The rest of the currencies suck ass as well. Ron's an MD, a vet & instrumental in the liberty movement but the gold fellatio is retarded
Fed takes away punch bowl, global stock getting crushed
- Thread starter Boston.Knight2
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Some of the currencies, and yes, some of the debt v. their GDP. Especially in the western nations where manufacturing and exports have dried up entirely.
But we're definitely the biggest, and we are worse than a good number of them. In fact, one can start to see some parallels between us and Japan just several years back, when everyone thought they were teflon too.
Just saying ... this is going to get ugly, probably just in time for the new administration. But this has been in the works since the '90s, when we started outsourcing, and it's spiraled from there.
May have shared this before, but it goes along with the doomsday talk in this thread... It's coming up on a time where we'll need to throw out the book on how the economy is modeled, measured and thought about and I think this is a great read.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-06-04/new-world-order
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-06-04/new-world-order
Interesting talk from someone who was banned and had to insert a "2" behind his screen name just to return.
Ummm ...
The .COM bust happened at the end of 2000, and W.'s first quarter (2001Q1) was when the recession was "official declared," and the largest layoffs hit late March 2001 and continued through April 2001. Try ingto re-write history on this, post-9/11, is how Tom Daschle lost most of his standing.
The .COM bust wiped out not just trillions asset value, but destroyed the unsustainable, federal revenue at the time. That alone took out more than the cost of the wars. Because the "double whammy" was the unemployment and other social benefits, which were extended over and over. One could even argue the .COM was the inevitable result of 401k, where the overwhelming majority of Americans suddenly started funding the stock market by the early '90s, whereas most employers did not offer a program in the '80s.
But the housing bust was far worse. It really started in 2007, hence why the start of the recession was "revised" from 2009, using a new metric, during W. Using the same metric, the recession actually started in 2000 as well, during Clinton. These are things beyond their control, in both cases, although they certainly didn't help things.
The housing bust was actually part of the result of the Republicans "Contract with America" in the mid-'90s, the one the media says the Republicans "lost" with Clinton, but they actually "won." Clinton was smart, and refused to agree to the "balanced budget" push, which the US media despised, but signed everything else (people forget this -- again, media != reality). Part of that was a long-standing housing program that benefited minorities, long-pushed by, the now late, Republican Jack Kemp. Unfortunately, that did all sorts of things to regulation. Even W. alluded to this in his emergency, 2008 address ... while carefully not to blame his own party (or Clinton, should they respond and point out the facts).
We rode the housing boom like we did the .COM boom. We kicked the can down the road. It has wiped out more value and resulting federal revenue than the defense budget, which has shrunk from 1/3rd to 1/4th and is now heading to 1/5th the US budget. Even the US military -- sans the USAF (don't get me started) -- is now preparing for when the US cannot afford its interest payments, or they at least cut in their budget. It's those types of devaluations and resulting, long-term issues that cause people like Ron Paul to warn of the inevitable.
Either we cut spending now, when people still value our dollar, or we are forced to cut it later, when it no longer has the same value, but far less. As much as I despise the military brass for their big budget programs -- the USAF in particular -- they have been warning about this "national security issue" for some time, not just Ron Paul. And they are right.
That all said ...
There was far more spend in "pork" to get "war votes" in the '00s. Again, this how and why the Defense Budget continues to shrink, and has steadily in the 21st century. "Oh Mr. President, you want my support for the war? Then pork up my constituents." This was my #1 complaint with the Republican Congress, of which W. was all-too-eager to given into.
It wasn't until the Democrats got in after 2006 that W. finally stopped, out of partisanship. That's why most of us Libertarians prefer the parties to differ. 6 years of Republicans (2001-2007), and 2-4 years (depending on how you define "majority", 2009-2011 or 2009-2013) of Democrats, is how you get this non-sense of pork over pork.
This was also the same problem under the Reagan administration, although Reagan was more than willing to expand all sorts of entitlement programs under a Democratic Congress (1983+). This is also where we get some of our biggest liabilities, from medical to income tax changes (1986-1987).
In fact, President Obama purposely avoided going to Congress to get approval to extend the Libyan war beyond 90 days -- as he's Constitutionally required -- because he didn't want to give into the expected "pork" of the Republican Congress -- which is both understandable (budget), and scary (idea of endless war without Congressional approval, which even Reagan did not cross) at the same time.
People can make simple assumptions and listen to the media. But for those of us who actually read the OMB reports, at least the summary sheets (usually 30-50 pages), we know where the money is actually going. Several papers have regularly done surveys and published reports on how skewed the American view is on budget.
Especially when it comes to education, law enforcement and most social welfare programs ... they are heavily funded by state budgets, not federal. I.e., if you only look at the US federal budget, it seems the defense budget is 10-15x education. But when you include state budgets, you start to realize ... even with $0 defense spending, including all the R&D, international social programs and services under the DoD budget ... it still wouldn't pay for 2/3rds of our educational funding.
Which is why Libertarians like myself just go facepalm, with typical arguments. A good economy results in the most federal revenue. A poor economy does not, regardless of the tax rate. And there have been plenty of "artificial" economies, the .COM and the housing being the 2 most recent. All while we outsourced and otherwise expensed the middle class since the late '80s, and it continues -- from both parties.
And why we are so f'd. It's not a matter of "if," but "when." So far ... the dollar's valuation hasn't dropped. How long that lasts, I don't know ... but it will run out. Likely when portions of the EU collapse, and we find out just what the Fed has really been up to.
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I think you've shown that you can't keep up with the cognitive leaps required to discuss complex topics in abbreviated fashion, so I would think you'd appreciate having something spelled out a little more.
