Obama seeks $1.2 trillion debt ceiling increase

The proportion of debt vs income, from a household perspective... it is untenable. But if you want to be scared of something, it is another currency or other currencies replacing the dollar as the reserve currency due to that ratio, and what will narurally occur to an economy no longer afloat from it. Petrodolars is what you should fear as our credit rating continues to plummet under that ratio.


Or you could continue not caring. It doesn't really make any difference.

 

Still no math. Simply a fear of large numbers. Not sure what I'm supposed to care about yet. Why are the numbers so scary?

 

So, why do you care about the public debt, but not the private debt, which is much higher as %GDP?

Do you even know what % of purchase price of each product you buy goes to debt service payment of these often over-indebted companies, which amounts to a hidden "tax" that everyone has to pay?

Do you not care that it is actually the private sector that will cause the next recession/depression because they have loaded up too much on debt in often irresponsible ways? Once they have to default in mass, employees are laid off and the recessionary cycle starts. Government, with all its debt, is actually a stabilizing factor in this, because it can compensate for lack of private sector spending by its own increased spending in a downturn.

 

Dang! Why didn't I think of that? Oh, wait - I did and rejected it because spending as a % of GDP has been dropping:



Matter of fact, Republicans have done such a good job of cutting government revenues, we seem to be in a permanent deficit spending mode with no way out. But, not to worry - Republicans have a solution - just pretend the extra spending doesn't exist, like Bush did with his wars. There. All fixed. Nothing to it. [/sarcasm]

 

You must be extremely young then... Amazing you can type at such a young age!

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66114.html

I believe Coburn did as well....

 

I take it you weren't very good at the word problems section on the GED.

 

Glad to see someone resurrect this thread from 3.5 years ago. Just shows how big a mess we're in and continue to dig the hole deeper and deeper.

As the OP stated way back when, the Messiah is like a pimply faced teenager who is running amok with mommy and daddy's credit cards.

Sad that the masses don't seem to care. Those that support the Messiah are only concerned with what free stuff they can get their hands on.

 

The total debt is not just citizen to citizen debt, firstly, it includes the federal debt, and states debt... as well as corporate debt and then we the lowly serfs... and yes, it is a concerning figure. You will find it in the snap I took of the debt clock. We have an addiction to credit no doubt, but it will not be your visa card that causes the next recession/depression... and blaming the civilians for it because they love them some spinnin rims is either completely disingenuous or remarkably naive. Can we please focus on the federal debt, as the economy as a whole is a tad complicated. The point I would like to address is that we are a fiat currency, who has increased its federal debt 70% under a single administration, and what might happen to that "just print more" philosophy should its underpinned trade value for oil be unhinged? Entitlement and rampant "spending" is a bit of a problem, which is a federal issue. We can point dingers at Nixon if you like for unhinging us from gold if it is more comfortable, but I dont give a (*)(*)(*)(*) about your student loans really.

 

I can agree that spending binges for a good, long-range reason can be helpful, and even necessary. I paid fairly close attention to what both you and Iremon said about spending and the economy a few years ago, and even though I still don't agree with a part of that viewpoint, I know that spending is necessary.

But, when we see the other signs I've already pointed out in this thread, like the horrible ratio of national debt to GDP, and the nose-diving labor-force participation rate, along with a persistent double-digit U6 Dept. of Labor unemployment rate, while at least 50% of the population is collecting one form of means-tested welfare or other, then it is obvious that all this debt is being taken on just to "tread water" with an anemic growth rate and a further diminishment of the American middle class.

In other words, if we've sustained the enormous addition of even more national debt under Obama than under all the other presidents put together, shouldn't we have something more to show for it than a gigantic Welfare State, and, a grotesquely overvalued stock market that even Janet Yellen, the Fed Chair has warned us about...? We haven't gone deeper into national debt to win a world war; we haven't gone deeper into national debt to forever end poverty in this country, or to provide universal healthcare at no cost to citizens. Poverty is worse now than before, despite the Libocrats shoveling out welfare until they've nearly dropped from exhaustion, and healthcare? Ha! Remember when Obama lied through his teeth and told us all that we'd be SAVING $2,500 per year with Obamacare...?!

 

Well, you call it naive to focus on people buying spinning rims, but you want to focus solely on public debt, which I pointed out above is the much smaller portion of total debt (a point you ignored). I also made the point that private debt is much more likely to cause the next recession/depression, which is supported by history, since public debt has not been a problem in downturns in the last century.

Could it be that you only focus on public debt because of your disdain for government, and not because of logical reasons? Any engineer who wants to fix a problem (debt), would first focus on the largest contributor to the problem (private debt). SO, why is private debt unimportant in your view?

