold the gains. Can't find the charts now but I saw a nice one on the subject tonight. Obama is the exception.

Most (not all) of Obama's "spending" increase came in 2008~2009 when he stupidly ordered the cost of Afghanistan / Iraq to be put on the general books. Afterwards it was business as usual, just with dramatically lower tax revenue. Prior to that they were being financed via emergency spending measures done every year and thus kept off the general ledgers. That is how Bush prevented a stupidly large spike in spending from being shown, politically savvy if a bit under handed. Obama did the morally right thing but the politically stupid thing, wouldn't be the only time as later demonstrated. Chock it up to being green at politics and not realizing how dirty, under handed and downright deceitful you must be to succeed.

Of course none of that matters, diehard Republicans are going to crucify him and manufacture convenient reasons later.

It's hard to believe that there are actually people out there that see the world the way you do.

Suggesting that Obama doesn't no how to play underhanded and deceitful? Mon Dieu! Man, where have you been hiding? You must get your news from Liberal Democrats, hired from New York City (79% for Barack Obama) and who join a Union.

[Diogenes]

Obstructionist to what? Financial suicide? Idiot Democrats are dragging us over the cliff and you think the Republicans doing a little heal dragging is being obstructionist? There is already not enough money in the world to pay for existing programs and now nationalized health care has been added.

The only question is how long to the land of Greece? And increasing tax rates won't increase revenue.

Look for the US going into depression next year, no one will be investing here. Idiots.

Are you saying this on the record? Cause on November 7 2013 you'll have to eat those words.

There is plenty of money in the world, too bad most of the US share is being funneled through Ireland and other external tax havens. Corporations have shifted the tax burden almost entirely onto the middle class, which is shrinking. The shrinking was bound to happen, it was unfeasible to maintain the rate at consumption the middle class was experiencing. That rate fueled those big corporate profits that then went through Ireland and into the Cayman Islands. Now its time to pay the bill and the rich have been using their influence to ensure their not stuck with any part of it.

You have really drank the kool aid. Where do the black helicopters fit in?

Anyhow, this is all wasted on you and most of your ilk. There will be no revolt, no bloody conservative revolution lead by your leaders. This election wasn't even remotely close. Hopefully the GOP realizes this and returns to their previous fiscally responsible roots and serves as a counter balance to the overreaching progressive ideals.

What I realize is that the fire has gotten out of control, and now the only thing that we who plan to survive can do is light some back fires and hope it burns up the cause of the problem first.

[Diogenes]

My ilk? LOL. The Fed has been pumping hard for the last 4 years, and especially hard to help Obama this year. The Chinese will look at the Obama campaign slogan "Forward" and say SOS. No more loan money for you. Then what? Increase tax rates? Increase borrowing? From which suckers? You're out of money. Stop defense spending? More job losses... Print more and borrow it from the Fed? Run away inflation.

Do you think anyones non investment in the US will suddenly change?

The small investor has been losing money and hoping to see an improvement for the last 4 years. My sister was waiting to decide to close the business and she is not the only one.

National health Obamination Care won't be blocked now. You really are clueless. You must think all these people losing money must be just evil and are really just hiding it.

No, I am wasting my breath talking to those of your ilk. Good luck. Forward!!!! Idiots.

[paperburn1]

I am up in DC this week and the mood seems quite sober for the day after an election. I think a lot of us beltway bandits are wondering what's next.