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Greenspan: US Can Pay Any Debt It Has Because It Can Print Money To Pay It (VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_N0Cwg5iN4
Do we have assholes here pinning the deficit and bogus downgrade on Barry?
You asked for it:
dubya "I didn't wanna scare the kids" owns $T6.1, and then passed a ton of tax expeditures and 2 bogus wars, and cratering economy to Barry.
St Ronnie doubled the debt
Greenspan: US Can Pay Any Debt It Has Because It Can Print Money To Pay It (VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_N0Cwg5iN4
The world's bond markets basically ignore S&P "political punditry", keep buy US bonds, and with no significant change in rates.
Dubya
The war in Iraq and the disregard of the US real estate ripoff by banks sealed the fate of this great nation. All is pretty much lost. Time to tighten the belt. Hard times are a coming.
thanks dubya
In all fairness it's not all thanks to him. He was just an idiot, the ppl around him are the ones who buried us with their fear mongering. The TKO that Bin Laden dealt us really was the beginning of the end. Most were in a daze worried about security instead of paying attention to the bank's highway robbery.
Last edited by cheguevara; 08-08-2011 at 08:23 AM.
Your chart is wrong.
Bush increased the debt 5 trillion in 8 years. Sucks, but he did it.
Obama has increased the debt 3.6 trillion in 30 months.
The math is pretty simple if you are intellectually honest.
The national debt was 5.7 trillion when Bush took over from Clinton.
The national debt was 10.7 trillion when Obama took over from Bush
The national debt is currently 14.3 trillion
Really? " , meet slap"......really?
If you're intellectually honest you don't break things down that way at all and you don't leave out mention of the largest recession ever. Bush and his policies have far more to do with the debt than Obama has had although Obama is not innocent by any means.
If we raised taxes to the highest levels in history, then the deficit would disappear, and the debt would start getting paid down.
Do you not understand anything about economics or our tax system?
The comparison's are not really all that valid between Bush and Obama.
It's the revenue, stupid.
Mandated spending, by law, is not as flexible or dynamic as the economy itself.
If the economy takes a nose dive, and tax collections plummet, as they did, there is not a whole lot that a president can do to change that, other than some direct stimulus, which was done.
Playing the silly partisan card about who ran it up more than who, is really pointless at this point anyway. Not that that will stop anyone from doing it. (sighs)
The solution, real austerity with tax raises, is obvious to everyone, but the Norquistians running the GOP.
The sooner we bite the bullet, the better.
I wonder how much of Bushs debt was borne of necessity? I wonder the same of Obamas.
lolololol america
and lol at these pussies saying "revenue" instead of just saying new taxes.
Just getting into this thread, and this is bound to be OT as this quote was from page 1, however, I need to point out that the United States ALSO has a government run healthcare system. In fact, our government spends more capita (including ALL citizens, not just those covered by govt. healthcare) than any of the countries you reference.
Obviously those countries social policies are not OUR social policies. I have long argued that the problem is not government per se, but is, in fact, the United States Government
"revenue" instead of just saying new taxes."
local, state, federal tax revenues are down due to lower consumption (sales tax), derated property values and foreclosed property (property taxes), and 25M people un/mal-employed or no longer "participating" in the labor market.
Just getting people back to work and consuming again, WITHOUT RAISING TAX RATES, would help tremendously in reducing the pain of the Banksters' Great Depression.
Whats really frustrating to meet is seeing people point to our crappy policies and try to use that as proof that certain social policies can't work.
"problem is not government per se, but is, in fact, the United States Government"
The US govt is whatever the Corporate-Americans and capitalist want it to be.
The govt is a proxy for the real wielders of power, and they aren't Human-Americans.
Well, that's certainly true. It's also worth noting that certain US government run healthcare is pretty good too, IMO. (the VA).
The US simply has a nice scam going on. They let insurers pick up most of all the low-risk pool, and then the insurers drop them all off to the government when they become high-risk or lose their jobs.
"ALSO has a government run healthcare system. In fact, our government spends more capita (including ALL citizens, not just those covered by govt. healthcare) than any of the countries you reference."
US govt only runs the VA. It runs an healthy insurance operation (not the health care syste).
The exorbitant costs of US sick-care are due to waste, fraud, inefficiencies, and greed of the docs, hospitals, for-profit health insurers, NONE of which is caused by the US govt.
My post had nothing to do with whose fault it was.
The simple fact is, the numbers in the chart were WRONG. I pointed that out and gave you the REAL numbers.
Credibility, Chutzpah And Debt
By PAUL KRUGMAN
To understand the furor over the decision by Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, to downgrade U.S. government debt, you have to hold in your mind two seemingly (but not actually) contradictory ideas. The first is that America is indeed no longer the stable, reliable country it once was. The second is that S.& P. itself has even lower credibility; it’s the last place anyone should turn for judgments about our nation’s prospects.
