For Ghandi's Bitch: The escalating United States Debt is scary and it's not just b.s.

Bob wrote:
Of course that's a contributor. But so is this and to ignore it is just denial...

https://www.google.com/search?q=growth+in+entitlement+spending&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

read, learn ...

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/fed-budgetary-experts-demolish-cbo-health-cost-model-the-lynchpin-of-budget-hysteria.html

2seaoat wrote:the slow deliberate march into the Abyss which the last 30 years represents with the likes of Mitt Romney exporting our jobs and allowing the finacialization of America...

In the late 1990s, Washington was a sharply divided political city, but there was a growing consensus on one big issue. Most Republicans and Democrats agreed that trade with China would be a boon for America.

President Clinton summed up the mainstream consensus in Washington with a message to Congress in the spring of 2000. In a letter circulated to House members, he wrote, "China with more than a billion people is home to the largest potential market in the world… If Congress makes the right decision, our companies will be able to sell and distribute products in China made by American workers on American soil, without being forced to relocate manufacturing to China. …We will be able to export products without exporting jobs."

Clinton was pushing Congress to permanently normalize trade relations with Beijing, helping to ease China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). Big business was furiously lobbying Capitol Hill in favor of the legislation. It saw China, with its 1.2 billion consumers, as a vast new emerging market and many parts of Corporate America wanted a piece of the action.

Just weeks before the legislation received the president's signature, Robert Burt, chairman of the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs of leading American corporations, spoke boldly about the future. "This historic legislation will be remembered as the key that opened the door for America to sell its products and services to the world's largest emerging marketplace," he declared.

Other executives around the U.S. were equally strong in supporting U.S. trade with Beijing, and China's efforts to get into the WTO because they reasoned that China would then be required to play by the same trading rules as the WTO's other members. Moreover, as Europeans rushed to do business in China, American corporate captains did not want to be left behind. They worried that unless the U.S. backed the move, they would lose out to the Europeans, a worry Chinese officials played upon effectively from time to time during the 1990s.

On Capitol Hill, legislation to normalize trade with China got overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate, where it passed, 83 votes to 15. Even in the House, where Democrats were split on the issue, the president received support from three-quarters of the Republicans, and the legislation passed by a wide margin, 237 to 197.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/china/trade.html

Ghandi_is_my_bitch wrote:
read, learn ...

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/fed-budgetary-experts-demolish-cbo-health-cost-model-the-lynchpin-of-budget-hysteria.html

If the claim is that simply shifting more of the responsibility for delivering health care from the private to the public sector is all that's needed to turn around our economic decline, then we have already tested that theory with one of the largest experiments ever undertaken. It's called Europe. And Europe is in all the papers right now but it's not because Europe's lower per capita health costs are giving it a strong economy.
And that's even if your premise that Obama's health care reforms will get the costs under control proves to be the case and that's a highly questionable premise.

Bob wrote:

Margin Call wrote:you better pray the Fed can control the bond market. The world could change in a matter of days or minutes if the Fed can't maintain confidence.

Please elaborate on this. In the words of the esteemed W.D. Childers, please "get this hay down to where us goats can get at it".

The financial system goes into cardiac arrest like it did in 2008 but without Dr. Bernanke and Congress having the ability to perform CPR.

Margin Call wrote:
The financial system goes into cardiac arrest like it did in 2008 but without Dr. Bernanke and Congress having the ability to perform CPR.

If someone put a gun to your head and forced you to make a prediction, on a scale from 1 to 10 (with ten being the most certain), what number would you assign to the likelihood that it will happen?

Bob wrote:

Margin Call wrote:
The financial system goes into cardiac arrest like it did in 2008 but without Dr. Bernanke and Congress having the ability to perform CPR.

If someone put a gun to your head and forced you to make a prediction, on a scale from 1 to 10 (with ten being the most certain), what number would you assign to the likelihood that it will happen?

I think the bond market will force Congress' hand regarding revenues and spending before it would allow such a collapse.

0 - 5 years: 1

6 - 10 years: 3

10+ years: 5

Margin Call wrote:

0 - 5 years: 1

6 - 10 years: 3

10+ years: 5

That's actually very good news. I'm 63 and the way I'm going if I make it past another 5 years it will be a miracle. lol

It is very difficult for me to see anything bright about the future. The people that can not or will not try to find jobs are the people that are breeding like flies. I think there are over two million people in prisons and it will only get worse. I wonder what health care will cost in ten years?

Yella wrote:It is very difficult for me to see anything bright about the future.

Me too. We lived such a long time with so much prosperity and stability in this country. And now it all seems to be slipping out from under us.