The US debt - visualisation of what people actually talk about

[Skybird]

Great.

http://www.wtfnoway.com/

[Tchocky]

This would be a lot less "GET THE CANNED GOODS AND WATER INTO THE BUNKER" if it were displayed as a proportion of the US GDP and relativised against other industrialised nations

[Skybird]

The US GDP for 2010, and the debts of 15 trillion, basically are the same number, so I fail to see your point. The US GDP for 2010 was 14,78 trillion.

List of countries by GDP, 2010 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal))

[Tchocky]

That's exactly the point Skybird. Look at something like this - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/PublicDebtTriade.PNG

Countries have coped with high debt loads before, and will do so again. Debt is not cancerous (bad debts are, but there's no reason that the US is functionally unable to pay). It's not nothing to worry about, but it is an economic factor that can be handled simply and without drama.

Whether it is or not is up to the voters, and then by representation, the representatives, both of whom are having minor reality-calibration issues at the moment.

[Madox58]

minor reality-calibration issues

:haha:
I had a minor hammer-calibration issue today.
Now I have a broken wrist.
That shouldn't stop me from working at full effectiveness tomorrow though right?
:O:

[Skybird]

Tchocky, I am pragmatic. To me a country is bancrupt when nobody lends it money anymore, or when it cannot serve its interest obligations anymore.

That is the point. Not that country's people imagining or not imagining that others should lend it money or not. Debt loads that exceed a certain ´share of the regular income, GDP in this case, strnagle that ciountry, because the interests it needs to pay from that treshold criterion on grow faster in totals than it can pay back its debts. And as I often said and as you can read , if you want and are interested, in Paul Kennedy'S very excellent history study "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers", pratciually every European power of the past 500 years has become bancrupt and defaulted at least once ion that time, many did even several trimres, up to 5 or 6 times in those 500 years. And most of the time that meant the end of that power'S era of reigning and dominating any kind of empire or trading monopoly. It never was pleasant, it never meant anything enjoyable to the rodinary peope, the middle class of traders and merhcnatmen. Often it led to revolts, riots, revolutions.

If you think the Us is immune to that, because you still seek your hope in the self-deception that it is in the world'S interest to keep you floating, then you alraedy have sealed your doom. Because the system is set to implode in the middle of the spiral. What you overlook is that the world'S interest to keep you afloat is coming at a porice. And that price is becoming too high.

Like your correctly found in the Wikipedia article (the graph of yours I found at Wikipedia first at least), Japan is set for implosion, too. So is Britain, which al.,so has a hilarious finacial problöem. Practically all wetsern nations have, tovarying degrees. Ovber here we increasingly beco,me nbervous even about France. And this althoiugh we should worry about ourserves - due to the hidden security duties Germany has accepted to keep the Euro floating, ranging in the very high hundreds of billions now, our finances have turned into a mess as well. It is an irony that practically all major players who joined the Euro, now are worse off than they were before the Euro saw birth. That is true for Germany, France, Austria, Spain, and is obvious for Greece, Italy, Portugal. It reminds me of fairy-tales where the man sells his soul to the devil for all eternity - for just some years of wealth and fame first.

However. No other Western economy's fall will cause shake and rattle al laround the globe to such a deghree, like the American. Only when you count all EU-economies as one economy and see by the numbers that the EU zone'S GDP now exceeds that of the US, you can imagine a collpase scenario as great if not worse - that is if the EU as a whole breaks down. And that is unlikely in that it will split and fall apart in sub-entities first, if it ever collapses, I think it will not collapse as a whole simultaneously. The Euro, maybe. And fi that happens, the EU will see drastic changes and splits, too. But still no total collapse.

In the end, it is simple, and healhty reason: if you lend,k you have to pay it back sooner or later, and if you spend more than you prioduce in income, you get into trouble sooner or later, and your creditors will no longer trust you and no longer lend you. Nobody can live on tic, forever. Nobody.

Reality callibration problems are nothign new, but have become a constant major problem in the West. The basic manifestation of it is that the parties have put their own power inmterest above the communal interest of their nations which to serve they once have been founded for. Problem also is that poltiics is no mlonger independent from economics and business, and that the electorate gets beytrayed becasue lobbyist masisvely influence plltics and bypass the electorate that way, claiming more power for themselves than in a democracy they are legitimated for. The current US standoff to me is ust a logical consequence of the pervertation of the system that has eroded the way it once as meant to be since decades. It also happens here in Germany, and Europe. And here I also see it as a logical consequences of erosion processes that almost necessarily seem to lead to this "mutation". As I see it, we face a profound, dramatic "Zeitenwende" (chnage of times), ending a historical cultural phase of lets count it 2000 or 2500 years. What comes after us, and whether it will be better or worse, I dare not say. But combining it with the outlook on the ecosphere's state of things, I am not optimistic.

The Swiss, already having more bunkers for their people than anybody else, have started to build even more. I wonder if they know something that we don't.