Will we default on our debt.

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

No. This is all political kabuki theater

KABUKI theater, I love it!

[MothBalls]

I do agree with this;

(CNN) -- Watching Republicans and Democrats squabble from their ideological battle lines over the debt ceiling is the same as watching a bratty child fall out in the middle of the floor with a temper tantrum when he doesn't get his way.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/1...html?hpt=po_t2

Lets just default on all the foreign debt, file bankruptcy, reset the books and start over. In the new set of rules, simply state you can't spend what you don't have.

Fire Congress, the Senate, and the entire Executive Branch. Face it, if you were in a private company and things got this screwed up, the shareholders would have the entire upper echelon fired. Time we do the same.

Starting to think someone like Larry the Cable Guy would make a better President anyway.

[Armistead]

Originally Posted by Webster

well the tea party god rid of many of those republicans who voted for bailouts and spending more but sadly too many are still there. those tea party people are still watching and paying attention to whats going on and you will see many more republicans get defeated or not in the next election based on what they say and how they vote between now and then.

for the life of me i cant see why people like barney frank and harry reid can still get elected after 100% flat out proof they do nothing to help or represent the people who elected them. now im not saying replace them with a republican but at least replace them with a democrat that "might" look out for the intrests of the people of that state.

im a life long democrat but voted republican the last 5 years mainly because of the out of control spending on both sides and i know less goverment is what i want and lower taxes will create more jobs.

the republican and democrat progressives believe in socialism and want to create a socialist contry while regular democrats believe spending money and bigger goverment solves all the problems and the regular republicans believe cutting taxes and smaller goverment solves all the problems and they are all wrong but cutting taxes will help get more jobs because when companies have more money they hire new workers and lay off less workers and thats the most important thing for now.

there is not a politician in washington that gives a rats azz about us or the country but they only care about what lobbyist give them and how to stay in office

Webster, look at the last tax holiday, corporations promised more jobs, they actually laid off more workers after it and invested the money in stocks for themselves and used more profit to create jobs overseas.

Tax breaks creating jobs in a global economy works only where they can create jobs for less. Do you really think corporations will create more jobs here or in China of India. The issue isn't taxes, it's regulation, but here in the US we can't or won't give enough, they can still build and pay less elsewhere, maybe why Bachman said we need to get rid of the min wage here, so corps can pay $2 an hour.

Stange, most in the teaparty are fundy christians that want to impose their beliefs on others through government. They want God in government, but forget it was God that said take care of the sick, the poor, the elderly, they must follow a different God than the one in the bible, another reason to keep church and state totally seperate.

Fine, let the poor, the sick and elderly die, just don't claim christian values when you do it, course if they could kill all the fags, then it would be worth it to them.

[Skybird]

Short before the Big Bang...


"Is that your budget deficit?" - "No, I think it's yours."


Both from "Der Tagesspiegel"

[yubba]

I've always wondered what they were thinking when they cut down the last tree on Easter Island. Sadly I was listening to a program telling how Europes fishing stocks were so depleted that the only way their children might be able too see a fish would be in a text book. I say let us default, cut all the damn trees down, fish all the fish out of the sea and be done with it. Too the Victors go the spoils.

[gimpy117]

The tax cuts war made us go broke. we are spending so much on the war now, and they just approved an increase in the budget for the DoD....but republicans want no new taxes. Sure, we need to cut programs, but the cuts nessicary to balance the budget would be Draconian, especially if nobody looks at the 500 pound gorilla in the room that is the defense budget.

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

Originally Posted by Webster

...cutting taxes will help get more jobs because when companies have more money they hire new workers and lay off less workers and thats the most important thing for now.

I disagree. Wages are much more important factor than taxes. If there is option of hiring American or Chinese for same job which one you think company will take? Wages are so much lower in China that even if U.S. gov stops collecting taxes altogether it would still be cheaper to do work overseas.

