[poo hits fan]Agreement from the hard Left and Right

Ross Perot was jumping up and down about the deficit and the debt and the impending doom when he ran for president and everyone wrote him off as a loony.

Higher taxes and spending cuts are political suicide. I don't know how this stuff can get fixed.

I never voted for Clinton, but I do respect the fact that he at least got us on the right fiscal path. I think a balanced budget has to become a requirement for passage -- no more deficits. That still doesn't answer for the debt, but it puts the brakes on at least.

 

I couldn't agree more

 

"Reagan proved deficits don't matter."

- Dick Cheney told Paul O'Neill

 

The blame ultimately goes to us - the voters who voted for lower taxes AND higher spending (entitlements, Iraq, etc.). Personally, I think spending is the big bulprit here.

That's the problem with Democracy. It relies on the general assumption that the voters actually know what is best for them.

 

The Federal Reserve is a Central Bank. I think it is the fifth Central Bank that we have had in the U.S. This one has succeeded where the others were all defeated by Americans who understood how Central Banks ruled Europe through wealth confiscation by debt and currency devaluation.

Now most nations have surrendered to the power of Central Bankers, those are the folks who are super wealthy and benefit financially from their ownership of all the Central Banks including the Federal Reserve.

Federal Reserve Banks are complex in ownership and secretive also. The most powerful I think is the Federal Reserve Bank of NY.

The Federal Reserve Board just are minions who carry out orders.

The Federal Reserve is where the govt. borrows the money it spends. The more they borrow the less intrinsic value the dollar can sustain. A dollar bill is paper with green ink. Not much real intrinsic value. Spending power is controlled by those who lend the money and control the supply of money.

Inflation is a delayed reaction to devalued currency. As long as nations respect the dollar they will trade for and with dollars, nations like China are kind enough to do this right now as we buy their goods like there is no tomorrow. This props up the value of the dollar and also sends cheap goods our way so we can borrow more money and buy more things.

Economists call these things bubbles.

There are real estate bubbles (borrowing money cheap to buy and push up the price of housing)
Stock bubbles
All kinds of bubbles

But the worse bubble is a currency bubble.

That is the one we are a fear'in right now.

The one where Central Bankers decide we have had all the gluttonous credit binge spending we can afford and they yank credit tight and shove taxes to the max (in order to pay them back)

This won't happen quickly if they can help it (although Central Bankers always hedge their positions in case of calamity)

First of all, they don't want us to write off the debt. So we need to have a slow progression of crisis if we are going to stop borrowing and spending and start payback time.

Second our military has to be firmly in their control. It might be in their control but I don't know how firmly it is. I am sure they do.

Anyways- I think it is a waste of time trying to figure out how you are going to pay off your $150,000.00 share of the debt that is increasing every day. Especially since they have also got you personally in hock over your eyebrows.

My suggestion is spend quality time with the wife and kids, love your neighbor and enjoy the car and the house.

Every empire falls.

If you don't understand the Federal Reserve you do not understand govt. in America.

Here is the best read on the subject- The Creature From Jekyll Island by C. Edward Griffinhttp://www.realityzone.com/creature.html

 

IIRC, haven't the recent tax cuts and spending increases been driven completely by YOUR party? Your party's "plan" has been in effect for five years now and it just keeps getting worse.

 

Start putting money in overseas accounts. Better move to another country!!!

 

This is truly frightening.

There is so much wasteful spending in government, things like 'corporate welfare' and such, that a reduction in government programs could be made without hurting the citizens who need public assistance the most. I think an end to corruption, or at least a significant reduction, would result in a similar reduction in the national debt. Unfortunately, so many who are in government now are only helping the wealthy loot our taxes instead of protecting our investment in our own country.

But, I'm already working on a plan that will allow me to leave without incident, and live comfortably once I'm gone.

 

Maybe one day we will include George W. in the same group as Warren Harding and Ulysses S. Grant who have always been labeled as the countries worst presidents/administrations.

Then again, U.S. Grant is on the fifty dollar bill, so who knows, one day George W. may be on the $100 dollar bill instead of Ole Ben.

 

Half of my 401K is in international mid cap funds. It had a 15% return last year.

 

Taking diversification tips from TJ I see. You might want to ask him how his ULPIX is doing this year.

 

Can someone more versed in these matter explain to me why it is so hard to balance the budget?

It seems to me that if they just freeze tax-rates and increase spending at the going population and inflation rates, wouldn't real GDP growth eventually soak up the deficit?

What's the tally on the Iraq war so far?

 

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/csm/20050519/ts_csm/awarcost_1

no worries"shudder"

If I did that, no telling where my money would be.

 

I have an interesting tale in this regard.

I don't know if you are familiar with proxy voting procedures for stock ownership, but they all follow a patern that until recently I never realized had a Communist-like flavor.