Let’s start with S.& P.’s lack of credibility. If there’s a single word that best describes the rating agency’s decision to downgrade America, it’s chutzpah — traditionally defined by the example of the young man who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan.
America’s large budget deficit is, after all, primarily the result of the economic slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis. And S.& P., along with its sister rating agencies, played a major role in causing that crisis, by giving AAA ratings to mortgage-backed assets that have since turned into toxic waste.
Nor did the bad judgment stop there. Notoriously, S.& P. gave Lehman Brothers, whose collapse triggered a global panic, an A rating right up to the month of its demise. And how did the rating agency react after this A-rated firm went bankrupt? By issuing a report denying that it had done anything wrong.
So these people are now pronouncing on the creditworthiness of the United States of America?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/op...gewanted=print
That sums it up.
FWIW, the Economist, once again, nails it:
Three examples of downgrade chutzpah
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democ...dit-rating-cutCHUTZPAH is not a word I often use in my writing, but it kept bouncing around my head this weekend as I read about S&P's downgrade of America's credit rating. So many of the actors in this mini-drama displayed such shallow self-understanding, combined with impressive audacity, that it was impossible to ignore their impudence. Three, in particular, stood out in my mind.
Let's start with the actor who seems to be ignoring some basic facts. As my colleague points out in a must-read post on Free Exchange, S&P's downgrade of America's credit rating was not about the country's ability to pay its debt, but its willingness. And lately, a troubling number of American politicians appear comfortable with the idea of stiffing the country's creditors. One of those politicians is Michele Bachmann, who said she would not vote to raise the debt ceiling, despite having earlier voted for a budget that would've necessitated doing just that. As the deadline for default loomed, Mrs Bachmann and others downplayed the consequences, even as their actions pushed America to the brink. Yet over the weekend she not only blamed the president for S&P's downgrade, she blamed...the raising of the debt ceiling. "This president has destroyed the credit rating of the United States through his failed economic policies and his inability to control government spending by raising the debt ceiling," Mrs Bachmann said. That is an impressive amount of chutzpah, or choot-spa, even for a presidential candidate.
Yet Mrs Bachmann's criticism of the White House was not all absurd. She said the president was "AWOL" and "missing in action" in the debt-ceiling debate. While this was not true of late, the president's failure to either embrace the Bowles-Simpson plan or present a deficit-reduction plan of his own allowed the Republicans, and the tea-party movement in particular, to monopolise the issue. Lexington asks some pertinent questions in his latest column: "Could [Mr Obama] not have made raising the debt ceiling a condition of extending the Bush-era tax cuts last December? And why did he take so long to show that he cared about putting America’s finances in order?" The Republicans can plausibly claim that their actions forced the president to get serious about the deficit. So it was with some chutzpah that Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, responded to S&P's downgrade by saying, "We must do better to make clear our nation’s will, capacity and commitment to work together to tackle our major fiscal and economic challenges." That would've been good advice for the president some months ago.
But the White House also has some cause to criticise S&P. I mean, this is S&P, one of the rating agencies that showed astounding incompetence in failing to properly grade the mortgage-backed securities that nearly sunk the world economy. Then, on Friday, as they were contemplating America's downgrade, they sent the White House budget numbers that were off by some $2 trillion. Acknowledging the error, S&P said its decision was still justified based on the poisonous political atmosphere in Washington. So the firm that could not be trusted to accurately assess objective measures of credit-worthiness is now basing its decisions on completely subjective criteria? Chutzpah, on which Paul Krugman and my colleague have more.
Yet who can blame S&P? America's politicians inspire no confidence in their ability to put the nation's finances right, or to keep from blowing up the economy. As my colleague pointed out, Mitch McConnell says debt-ceiling brinkmanship is now the new normal, because the first go-around was so much fun. Michele Bachmann, meanwhile, is second in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, and most of her compe ors showed similar intransigence, mixed with varying degrees of opportunism, during the debt-ceiling debate. As for the president, he still has no plan for long-term deficit reduction. So yeah, S&P failed to accurately identify the junk that made up those troublesome mortgage securities. But I can hardly fault them for trying not to repeat the mistake when evaluating the make-up of America's political system, which is ultimately responsible for paying the country's bills.
More fodder for the Daily Show, I'm sure.
It is really a sad comment when our nations finances and the politics around it is such fertile ground for satire...
and by fertile, I mean break out the waders, 'cause it's gettin' deep.
Didn't I say it wouldn't make much difference?
That's part of the problem in trying to assign blame. Some of it is impossible to avoid, and set up from previous years.
Social policies can work, but I especially have a problem that allows people not to be accountable for their part.