Give us some logical reasons, not "I dont give a (*)(*)(*)(*) about your student loans really" emotional response.

 

Because I made an assertion and rather than address that assertion you wish to refocus the argument on something else, which is also off topic to this thread. If you would like to open a thread on your off topic rant I would be happy to join you there, after you address the topic at hand... because this is simply a deflection. Is that clear enough?

 

Well, you brought up comparison of government with household finances, which is also off-topic and irrelevant, because those two cannot be compared to each other.

But, if you want to hear my opinion on public debt, which I have stated before, here it is:

Is public debt too high? Yes, it is, mainly thanks to "tax less and spend more" policies from the past.

Will public debt be a problem? Not in the near future, since debt/GDP ratio has come down, as Grizz has pointed out.

Will "money printing" by the FED lead to inflation? Not anytime soon, since all the printed money is kept away from circulating in the economy, since the bankers, who get that money first, don't lend it.

Do I support draconian proposals like the ones by the self-proclaimed budget whiz kid Paul Ryan to increase military spending while balancing the budget on the backs of the least fortunate? Absolutely not!

 

You haven't given any problems. You just keep showing numbers and talking about how scary they are. I'm still not scared. Try to explain it using math this time. Why are these numbers so scary?

 

Since you've known me I've predicted the economy would be doing bad/mediocre for years, predicted QE1/2/3 would do absolutely nothing, predicted the government would not spend enough money, unemployment would crawl slowly, and we might even end up back in a recession. The funny thing is you guys talk about spending as if there has been an actual relatively large increase in it. There hasn't, in fact spending has increased at the slowest rate in the past 40 years. The fact this hasn't registered yet for you is pretty surprising. All national debt to gdp is, is a %. It means absolutely nothing when it comes to real productivity. Heck Japan has over 200% and a declining population and they still survive. That's just a % and a misleading one at that, as you should never include intragovernmental debt in the calculation.

But trust me, spending is the problem, and the problem is not spending enough. We will have to wait for a Republican to get elected and start WWIII before we spend the amount necessary for economic prosperity.

Reagan almost spent 3 times more in deficit spending than all the Presidents before him, Bush over 2 times more than all the Presidents before him. You keep giving these really lame logical fallacies. Where is the meat to your argument that "it is now" that we have reached the limit. Because this argument has been going on for centuries and the limit just keeps getting changed. I'd like to know why government spending and debt are so scary.

 

I said in 2008, if we did not address foreign outsourcing and foreign imports, the stimulus would just be a temporary band-aid and need reapplied in a few years.... seems I was right

so when are we gonna address the real issues.....

we can apply another band-aid, but unless we address the issues, it will again only be temporary

.

 

Doesn't have to be a band-aid. We can just increase our spending and keep it increasing like it has been for the past century.

 

or we can bring the jobs back home... your right though, both work... I just prefer to bring the jobs home

 

It's just unreal how anyone can be so dishonest to act as if Obama went the big government route and it failed, lol. We had the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression and our public sector employment decreased. What the Republican's did to force this was borderline treason. What's funny is Reagan's economy started booming as he started spending money like a solid Keynesian and the government at all levels was increasing.

 

I don't have tables of figures and charts to back me up but I personally lived well under Reagan, Bush No. 1, and Clinton. I had great jobs and made lots of money. I had solid investments and I earned a nice pension wich I am enjoying now. Bush No. 2 and Obama were both idiots and we are now poor and deep in debt. If the figures and charts don't show that then something is really (*)(*)(*)(*)ed up with the figures and tables of charts.

 

Well, anecdotal evidence doesn't get you very far. And to be honest, anyone who has had money in the stock market the last 6 years has seen gains that trump anything that happened in Reagan's days. Clinton of course with the tech boom, the velocity of money went crazy and the economy just exploded with growth. It's all relative. Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2 all increased government at rates far higher than Obama. The economy struggles when your policy to have the gatekeeper to our monetary system firing tons of employees and not spending any money.

Been predicting this every step of the way for 6 years now. The government needs to spend money. If it doesn't get to spend money we have to figure out a new system in which people are comfortable with the fact that new money has to be created to continue our economic growth. And right now, our only option is by borrowing from banks. Since that was the problem in the first place, it's kind of a dismal scenario. The government should be hiring millions and spending trillions more. Then you'd see Reagan like prosperity. Keynes and Reagan would be great friends!

 

Republicans borrow and spend money.

Democrats tax and spend money.

It's asinine to blame all this on Obama when there is more than enough blame to go around.
There is something basically wrong with the system.

