U.S. National Debt, For A Few Dollars More

MarketOracle ^ | 4/26/11

[Kartographer]

It happened again with my attempt to make sense of how the United States of America managed to screw our finances up so badly, that an epic collapse is within view to people with their eyes open to facts and the truth. You don’t end up in the predicament we find ourselves in today due to a couple minor mistakes over a short time frame. It took thousands of horrible choices, colossal doses of delusion, a heaping of stupidity, and a mountain of denial over decades to put us on the brink of economic collapse. An unholy amalgamation of demographics, fiat currency, debt, taxes, power and greed have led us to this point. Next we experience collapse, revolution and ultimately, retribution.

[Kartographer]

Like revenge retribution is a dish best served cold and their are many that will soon get their fill of that frozen desert.

[screaminsunshine]

I await Bernakes press conference. It may be more than they bargained for.

[Zeddicus]

Denninger has pointed out several times that when you subtract debt expansion, the USA has had no real economic growth since World War II, and every President since then (including the "conservative" icon Reagan) has been involved in perpetuating the illusion.

Two of our most noteworthy "Republican" Presidents caused two of the biggest problems we have today with federal entitlements:

1)Reagan's massive Social Security tax increase which the government immediately spent, and led to the huge bankrupt ponzi we have now,

2)W's Medicare Part D drug plan.

So for anyone under 70 years of age, everything we know about our economic system is a lie, an illusion. We've been inflating our standard of living with borrowed money for 7 decades.

There is no possible way to fix the mess we're in, for two reasons: (1) A mess that took 70 years to create cannot be solved with our political system, which lives on near-instant gratification, (2) Overall, our population lacks the character and political will to recognize the depth of the mess and take purposeful action to correct it.

Even Ryan's budget plan won't come close to cleaning up this mess, as even it depends on our government adding another $10 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years.

The entire world is drowning in debt, and huge percentage of the world's people are now dependent on debt in one form or another for their daily lives.

It's all going to collapse, and it's not going to be pretty.