By this I mean that every ballot I seen until recently lets you either vote for the candidates that the company wants or not, but only a yes/no vote for the full slate. Very much like Sadam
Hussein's Stalinist elections.

This year, however, I recieved my balot for Huaneng Power, a Chinese company and was presented with actual choices, and individual votes per position! It was a revelation! It was like waking up from a dream. I now understand how the people in Iraq found that they never knew what they'd been missing.

 

Now that I've read over what I wrote I see I've made one of the mistakes that I was intending to point out. People (as I just did) often treat the concept of democracy and capitalism as interchangable ideas. This couldn't be further from the truth. The two ideas are more often than not at odds with each other when capitalism evolves to the world of multi-national corperations.

Inherent in democracy is an idea that draws from the philosophical background which brought us communism -- both in the purest philosophical definition, are philosophies which value individual equality. (Obviously, this isn't the case in practice.)

Conversely, try suggesting to the head of Exxon that some stock room clerk is his equal, and that this idea should be central to how he decides to operate the corperation.

Corperations are inherently hirarchical organizations that depend on their ability to gain advantage over competition, and must move with the quickness that democracy can't have. Democracies are inherently internaly conflicted, and their strength comes from the process required to build consensus.

 

Ottoman makes a good point. There is a conflict between democracy and capitalism in the political realm. As we see we have a political system in which it is basically one person one vote plus each individual can influence the media and info available to others casting their votes based on the dollars they have to spend. A few rich guys can, for example ,fund the Swift Boat liars to influence the election. The wealthy can buy access to the lawmakes and drown out other competing interests. The dmocracy comes out in effect more like one dollar one vote, and the rich can outvote the many.

In the economic realm there is no pretense of democracy . A rich guy with 100,000 shares can outvote thousands of litte shareholders.

 

I think history may prove that Democracy and Capitalism are almost mutually exclusive.

In my admittedly simple-minded view, it seems that all the developed democratic nations are sliding into the Socialist realm. The progressive tax rates and entitlement programs we see today would have shocked even the most "progressive" thinkers of the previous centuries.

The rich capitalists will always be outnumbered by the mid/lower classes. As a result, politicians will eventually gain power by levying extremely high tax rates on the wealthy and basically disbursing it to the non-wealthy (in various forms). Eventually, any excess capital will be in the State coffers.

 

Langal- I am not versed enough to explain but I think clarifying something may help.

To balance the budget

And to pay off the debt

Are two very different things.

The budget is what we borrow each year to pay for govt.
We borrow the money and if we exceed the budgeted amount by overspending we have to borrow more money.

The debt is the acumulation of all this borrowing.

In order to pay off the debt we have to stop borrowing totally and begin paying it off. A balanced budget would be essential for this to happen, but not necessary. If you have plenty of cash and you don't have to borrow at all it doesn't matter if you bust the budget, the budget may have been a poor guess.

Budgets are how much they intend to spend on programs.
They then borrow the money to spend.

It works the same way in your household.

We pay taxes to pay the interest on the debt load. More taxes the more interest we can pay. There is no way to tax enough to pay off the 45 trillion in principle we owe, plus we are adding to the debt at approx. 2-3 billion daily.

So we are in a no win situation. We don't have enough GDP to pay off the debt, so if we bankrupted the country we couldn't clear it up.

We must deflate the dollar value to make any progress at all.

If we create more dollars out of thin air- Like printing say 25 trillion additional dollars next year, then we could pay off chunks of the debt with very inflated currency. Alot of people like that on a small scale. You bought a house 25 yrs ago, because of inflation (Devaluation of currency) the payment of $325.00 / month is being paid with cheaper (devalued) dollars so for your 2000 sq. ft. house it seems like you got a good deal going. And you bought the house for 55,000 and now it is appraising for 105,000. Sounds good you been getting raises and you could actually afford a payment of 850.00 per month.

But what happens when you buy a home for 255,000 and you are making a payment of 2200.00 per month and you are stretched thin with credit cards and gas goes up to 2.75/ gallon and groceries all go up in cost and everything else goes up in price because of the same effect, the dollar keeps getting devalued due to govt. debt. Well then you hope your Company is doing real well in a very healthy economy and they give you bigger and bigger raises each year to compensate.

Now the bubble breaks. Debt forces the devaluation process to the point where people can't purchase from your company, pay raises come slower until they stop, downsizing begins, outsourcing florishes, what most purchase are cheaper goods from overseas, and we all take our political sides and debate how to balance the budget and the beginning of the end is trickling down...

So govt. keeps borrowing and spending. We pay the interest every April 15th and who knows what America will look like in 40 yrs?

 

How many people believe our elected leaders have the best interest of America and Americans as their top priority? 99% + have how to get relected as their number one goal.