In top to this, as mookiemookie said, companies hire only as many employees as are needed to get job done. Hiring unnecessary employees is bad business. It unnecessarily cuts shareholders' profits and I as shareholder would not tolerate that!

Default.
It'd be the best thing that ever happenned to USA.

Throw out the "Federal" (privately owned) Reserve.
Tell the IMF where to go.
Let USA print US Dollars again.
Nobody for Uncle Sam to borrow from, and pay interest to.
They can't spend what they haven't got.
Do away with the Income Tax & Socialism.
Let Uncle Sam finance himself with Tarrifs & Excise Taxes, just like he used to.

[Skybird]

You depend on deliveries of all kinds of ressources from other countries. Without these, your people cannot work, since there will be no wokring economy. Your society will fall apart. And why will there be no such deliveries in sufficient degrees anymore? Becasue you betrayed the world and have stollen too much money from other people whose money you leased, but did not pay back - that tells everybody that you cannot be trusted. Much of your heavy industry you have sold away carelessly or allowed to degrade so that now it is rotten and not compatible anymore, especially compared to Asian and European companies. Your powergrid is a mess. Your road grid falls into pieces. And whjat you are proud of, yxour computer and hightech industry, vitally depends on rare precious ores and earths from Africa and China whose names most people never have heared of but without which you cannot do.

But you want to cut right those international economic ties that are vital and indispensable for your very own self-interest? Not to mention that you would cause a tsunami by going bancrupt throughout the developed world, too. Is this what we are left with to expect from America: first messing things up by making debts, debts, and more debts, and when it all collapses saying "Not our problem"?

Probably. Already Nixon's finance minister once told the Europeans: "The dollar is our currency, but it is your problem." Thank you. Maybe it serves us right. Maybe we should have kicked you already back then. But we didn't. Like nobody reacted to the alarm bell of the oil crisis of 71 as well.

Isolationism does not work in this world anymore, Snestorm, not last of the reasons is self-interest and survival. Your scenario is not rescue. It is suicide.

On the deadlock between both parties, Obama already had agreed to huge compromises, and if the relation between both parties would be normal, the Reps already would have worked out a compromise. It'S just that the Tea Partry movement in them sees any compromise as weakness and that their hate on Obama for the lost election is so irrational and that bitches like Psalin have been so successful in poisening that now it is just about doing as much damage to the president as humanly possible - even at the cost of the nation that gets blinded and deafened by their vitriol.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Isolationism does not work in this world anymore, Snestorm, not last of the reasons is self-interest and survival. Your scenario is not rescue. It is suicide.

Isolationism worked very well for them before, and it can work very well for them again.

USA was self-sufficiant before, and there is no reason why it can't be again.

Beyond that, I hardly think every nation in the world would turn their backs to her.

[Castout]

The question that every American should ask is that when will their country default on its debt?

How do you pay that amount of debt?


Raising the ceiling is obviously not a solution to reduce this debt in the long run.

What kind of austerity measures that will be needed to control this debt. Large debt usually is related directly with decreased quality of life and rising prices(inflation) and the reduced value in currency in general.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Snestorm

Isolationism worked very well for them before, and it can work very well for them again.

USA was self-sufficiant before, and there is no reason why it can't be again.

That is a dangerous fallacy (that Jarred Diamond has reflected in depth about in his book "Collapse"): that something that worked in past conditions therefore will work in future conditions. Usually, the militarey is most pronbe for this thinkling error, it always starts the next war in the way it has won the last one. However, in this case discussed here, it is not true. The world, the economy has changed. Your dependencies are others than back then, and they are more intense - as long as you do not wish to give up your hightech industry and computer. Even the planned electric revolution to end the carbon era would not be possible without massive deliveries of needed ores and substances withiut which you cannot do it and that you do not have in North America.

As long as you do not all become farmers and trapperds again, you need a working economy to offer people sufficient jobs so that they can earn their living. And your economy is a highly depending, vulnerable thing, and much of it is in a pity state, with major parts of its former glorious branches outdated, gone, externalised, sold away.