Whats really frustrating to meet is seeing people point to our crappy policies and try to use that as proof that certain social policies can't work.
You know. Maybe we should implement government health care. That in itself would become a serious tort reform for medical malpractice, because the federal government will say " You" when someone tries to sue. That just might make it cheaper.
"I especially have a problem that allows people not to be accountable for their part."
you mean like the financial sector assuming NO ACCOUNTABILITY for the Banksters Great Depression, while paying the hate-media, including people here, to blame it all on stupid, greedy Human-Americans, CRA, and F&F?
Seems like the only people you like to on your mythical Welfare Queens in Cadillacs.
Moar goodz from ma peeps at the Economist:
Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade America’s credit rating on Friday is momentous, but not, I suspect, for the reasons most people will cite. Many worried that interest rates would skyrocket and the markets sell off. This seems unlikely. The news won’t be a surprise and S&P was kind enough to dampen any impact by waiting until after the markets closed. There are very few investors who will be compelled to sell Treasury debt because it’s rated AA+ instead of AAA. Banks will not have to hold more capital against their Treasury holdings, regulators confirmed.
Another popular interpretation is that this is a wake-up call about our runaway debt. And indeed, S&P, in its decision, did cite the inadequacy of the debt deal agreed to by Congress and Barack Obama this past week:
[T}he fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration agreed to this week falls short of the amount that we believe is necessary to stabilize the general government debt burden by the middle of the decade.
Not surprisingly, Republicans seized on this as evidence that their strategy and views have been vindicated. The office of John Boehner, speaker of the House of Representatives, called it the “latest consequence of the out-of-control spending that has taken place in Washington for decades.”
But this interpretation is incomplete and misleading. As S&P’s announcement makes clear, the inadequacy of the deal was only one motivation. As important (to me, even more important) was the the reckless and divisive battle that preceded it:
The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy … [This] weakens the government’s ability to manage public finances …
This is crucial. Sovereigns aren’t like companies. They can’t go bankrupt, and creditors can’t seize their assets. Their creditworthiness depends as much on their willingness as their ability to pay. As Felix Salmon presciently noted before the announcement was made, it’s not our ability to pay that’s in doubt:
America’s ability to pay is neither here nor there: the problem is its willingness to pay. And there’s a serious cons uency of powerful people in Congress who are perfectly willing and even eager to drive the US into default. The Tea Party is fully cognizant that it has been given a bazooka, and it’s just itching to pull the trigger. There’s no good reason to believe that won’t happen at some point.
Absent the toxic politics that infected the debate, we could have hammered out a deal that stabilized the debt without squeezing the economy too much in the near term. After all, Britain, Germany and even Italy seem able to do so, and we have in the past, too.
Investors largely tuned out the debt-ceiling debate until its final days out of a belief based on long experience that for all the antics and rhetoric of the Tea Party, the people who actually run Capitol Hill would never compromise the country’s credit worthiness. After all, it was Mr Boehner who reminded his freshmen colleagues that on the debt ceiling they’d have to act like “adults.”
It is striking that the proponents of this strategy seem so oblivious to its impact. Our economy is lubricated by a sophisticated and stable credit market whose most vital component is also the most ephemeral: trust. As the crisis amply demonstrated, when trust erodes, the system freezes up. America has built a reputation for responsible and credible management of its finances over the centuries, and that reputation has been reduced to a political football, like a federal judgeship. Henceforth a foreign pension fund or central bank that once mindlessly ploughed his spare cash into Treasurys will have to think twice.That is not what happened. As the fight dragged on, the leadership moved closer to the Tea Party, not the other way around. And they seem happy with the results. Why else would Mitch McConnell have promised on August 1st to do exactly the same the next time the debt ceiling must be raised?
I never had much sympathy for the view that America’s economy was about to be eclipsed by China’s, and the main reason was our political ins utions. Those checks, balances and laws provide an orderly means to change course in response to new challenges. China’s authoritarianism deprives the government of a feedback mechanism to tell it when it is meeting the needs and aspirations of its people. That makes its system intrinsically fragile.
Events of the last few weeks have forced me to reconsider. While the crash of a high-speed train highlighted many of China’s ongoing weaknesses, it also revealed, in the vigorous reporting and commentary that followed in print and online, a nascent apparatus of accountability. Conversely, America’s ostensible success in avoiding default in fact highlighted the growing dysfunction of its political ins utions. If these events are portents of things to come, then the day when China displaces America as the world’s economic superpower is closer than I thought.
My more optimistic take is that the behavior of the markets and record disapproval ratings will force Congress to acknowledge the idiocy of their recent behavior and to adapt by subs uting compromise for brinkmanship. Investors won't learn much new from S&P's announcement. Politicians should.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freee...dit-rating-cut
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