Driving straight into a tree we could easily avoid

MorkandMindy said:

The US has been running up debts for many years. The debts include: a trade deficit (Current Account deficit), a growing National Debt and growing Personal debt.

In August 8th 2011 Standard and Poors downgraded US debt from the highest possible rating of AAA to AA+ owing to the rising debt which had reached 14 Trillion dollars.

Since then the debt has doubled past 28 Trillion dollars and is continuing to grow at 3 trillion dollars a year with no sign of going anywhere but further into the red.

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Yes that was something I brought up at the time. We nearly got down graded a second time in 2012 or late 2011. I'm not sure how we haven't been down graded since, but I'm sure that is coming again soon with our crazy spending.

MorkandMindy said:

All those trillions of dollars and the relentless growth of the debt look pretty hopeless.

So what do we do? Bring back all those manufacturing plants we've moved out of the country, and that we are currently buying products from we used to make ourselves?

No, we just keep paying others to make things, and pay unemployment to the Americans who used to work in them. And provide therapy to help them feel less worthless.

And we create pointless jobs to re employ them and disguise the very high rate of disengagement from the economy. Andrew Yang is totally familiar with that, and that about 5% of the working population were judged to be not re-trainable and therefore granted disabled status. If you counted the disabled with the unemployed and the under employed you get a more realistic picture of employment, which is that it is very high. All that is done to keep up the image of a good economy.

It would a be a whole bunch better to actually create a good economy.

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So Andrew Yang is not going to be your Democrat yes-man, to toe the line like the rest have all turned out to be?

MorkandMindy said:

No, in fact he got zero candidates in the Democratic Primaries.

His plan was simple and comparatively affordable, not the sort of thing Democrats support.

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Well good for him, then. I'm skeptical of just about all of them of both parties, at this point.

The 2011 credit downgrade was not due to us running up debt, but because Congress keeps playing games with the debt ceiling.
United States federal government credit-rating downgrades - Wikipedia

MorkandMindy said:

Me too.

But now I'm more of the opinion that the lobbyists are the final obstacle. That if anyone who does any good does get through either party to a position of power then in Congress they will never get to the 50% of the votes needed to get anything done, because the lobbyists own most of the Congress people.

And although a President can do a certain amount if you do anything major you'll follow in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and JFK.

No President since JFK has attempted to take big steps to fix the country.

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I'm ready for term limits, myself, although no doubt there're ways around that too.

MorkandMindy said:

A lot of people are in favor of term limits, but that doesn't prevent the 'rotating door' between banks, corporations, the military, and the government as I understand it.

The corruption in these areas, the government-lobbyists, the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, the military-industrial complex, the banks and government and such, all the really lucrative things. When the county goes bust they'll all be in their second homes in other countries.

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True that. And too many new congressmen are corrupted before they move into their offices or even get elected!

The debt of the USA will be settled when Jesus Christ returns and sets up HIS millennial kingdom. Until then, unless the holders of the USA debt band together and en masse demand payment (which will mean the end of the USA), the debt will grow and grow and grow...

Re: manufacturing jobs: the greed of the American labor movement pushed manufacturing out of the USA and into cost-friendly foreign countries.

As long as Japan, China, Brazil, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other countries are willing to allow western corporations to build factories and create hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs for their population at a fraction of the cost it would be in the USA, which wages fund their government's economic and military growth, the USA population will gladly continue to be dependent on low-cost foreign products, and the US government will continue to allow China, et alia, to continue to purchase US debt.

It's a horrible cycle teeming with filthy greedy money lovers.

JerryinMass said:

The debt of the USA will be settled when Jesus Christ returns and sets up HIS millennial kingdom. Until then, unless the holders of the USA debt band together and en masse demand payment (which will mean the end of the USA), the debt will grow and grow and grow...

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There is no need for anyone holding US debt to demand payment as they are paid on time in full when the Tbills they hold mature.

Adding to the debt is the one thing that brings D's and R's together in glorious harmony! Thats got to be worth something...?

durangodawood said:

Adding to the debt is the one thing that brings D's and R's together in glorious harmony! Thats got to be worth something...?

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Lolol, but not worth 20-something trillion!

MorkandMindy said:

The US has been running up debts for many years. The debts include: a trade deficit (Current Account deficit), a growing National Debt and growing Personal debt.

In August 8th 2011 Standard and Poors downgraded US debt from the highest possible rating of AAA to AA+ owing to the rising debt which had reached 14 Trillion dollars.

Since then the debt has doubled past 28 Trillion dollars and is continuing to grow at 3 trillion dollars a year with no sign of going anywhere but further into the red.

Click to expand...

The biggest enemy that no one is talking about is the fed. They make this stuff so convoluted that’s it’s almost impossible for your avg joe to comprehend. Between reverse repo and mbs purchase being through the roof our current financial system is a ticking time bomb. As soon as they start to unload these assets the entire stock market will come to a screeching halt. That being said. We might just melt up into the stratosphere before anything tragic happens. Oh and inflation hasn’t even begun. Right now there’s no money velocity. So once the economy does actually start to recover we will see hyperinflation. What we have now is almost entirely a supply crunch.