O's probably happy that everyone is talking about that nut pastor in Florida...

[CosmicCowboy]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/39075951

Nobody wants long US debt. We have 75% of our total debt that has to be refinanced in the next 3 years. Not good.

[Nbadan]

..that depends...who owns the debt?

[CosmicCowboy]

..that depends...who owns the debt?

Pretty simple stuff. New auctions. The US is selling. The lower the overall demand, the higher the interest demanded by purchasers. Tax payers eventually have to pay principal and interest. Higher the interest, the more taxes it will take to service the debt.

[Nbadan]

Whom do they pay a majority of that interest too?

[CosmicCowboy]

Whom do they pay a majority of that interest too?

I already gave you a simplistic explanation. I'm not going to try to give you a full education on the government bond market on a message board. The internet is your friend.

[Nbadan]

...oh, I know how the bond market works, do you?


who owns the debt?

[CosmicCowboy]

Go ahead and just talk to yourself Dan. Explain it to us stupid conservatives.

I know that the biggest holder of US debt is Social Security because they took the money out of our paychecks and immediately dumped the money into the general fund where it was spent and they took paper IOU's instead. I get that. And now we have to pay high interest rates to get others to buy our bonds so we can pay off the SS bonds so we can pay SS benefits. I get that too. What part don't you get?

[Nbadan]

...the part you don't get is the part where the U.S. govt pays that interest to ourselves...how many jobs do you think that investment of trillions of dollars into the economy has created over the last 30 years? How has it improved our standard of living? what would that money have been doing earning no interest?

[CosmicCowboy]

...the part you don't get is the part where the U.S. govt pays that interest to ourselves...how many jobs do you think that investment of trillions of dollars into the economy has created over the last 30 years? How has it improved our standard of living? what would that money have been doing earning no interest?

And what happens when they need those trillions of dollars to pay the benefits those dollars were taken from paychecks for?

It's a ponzi scheme. They eventually have to refinance that debt to someone else to get the real money back.

[Winehole23]

Dan thinks we're getting rich off our debt. True story.

[Nbadan]

ideally we pay off the debt, but not during periods of growth less than 3%.....if you cut spending during a period of little to no growth, as wing-nuts want to do, you will increase the debt and increase unemployment...

[Nbadan]

Dan thinks we're getting rich off our debt. True story.

We're not getting rich, but lets be honest about the debt....

[Nbadan]

...think of it this way, when Obama took office our economy was on the brink of collapse thanks to years of GOP debt abuse, yet we were still able to borrow trillions of dollars to prime the economy...

[Winehole23]

nm

[Nbadan]

....eliminate the Bush tax cuts, which have failed to deliver jobs anyway, and watch the debt virtually evaporate...

[Winehole23]

Even with $1T structural deficits and an aging population. Right.

[Nbadan]

nm

what policies have caused it? Whose policies reduced the cost viability of medicare?

[Nbadan]

Even with $1T structural deficits and an aging population. Right.

...deficits don't last forever, but things aren't going to get better if we keep letting corporations write their own regulations and pay little to no federal taxes..

[Winehole23]

what policies have caused it? Debt/deficit have been growing for the last 30 years. Assigning sole proprietorship of the problem to one party or one president is simplistic to the point of being plainly false.

[CosmicCowboy]

debt/deficit have been growing for the last 30 years. Assigning sole proprietorship of the problem to one party or one president is simplistic to the point of being plainly false.

x2

[Nbadan]

Debt/deficit have been growing for the last 30 years. Assigning sole proprietorship of the problem to one party or one president is simplistic to the point of being plainly false.

..it's about policy....the Bush tax cuts, two wars of aggression and the expansion of Medicare Part D added trillions to the debt without any way to pay for it....

[Winehole23]

Yeah, that didn't help matters, but it's not the whole story.

[Nbadan]

Yeah, that didn't help matters, but it's not the whole story.

...it's a lot of the story....before Obama, Democrat Presidents had added a fraction of debt compared to wing-nut Presidents...

[Winehole23]

Presidents don't make appropriations or run deficits. Congress does.

[Nbadan]

Presidents have veto power...

[Nbadan]

...thus they set the 'spending tone'...for instance, the Bush tax cuts and the largest social services spending ever were not Bush policy, but he set the tone..