Posted on 02/24/2012 6:27:43 AM PST by NYer
I hope whoever the Republican nominee is, sees this stat that was originally published in The Weekly Standard and starts shouting it from the rooftops.
In fact, send an aide to Kinkos and get a really long one that can stick to the side of the campaign bus and then get 3 million business card sized ones and start handing them out to everyone you meet. Start wtih the girl at Kinkos.
Everyone knows that Greece is crumbling under its debt. Well, did you know that our per capita debt is actually worse. One word - unsustainable.
Ping!
But just listen to the media and they’ll tell you unemployment and the economy are getting better! Don’t worry, America. Your god-like president has it under control! Just make sure those evil republicans stay out of office or they’ll take away your entitlement programs and the country will fall apart!
What are the per capita earnings for the USA and Greek citizen?
ML/NJ
Greece, 27,000, debt 39,000
USA, 47,000, debt 44,000
Solution: Raise the debt ceiling, we’ve still got room!
So the debt per TAXPAYER is more like $90,000?
Yeah. Surrrrre they will.
ehh...some think that number’s a mite optimistic....
“The United States Unfunded liabilities, have now exceeded over one million dollars for each taxpayer...”
I’ve come to the conclusion that we are past the point of no return.
Default is the best option since, once it takes effect, no one will lend to us for a generation. Deficit spending will be impossible, which is why Keynesians are horrified by the mere mention of the word.
Inflation or austerity will induce a perma-depression.
I think the U.S. debt per person is more like $49,000. The debt is $15.4 trillion and the population is 313 million. $15,000 billion/ 0.313 billion = $49,200.
Debt:
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Population:
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
What is more important is that our per capita disposable income (total income - taxes and necessities = disposable income) is much higher than other countries on the chart (or so I think)
Finally our total corporate revenue is much much much higher than pretty much any two nations on earth combined. This is important because corporations share the public tax/debt burden with citizens.
In 2009, Italian financial police seized $742 billion of fake U.S. bearer bonds in the northern Italian town of Chiasso, near the Swiss border. This time it was 9x bigger.
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In 2012, Italy police seize $6 trillion of fake US T-bonds. In 2009, Italian financial police seized $742 billion of fake U.S. bearer bonds .....I would not be surprised if they had an inside man in the US Treasury.
Hmmmmm.......an inside man? Was it connected to this?
FOURTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS Behind The Real Size of the Wall Street Bailout; A guide to the abbreviations, acronyms, and obscure programs that make up the $14 trillion federal bailout.
SOURCE motherjones.com
Mon Dec. 21, 2009 12:23 PM PST
The price tag for the Wall Street bailout is often put at $700 billion—the size of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. But TARP is just the best known program in an array of more than 30 overseen by Treasury Department and Federal Reserve that have paid out or put aside money to bail out financial firms and inject money into the markets.
To get a sense of the size of the real $14 trillion bailout, see our chart at web site. Below, a guide to the pieces of the puzzle:
Treasury Department bailout programs
(Remember that Obama's Treasury Dept was controlled by his then-COS Rahm Emanuel---a savvy, connected G/S lobbyist in the WH)
Money Market Mutual Fund: In September 2008, the Treasury announced that it would insure the holdings of publicly offered money market mutual funds. According to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), these guarantees could have potentially cost the federal government more than $3 trillion [PDF].
Public-Private Investment Fund: This joint Treasury-Federal Reserve program bought toxic assets from banks and brokerages—as much as $5 billion of assets per firm. According to SIGTARP, the government's potential exposure from the PPIF is between $500 million and $1 trillion [PDF].
TARP: As part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Treasury has made loans to or investments more than 750 banks and financial institutions. $650 billion has been paid out (not including HAMP; see below). As of December 21, 2009, $117.5 billion of that has been repaid.
Government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) stock purchase: The Treasury has bought $200 million in preferred stock from Fannie Mae and another $200 million from Freddie Mac [PDF] to show that they "will remain viable entities critical to the functioning of the housing and mortgage markets."
GSE mortgage-backed securities purchase: Under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, the Treasury may buy mortgage-backed securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to SIGTARP, these purchases could cost as much as $314 billion ---SNIP---.
LONG READ---go to web site to read more and checkout the shocking financial charts.
SOURCE http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/behind-real-size-bailout
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The Stimulus Bombshell
MyGovCost.org ^ | 1/24/12 | Craig Eyermann
FR Posted January 31, 2012 by GSWarrior
Stunning.
That’s really the only word we can use to describe the release of a “sensitive and confidential” 57 page memo, written by then soon-to-be U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers in December 2008, about what became President Obama’s signature economic program in the first year of his presidency: the “stimulus package”.
