Is a complete collapse imminent?

Of course the US would be buying it's own debt at that point, however I don't see how that would cause everything to fold. It will be at least 5-8 years before another currency is ready to assume the role of the worlds reserve currency. Most likely the dollar will be replaced by a basket of currencies and the dollar will still be a major player in that basket.

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The Fed has been talking about buying treasuries for a while, so we're probably headed in that direction.

There are two things we need to fix as fast as possible, they are:

1. For a long time people were spending more money than they should have been spending, now thier trying to pay off debt/regain some stability. People keep saying that stimulous money isn't stimulating becuase people are saving it/paying off credit cards. The point they seem to be missing is that it has to happen before were on the right track again, people need to feel thier in a safe and secure enough situation to begin spending money again. That may mean paying off thier credit cards before they pick up that new living room set or start eating out once a week again. We need rebates/tax cuts until people feel secure enough to begin spending again.

2. We need more good paying jobs, and we need them yesterday. Unemployment doesn't seem that terrible, however those numbers are heavily "massaged." If you add those who are no longer recieving unemployment benefits and those who are underemployed (the guy who used to work a good job and make 80K a year, but who is now a department manager at walmart for 24K a year.) The real unemployment rate is probably around 15%, and that is very destabilizing in a modern economy. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm The guy who used to make 80K a year can no longer make his morgage payment and the home he bought 2 years ago is now worth 220K instead of the 300K he paid for it. The home goes into forclosure and all the homes around it drop 5% in value, people see thier net worth decline and try to get back to where they were by spending less and saving more... which costs us more jobs and the cycle continues.

Then there are huge long term problems that need to be addressed as well. Brittle food and energy supplies in much of the world, peak oil somewhere in the next 2-10 years, political instability, religious extremism, terrorism, governments burdoned with massive amounts of debt, corperate entitities that are more powerful than governments, the list goes on...

As long as spending is addressing our short term problems in light of our long term problems... it's doing more good than harm IMO.

MerchantofMenace said:

The Fed has been talking about buying treasuries for a while, so we're probably headed in that direction.

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CCGirl said:

Marx had it right after all!

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Only Marx's solution sucks even worse. The Iroquois and Lakotah had it right, and they didn't need any fancy "theories".

Lot of talk about unsustainable population growth.

As nations become wealthier and more educated, birth rates drop.

Economic expansion in the West has created jobs for poorer nations and generally raised their standard of living.

Ummm.......wehavent seen communism yet! If you were to read the manifesto, you would see that after the fall of capitalism, which may be what we are witnessing now, socialism will be adopted (nationalizing banks, anyone?), which will lead to communism. This can only happen in industrialized nations, and can not be localized.

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We've seen communism. Cuba, China, Russia, ect. That's communism in the real world. And it sucks.

What example? Why would you prefer to speak of which you know nothing about, than educate yourself? It is a very short, easy read

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20 million dead russians under Stalin?

Note the Social Security system, Medicare, public education, and so on.

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SS is a ponzi scheme that steals people's money, and thanks to public ed, our kids are some of the dumbest in the first world. Go Marx!

Steve Petersen said:

Lot of talk about unsustainable population growth.

As nations become wealthier and more educated, birth rates drop.

Economic expansion in the West has created jobs for poorer nations and generally raised their standard of living.

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Birth rates tend to drop with infant mortality rates. I.e., when you have a nearly 1:1 birth:survival rate, people have less babies because their babies tend to live. In many "third world" countries, infant mortality rates can be as high as 160:1,000 (infant deaths to live births).

IF you look at the countries at the top of the list (Sierra Leone, Afganistan, Liberia), all considered thrid world with low education and rampant poverty. The bottom of the list would be considered the "enlightened world".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate_(2005)

20 million dead russians under Stalin?

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More like 50-80 million.

Hitler killed 20 million or so.

MerchantofMenace said:

More like 50-80 million.

Hitler killed 20 million or so.

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I doubt the stats you posted. Can you provide proof to back the figures?

JustOneWay said:

I doubt the stats you posted. Can you provide proof to back the figures?

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Russian World War 2 Casualty figures

Except for some minor operations against the Japanese, the Russians pretty much fought the Axis, which included Hungary, Romania, Italy, Slovakia, and Bulgaria. Given that the invasion of the Soviet Union occurred the behest of Germany, it's a safe bet that Hitler was responsible for 20 million Russian deaths.

Some other good info is here

My estimate for Stalin might be a bit high, because the entire death toll for the Soviet Union is around sixty million. Stalin was in control for about half of the period that the Soviet Union existed.

More like 50-80 million.

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Um, no. It's more around 20 million Russians and Ukrainians he killed.

Hitler killed 20 million or so.

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I wouldn't say the Germans killed them so much as the sheer military stupidity of the Russians and their human waves tactics.

drGiaus said:

I wouldn't say the Germans killed them so much as the sheer military stupidity of the Russians and their human waves tactics.

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I'm not sure there was any other viable alternative, the only "sane" solution would have been to accept defeat... thankfully the Russions didn't accept that.

MerchantofMenace said:

The Fed has been talking about buying treasuries for a while, so we're probably headed in that direction.

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I'm expecting to see just about every imaginable kind of financial legerdemain and chicanery employed by the Powers that Be to try and prop up the present system. And, likely some that we haven't imagined...

drGiaus said:

Um, no. It's more around 20 million Russians and Ukrainians he killed.