There is no return to the days pre WWI and Roosewelt . This US today is not the US of the 60s and 70s, or the 40s. It is not the US of one and two hundred years ago.

However, it seesm to be a pattern in US politics. In a nutshell, Dems increase spendings and go on the international offense, Reps cut it and go isolationistic. Like a sine wave it goes like this, up and down, back and forth.

Beyond that, I hardly think every nation in the world would turn their backs to her.

If you betray your creditors by several trillion, they will remember that and it will serve as a warning to others.

Plus: before, the US will have inflicted crippling damage to global economic structrures and finances by defaulting. We in europe pay until today for and feel the aftermaths of the US-made housing and credit crunches that started in 2008, the ammount of wealth the American drama, made in the US, has destroyed for Europeans in Europe, both in live investements as well as future financial securites, are monumental. And therefore, many still are pissed. The dollar feels it, and some countries even saw their banks stopping to deal with American credits and bonds (amongst them: yours! http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...light=riksbank ) . China is in full action to reshift its reserves away from the dollar, and is reducing its focus on exporting to the US, wanting to boost internal consummation instead.

This time nobody will let America off the hook just because it shows a Californian tooth-paste-advertising smile. All the world is closely monitoring it, tight-lipped. And nobody wants to hear just an easy joke.

P.S. Ignore the "you". I forgot for a while that you are not an American.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

No. Companies do not hire new employees because they paid less in taxes. They hire employees to meet the demand coming in the front door. Businesses are in business to meet a demand. Businesses will only create enough jobs to fulfill that demand.

Very well put. Demand influences production, not the other way around.

If the customer/potential customer has more money to purchase stuff, they will buy more stuff, which increases demand for stuff, which makes hiring more people to make stuff profitable for the company that sells stuff.

No company is going to increase production (hire more people) unless there is a reasonable expectation that the extra production will be sold.

I am faced with this situation at the company I work for all the time.

I want to hire someone (increase production). But before I am allowed to hire them, I need to make a business case to my senior management where I demonstrate that the demand (from our clients) for this person will result in contracts exceeding the costs of the new hire.

If I can't make that case, we don't hire them. It sucks because I lose good resumes all the time. But I have to find the demand first, before I can increase the production.

Cutting the taxes for the company will not influence this formula no matter how badly some politicians want it to be true.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by gimpy117

. Sure, we need to cut programs, but the cuts nessicary to balance the budget would be Draconian, especially if nobody looks at the 500 pound gorilla in the room that is the defense budget.

That is the other issue that concerns me. We have to recognize that it took us decades to get into this hole and it will probably take decades to get out of it. There is no way we can solve this "debt problem" in the time of one term of the House.

What we need is some sort of commitment that this will be a multi-generational solution of gradual cuts and redesigning of the government programs.

But multi-generational does not work with the House, where the representatives are only interested in their re-election in two years.

I don't know if a constitutional amendment is the right solution, but it may be the only way we can force, and force is the right word, congress to come up with a mulit-generational plan and then stick with it.

There are no quick fixes. Unfortunately party politics needs quick fixes as we have elections every two years.

We need to make small changes in our spending, then allow the market economy time to adjust. Then make more small changes, allow the market economy time to adjust. Rinse and repeat for 50 years until we can get this problem fixed.

Again, it took us decades to get in to the mess, it is illogical to expect it to be fixed in one House Term.

If only we could elect politicians would be interested in the long term health of our government and not just their political career.




I kill me sometimes with my fantasies.

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Snestorm

Isolationism worked very well for them before, and it can work very well for them again.

USA was self-sufficiant before, and there is no reason why it can't be again.

Problem is, we jumped on board the whole globalism thing. Just about everything here is manufactured in china, and most corporations are global, with offices all over the world. Unfortunately, in the world we live in, where financial gain is concerned, patriotism ALWAYS takes a back seat.