Yeah, cause if they're not, we'll just...

well, we'll tell...

... well...


It's not like the government is all that accountable to the public anymore.

Sorry for the OT but:
Talking of media coverage and bombs, has the coverage of the air strikes on Libya also ceased to exist in the US? Here in Germany you see no footage whatsoever of the planes. All you get is funerals for dead rebels and wounded civilians but nothing from our side. Almost as if Nato had ordered a news blockade. :hmm2:

Wars end...........................Entitlements never do.

The system - because it's designed to do that. Call it for facts or just for psychology - the outcome is the same.

America did not complain about its rating agencies when the spelled doom over other countries. So why now? Because this time one is sitting at the receiving end of the line?

Or the German government has ordered a blockade of the media - to get its own egg-dance out of the public's attention focus.

I've seen very little coverage of Libya lately. Our media has a very short attention span and since there is nothing the Obama administration can take credit for, they have no desire to cover it.

Since when, we've been in wars and conflicts almost non stop for the last 50 years and looks like it's gonna get worse.

S&P received a lot of money to rate junk paper as "AAA" and thus contributed to the financial crisis. S&P executives should have been led out of their offices in handcuffs. They have lost all credibility. Only a fool would place any faith in their analysis of America or any other country.

That's separate from the issue of America's debt crisis. That's real. But S&P are a bunch of criminals and idiots.

Isn't it strange, the same people that created the mess are the same ones saying it's getting better and the same in charge of fixing it.

It's true that China benefits greatly from U.S. as export market and therefore have incentive to keep it going which means buying U.S. bonds. However China as everybody else (at my knowledge) do not have endless cash reserves. Before or later it just simply do not have money to buy bonds.

I believe that China can't accept situation where it's unable to pay to it's soldiers and buy enough 7.62mm rounds for "national security" purposes.

I don't know what will happen when China stops buying. Will American economy simply collapse? Will someone else fund American spending parties?

The problem is the debt ceiling, we're gonna have to raise it. If we don't our economy will crumble in time. Congress will fight and threaten each other, but they only have a few months to increase it and in the end they will.

Course this is like putting another finger to plug another hole in the Hoover dam. The world economy will be totally different in the future.

China has started to lower its dependency on the US market, and has started to jump off the dollar, it also has started to reduce it'S US bonds. More and more European economists also start to warn again st investing into US debts any longer. The Swedish Riksbank, the leading bank in Scandinavia, has stopped trading US bonds alltogether. Other big European banks, so I was told on weekend, prepare to follow the example, it is kept hidden to minimise negative shortterm conseqeunces for these banks and to avoid political pressure.

US thinks it is untouchable. But it no longer is. The longer it hesitates to learn that lesson and tries to bully and intimidate others into buying worthless US boinds, the harder the crash on learning day. The US has a fundamental structural problem, and its financial resources have started to break away. For Americnas, this is unimaginable , since America is believed to be what Rome was for Romans: the shining centre of civilisation in a dark universe of barbarism.

And if anyone thinks that China with rising marks would ever accept to endlessly depend on the US while America is in freee fall, then he has not understood whom he is dealing with. It would be incompatible with Chinese self-understanding to be the most superior community on Earth, to accept this injust "coexistence" endlessly, and at their own cost. The dragon has awakened once again, and in the long run he will not accept any poor, bigmouthed debtor as an equal to talk to.

If you read the signs in the news, you can see that it already has started. It is the small nuances that are important.

The US, in all this historic change, will either accept to relaunch, and then on a much smaller scale accept a place in the second row of seats only, by becoming bancrupt. Or it will reject the simple facts and try to turn the wheel of time bvackwards - and by that become most likely a rogue nation itself and a totalitarian dictatorship fighting against all odds, and all others. That are the two most likely scenarios I can imagine, currently, ignoring unpredictable events like global pandemics, meteor impacts and such things.

Well said, Skybird. I think the past ten years alone should have taught us a thing or two. We are about to get our teeth kicked in, and unfortunately we've been ignoring the warnings for years.

Not to knock or insult my own country, but our culture has (or at least "had") a nasty habit of thinking that we're the best thing since buttered toast. Pride often goeth before a fall, right? I have sincere doubts that we will remain as a major power for much longer. While sad in a way, it is also not entirely surprising that this would come to pass. Eventually, all empires must collapse under their own enormity. :yep:

Interesting times ahead, yes? :hmmm::lol:

Well, America expects others to behave in a self-damaging and stupid way - and that is a sign of a certain kind of stupdity - at least blindness - on its own side. It is not clever to depend on a "strategy" that bases on the other's cooperation by acting stupid.

All these are developements for which the mighty and powerful and expensive American military is no suitable tool. Instead, due to its costs, it serves as a catalyst for these developements and causes costs to the internal structure of the country: the money it takes to run this military is not available for education, modernising the economic structure, the powergrid, the traffic network...

Ironic, from a historian's point of view.

It'S sad, in a way, since there is so much potential still left. But it gets wasted by not making necessary, dramatic changes to the country'S general course and setup. It seems it wants to stay like it has been, forever, and tramples with the feet like a stubborn child that does not get what it wants.

But every box of Monopoly gets delivered with only so many toy notes of money, and not more. Sorry, kid.

It's already obvious politicains are preparing us for a two class soceity. It seems politicians are more interested on how to keep and create wealth globally for a few. I have no doubt somewhere in our future economics will be run by some world council. All leading economist say were headed for collapse, you just won't hear it from the government. Slowly as possible government will move more and more into poverty, a lil at a time so chaos doesn't ensue. All studies show 50% of the next generation won't have medical insurance, medicare and caid can't be funded. They've ignored the fixes for 20 years, now it's too late, millions will suffer. Fuel will be an issue, food, wages lowered. Anyone under 50 knows they can forget seeing all the money they paid into SS and medicare, etc..

We've had 11 years in which the Social Security program did not take enough in FICA taxes to pay the current year's benefits, so they use Trust Bonds to make up the difference.

We're nearing a 100 trillion in total debt across the board, money spent or money currently owed, 60 trillion in medicare alone to those paid in...but it's all gone. Add SS and the national debt, state debt, etc...all that money went somewhere.

I think we all know we've longed crossed the point of it can be fixed.

It's really no different than any past history of great nations. Again, the middle class will be a thing of the past.

yes, thats true, the upper class wield far too much power in this country, soon it will be either you are rich or poverty. I am scared for my future

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/980/2cas2o8kw.jpg
From: Der Tagesspiegel

I would like to add that First Officer What-Ever-His-Name-Was? wants to take heading to Capitalism. Cut taxes, not to touch anyones entitlements or benefits and see if fuel tank magically fills...

P.S. No I'm not saying that First Officer is any better than Captain nor otherwise around.

American Dream.....


Maybe Americans need to accept the fact that taxes need to be uhm....adjasted.