James Pethokoukis has summarized some of the most significant aspects of the memo, which we’ve excerpted below, and which reveals the Obama administration’s thinking behind what became an over 821 billion dollar boondoggle. The bold text represents Pethokoukis’ summary of that thinking, which is directly followed by a supporting quotation from Larry Summers’ memo:
1. The stimulus was about implementing the Obama agenda. The short-run economic imperative was to identify as many campaign promises or high priority items that would spend out quickly and be inherently temporary.... The stimulus package is a key tool for advancing clean energy goals and fulfilling a number of campaign commitments.
2. Team Obama knows these deficits are dangerous (although it has offered no long-term plan to deal with them). Closing the gap between what the campaign proposed and the estimates of the campaign offsets would require scaling back proposals by about $100 billion annually or adding new offsets totaling the same. Even this, however, would leave an average deficit over the next decade that would be worse than any post-World War II decade. This would be entirely unsustainable and could cause serious economic problems in the both the short run and the long run.
3. Obamanomics was pricier than advertised. Your campaign proposals add about $100 billion per year to the deficit largely because rescoring indicates that some of your revenue raisers do not raise as much as the campaign assumed and some of your proposals cost more than the campaign assumed.... Treasury estimates that repealing the tax cuts above $250,000 would raise about $40 billion less than the campaign assumed.... The health plan is about $10 billion more costly than the campaign estimated and the health savings are about $25 billion lower than the campaign estimated.
4. Even Washington can only spend so much money so fast. Constructing a package of this size, or even in the $500 billion range, is a major challenge. While the most effective stimulus is government investment, it is difficult to identify feasible spending projects on the scale that is needed to stabilize the macroeconomy. Moreover, there is a tension between the need to spend the money quickly and the desire to spend the money wisely. To get the package to the requisite size, and also to address other problems, we recommend combining it with substantial state fiscal relief and tax cuts for individuals and businesses.
5. Liberals can complain about the stimulus having too many tax cuts, but even Team Obama thought more spending was unrealistic.
As noted above, it is not possible to spend out much more than $225 billion in the next two years with high-priority investments and protections for the most vulnerable. This total, however, falls well short of what economists believe is needed for the economy, both in total and especially in 2009. As a result, to achieve our macroeconomic objectives—minimally the 2.5 million job goal—will require other sources of stimulus including state fiscal relief, tax cuts for individuals, or tax cuts for businesses.
6. Team Obama thought a stimulus plan of more than $1 trillion would spook financial markets and send interest rates climbing. To accomplish a more significant reduction in the output gap would require stimulus of well over $1 trillion based on purely mechanical assumptions—which would likely not accomplish the goal because of the impact it would have on markets.
Is this a bad thing?
The riots and millions of deaths from competing roving bands of thugs concern me a smidgeon more than the ability to go into debt again. The military might maintain pockets of control in certain areas.
Perma-depression? Sounds depressing to me.
We could turn it around, but the sacrifices needed will be unacceptable to a large majority of the US population. It means breaking promises made in regard to retirement and pensions of most Americans.
We would need to maintain a certain level of military to protect our borders. Policing to protect the citizens. Courts and jails to keep the citizen safe. Road crews to keep our roads maintained. That would be our government and nothing more.
I wonder how badly I would lose an election running on that platform?
——no one will lend to us for a generation.”
Is this a bad thing?——
That’s my point.
——The riots and millions of deaths from competing roving bands of thugs concern me a smidgeon more than the ability to go into debt again.-——
It wouldn’t be that way at all. Look how quickly countries rebounded from WWII. The recovery would be comparable.
Why? First, foreigners hold a percentage of our debt. Repudiating that debt costs us our credit rating —a good thing.
The rest of the debt is entitlement IOUs. In practice, the elimination of entitlements would force families to come together —to live together intergenerationally— generally a good thing.
I have family in Poland, and I saw,the country reboot after communism. All it takes for people to succeed is the rule of law, and for government to get out of the way. There won’t be pandemonium.
What we have to fear is hyperinflation, which impoverishes everyone without reducing spending, or austerity, which postpones default or inflation.
You need to listen to Rush.
RUSH: Stan Greenberg, pollster extraordinaire. He's got this polling company with Carville. Stan Greenberg is married to Rosa DeLauro, a congresswoman from Connecticut. Enough said. National Journal: "Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg is out with a must-read polling memo this morning, which offers some eye-opening advice to President Obama and his re-election team. After testing several of the president's economic messages, he finds the argument that the economy is back on the right track polls miserably -- and 'produces disastrous results.'"
Greenberg Warns: The Big Lie Isn't Working February 24, 2012
Ditto. The election cycle is so predictable. Whoever is elected president, will continue to blame the previous president for the country's problems. Meanwhile, they sign new bills into law that span well into the future. Hence, when the next president is elected and attempts to remedy the errors of the previous one, their predecessor's bills emerge, like ticking time bombs ... and the cycle of blame begins all over again. Of one thing I am convinced: we need to shrink Federal Government. Newt got it right in this last debate.
An event at my grocery store
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread490340/pg1
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