I wouldn't say the Germans killed them so much as the sheer military stupidity of the Russians and their human waves tactics.

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20 million WAR casualties, whose culpability could be shared between Hitler and Stalin. What about the 20+ million that Stalin is responsible for in his political terrorism policies?

"A Soviet weekly newspaper today published the most detailed accounting of Stalin's victims yet presented to a mass audience here, indicating that about 20 million died in labor camps, forced collectivization, famine and executions."
from: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE0DF113EF937A35751C0A96F948260

ACougar said:

I'm not sure there was any other viable alternative, the only "sane" solution would have been to accept defeat... thankfully the Russions didn't accept that.

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Honestly, I would rather have had Hitler been successful in his Eastern campaign, and then we could have dealt with him in a weakened state. I'm not seeing a whole lot of good that came out of the Soviet Union being victorious.

Honestly, I would rather have had Hitler been successful in his Eastern campaign, and then we could have dealt with him in a weakened state. I'm not seeing a whole lot of good that came out of the Soviet Union being victorious.

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Russia dealt with around 80% of Germany's forces and strength. We would have had losses in the millions had Hilter been successful against the USSR, instead of just the 250 thousand we did lose.

20 million WAR casualties, whose culpability could be shared between Hitler and Stalin. What about the 20+ million that Stalin is responsible for in his political terrorism policies?

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Yea, 20 million dead during the war, another 20 during the rest of Stalin's life.

drGiaus said:

We've seen communism. Cuba, China, Russia, ect. That's communism in the real world. And it sucks.

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None of those are communist. At the most, they are state capitalist. You would know this if you had read up on Marx and Engels.

ie: from the Manifesto

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. Marx argued that capitalism, like previous socioeconomic systems, will produce internal tensions which will lead to its destruction.[2] Just as capitalism replaced feudalism, communism will in its turn replace capitalism and lead to a stateless, classless society which emerging after a transitional period, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.[

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Clearly that does not describe Cuba, China or USSR/Russia.

20 million dead russians under Stalin?

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Terrible.


Lenin was supported by Stalin and the Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks, including Rosa Luxemburg, opposed what they could see was the opposite of what Marx had written:

She (Rosa) did not like the Russian Communist Party monopolizing all power in the Soviets and expelling anyone who disagreed with it. She feared that Lenin's policy had brought about, not the dictatorship of the working classes over the middle classes, which she approved of but not the dictatorship of the Communist Party over the working classes. The dictatorship of a class - yes, she said, but not the dictatorship of a party over a class. Later, I began to see that Luxemburg had much wisdom in her attitude, though it was not apparent to me at the time.”

British journalist, Morgan Philips Price (a supporter of the Russian Revolution)

After Lenin died, Stalin had complete power and had a brilliance for military strategy, unfortunately he set up a totalitarian state that was kept in place long after Stalin died. Stalin was extremely paranoid and clearly mentally ill.

Stalin then ditched the Marxist view of world revolution. He now began promoting the idea of “socialism in one country”. Trotsky and most of the other leading Bolsheviks were totally opposed to this change of policy. The only way Stalin could remain in power was to remove his main critic from the government.

......By this time (1938) there was virtually no one left who had taken a major part in the Bolshevik Revolution. The society created by Stalin now had nothing to do with communism and socialism.

It is worth remembering that the West applauded the purge of these Bolsheviks. They fully agreed with Stalin’s policy of socialism (state capitalism) in one country.

It will never be clear how many people Stalin had killed. He probably killed the same amount of people as Tsar Nicholas. 20 million Russians did die holding off the German army.

SS is a ponzi scheme that steals people's money, and thanks to public ed, our kids are some of the dumbest in the first world. Go Marx!

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Since none of this has anything to do with Marx, I am unclear what you are trying to say. SS and public education may be a disaster in the USA, but in other nations it is working quite well.

Had Germany been able to produce in Russia, she would have won. Instead Russia was an incredable drain on Germany... had Russia fallen it would have been the exact opposite. Germany would have defeated England, and eventually the United States.

Russia was a black hole that absorbed an incredable amount of German military power. Had Russia been quickly conqored by Germany, we would have lost the war. Saying we could have beaten Germany without Russia is almost as bad as saying the war could have been won without the help of the United States.

ScottBot said:

Honestly, I would rather have had Hitler been successful in his Eastern campaign, and then we could have dealt with him in a weakened state. I'm not seeing a whole lot of good that came out of the Soviet Union being victorious.

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Communism really can't work in the modern world. It was only possible in the prehistoric era when the only things you could own were rocks or spears and when everyone wore animal hides. Once people assigned a monetary value to precious minerals it became impossible.

None of those are communist. At the most, they are state capitalist. You would know this if you had read up on Marx and Engels.

ie: from the Manifesto

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You can claim all that crap all you want, but they were communist. No true scotsman fallacy doesn't work.

Clearly that does not describe Cuba, China or USSR/Russia.

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Communism isn't defined by a book, it's defined by the real world application of the principles of the book. That was the USSR. Capitalism is perfect on paper, too.

Stalin had complete power and had a brilliance for military strategy,

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Really? Is that why more Russians died than anyone else despite the fact that they were on the winning side?

Since none of this has anything to do with Marx, I am unclear what you are trying to say. SS and public education may be a disaster in the USA, but in other nations it is working quite well.

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Maybe, maybe not. But I guess that means that commy and socialist policies just are for America.