 

I believe you are quite serious. We may disagree on a number of things, but you, like Iriemon, are well-informed and intelligent. That's why it unsettles me to hear you speak about World War III as though it is a "given" that we will actually have one. I, too, sense a period of conflict coming, but I haven't thought it would be a "world war" until about a year ago.

I would be very interested in knowing who you think will be in this coming world war, and how the various players will "team-up". I'll go first, mostly just to show my "hand", and so you won't think I've asked just to snipe at your ideas later.

I see the U. S., the EU, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel in hostile opposition to the Russian Federation, China, and Iran, and, possibly, Turkey, if it decides to leave NATO. Many areas of the Middle East will fall into anarchy and chaos, which describes the situation with North Africa, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq right now. I cannot determine yet how either Pakistan or India would fit in a listing of alliances. Our puppet-government in Afghanistan will be thrown out by the Taliban, and so we will join England and Russia in having been kicked out of Afghanistan after losing enormous amounts of treasure, and no small number of people killed -- for nothing.

But that is nothing compared to the coming world war that I believe that you and I both see in the future. Russia must preserve its ability to move in and out of the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and thus it must command both the Bosporus Straits, and the Dardanelles. Ankara must "play along", or else. Russia already has a navy base in Syria, and just last December, it stood up an entirely new military command -- the Arctic Joint Strategic Command. And, as you know Russia now has not only developed and deployed new weapons systems of many different kinds, it has been conducting more and more military maneuvers and exercises with China. China, for its part, has been staking astonishing claims to large sections of the East China Sea... while Obama's "Asia Pivot" has been moribund. The South Koreans, the Taiwanese, and Japanese are all in a state of quiet panic about this, and Obama is doing nothing to reassure either of them.

OK, it's your turn. I figure that we're probably still about another 5 - 10 years away from the "(*)(*)(*)(*) hitting the fan", and when it does, it may do so in stages, not some big nuclear event that kills everything on Earth. We do disagree on one thing, though -- it'll be a Democrat in office when it happens. It almost always has been, for the past 100 years, starting with Woodrow Wilson....

1. Woody gave us World War I
2. Frankie gave us World War II
3. Harry gave us Korea
4. Lyndon gave us Vietnam
5. Bill gave us the Balkans
6. "W", a RINO Republican, gave us Iraq and Afghanistan
7. but, Obama, has given us another Iraq/ISIS, and a continuing, very involved role in Afghanistan until at at least 2024....

And, in the reality of the 21st Century, I just don't see a nice, fat war having the same beneficial effect on the U. S. economy that, for instance, Frankie enjoyed with World War II. First, you have to be winning the war, and I don't see ANY Democrat alive today doing that!

 

Obama I think falls into a special class or case when it comes to the debt ceiling. After all as a Senator he called rasing the debt ceiling unpatriotic. As for the economy, it is sort of like the weather. No government can control it or any single person, if they could we would have all ups and no downs.

I don't go around placing all the blame on any president, congress also has to be held accountable too. Our entire system is more to blame than any one person in particular. Parties, it all depends which party hold the white house as far as raising the debt ceiling is unpatriotic or not.

Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling almost enmass while almost all Democrats voted against raising it when Bush the second was president. Let Obama become president and you have the exact opposite.

 

First of all the wwIII comment was facetious. Although I believe Repubs love to spend money on wars I do not advocate nor predict WWIII will happen any time in the near future. Just a comment about what it takes for us to spend the necessary amounts of money the economy needs. We could just as very easily spend that money on infrastructure, education, technology, science, etc. But for some reason, Congress will only open up the checkbook to drop bombs and kill people.

We are no where close to a WW. In fact we are further away than ever. With China realizing the power of economic growth and freedom, they are not going to sacrifice that, just like we aren't either.

And like I always try to remind you, what the Govt spends the money on is a secondary benefit. The main benefit of the spending is to introduce the assets in to the private sector and what we do with that money. You guys always act as if money just stops once it's spent.

That's why Keynes is famous for his "you can bury it in the sand and have people dig it out". It was an indirect insult to people who think gold served as some powerful economic tool. He's pretty much saying, it does not matter what you spend it on at first, it's getting it in circulation that is important.

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First of all, yes he was wrong about the debt ceiling but you are taking it quite out of context. He said it was wrong to raise the debt ceiling to fund an "illegal" war.

But yes, every President has quickly learned that you can't fight math and logic. The debt ceiling is probably one of the more ignorant policies we've ever had in America.

 

The idea of the debt ceiling I think was to try to keep a lid on the amount of money borrowed. To try to keep the USA out of a huge debt. We are way past that.