For those who haven't already seen this...

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

5/29/2010 4:20:01 AM

old

5/29/2010 9:21:38 AM

HAI GUISE HAVE U HERD ABOUT THIS?

5/29/2010 10:03:01 AM

No one cares, man. The debt is going to take care of itself and people will continue buying our debt forever. There will never be any negative consequences for our extravagant spending, and if there are, the government can just paper over the problem with legislation that "creates jobs."

5/29/2010 10:23:32 AM

we also have a trade deficit that is going to crush us.

5/29/2010 12:13:31 PM

Can I pay off my portion now and be exempt from the consequences of our ever expanding debt down the road?

5/29/2010 2:15:45 PM

Quote :

"The debt is going to take care of itself and people will continue buying our debt forever."

I hope there is sarcasm in there somewhere...

5/29/2010 4:02:35 PM

He laid it on pretty thick, man.

5/29/2010 6:10:30 PM

Last time I was in NYC they had to add a digit

5/29/2010 11:12:49 PM

Don't worry. Once the currency collapses that amount of cash will be, like, nothing.

5/30/2010 1:10:09 AM

don't worry, Erskine Bowles is on it

6/1/2010 10:37:26 PM

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

No whammies, no whammies, and STOP!

6/2/2010 5:27:30 PM

5/16/2011 9:54:38 AM

http://www.treasury.gov/connect/blog/Documents/20110516Letter%20to%20Congress.pdf

TLDR: Tiny Tim is saying that we'll need to start "moving" some funds from pension accounts to work around the debt ceiling.

5/16/2011 1:06:55 PM

No worries man its totally common to fudge accounting.

see: Enron

5/17/2011 11:50:48 PM

You know... maybe if the government made $X in taxes in 2010, then they should spend $X-10% in 2011... and BAM! you're within budget and making money again.


Or stop giving tax refunds.


Crisis averted.


I can't even fathom what it would be like for the united states to have money in the bank.

5/18/2011 2:25:00 AM

you make it sound so easy

but imagine the rioting in the streets when suddenly Grandpa doesn't get his Medicare anymore

o and also the Rethugnican posturing about needing to "return the people's money" rather than using that surplus to pay down the debt, like a decade ago

[Edited on May 18, 2011 at 5:50 AM. Reason : taxes need to be raised above Clinton-era levels

5/18/2011 5:49:40 AM

Quote :

"You know... maybe if the government made $X in taxes in 2010, then they should spend $X-10% in 2011... and BAM! you're within budget and making money again."

I've often wondered why we couldn't just do this by slashing each program across the board by, for instance, 10%. Grandpa still gets 90% of his medicare. If people want more, then they need to agree to pay more.

5/18/2011 7:25:02 AM

Because grandpa is not going to agree to slash medicare by 10%.

And I am not going to agree to raise taxes on my earnings 10%.

So we're at a bit of a crossroads.


Bipartisanship has completely broken down. When you have a good guy like Coburn break down and say "fuck it, I'm about to give up. The democrats aren't willing to take any of our suggestions so this is pointless to try to save the country from economic hell anymore" you know we're in big fucking trouble.

The economy is in HORRIBLE shape right now, this thing could hit the fan faster than even I originally thought.

5/18/2011 6:37:15 PM

^

5/18/2011 7:12:02 PM

^ what? Coburn is by all accounts a reasonable person.

Just because he understands the looming disaster of this debt crisis and you don't doesn't give you the right to post a stupid response.

5/18/2011 7:48:17 PM

Quote :

"this thing could hit the fan faster than even I originally thought."

Oh, so instead of sometime in the next decade it could be sometime something a little bit less than the next decade?

5/18/2011 7:59:59 PM

I'm pretty sure I've been predicting ~5 years for the past several posts when you've pinned me down on timeframes.

The economy is collapsing so quickly right now though that 5 years might be optimistic.

25% increase in producer costs, 5% reported inflation, possible double dip recession, definite double dip housing, weak manufacturing, huge increases in M2, awful numbers in business investments.... employment still dragging... China economy slowing down at an unbelievable rate...

QE2 wasn't the training wheels for the bike, it was the fucking wheels.

I mean this is shit meets fan territory right here. You cant just ignore Grantham saying stocks are 40% overvalued right when all the numbers turn this sour.

5/18/2011 8:04:05 PM

If we don't have another round of quantitative easing in the next six months, we will enter a major depression. That's no joke.

5/18/2011 8:28:38 PM

scenario 1

Quote :

" but imagine the rioting in the streets when suddenly Grandpa doesn't get his Medicare anymore "

scenario 2

Quote :

"If we don't have another round of quantitative easing in the next six months, we will enter a major depression."

Choose your own adventure

5/18/2011 8:36:20 PM

Quote :

"The economy is collapsing so quickly right now though that 5 years might be optimistic."

So in other words, we'll have another recession after roughly the same period of time as we've been having them since the Great Depression? Try not to go out on a limb here man.

5/19/2011 6:59:02 AM

Actually, after a recession as deep as the one we just had we should have 6-7% GDP growth.

Instead we got shitty growth.

Debt crisis and dollar crisis. Get ready

5/19/2011 7:46:04 AM

No, this recession has been a typical credit crisis recovery. It wasn't a business cycle recession.

And, we could have had 6-7% had we purged all the debt from the system and suffered our real Great Depression II...however, it isn't entirely clear to me at this point had the same overall growth from then to now not averaged out. It isn't clear that unemployment would be better. The only thing that is clear is that the stage would indeed be set for organic normal growth...that doesn't mean it would happen.

5/19/2011 8:08:19 AM

No one knows how this is all going to play out, but it's very clear that the global monetary order is coming to end. Gold is replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency; silver is along for the ride, even if it is being manipulated. This is evident, judging from central banks and individual buyers ramping up their gold and silver purchases. Buyers are realizing that many governments are at risk of default, and so their currencies are also at risk.

5/19/2011 11:31:42 AM

A government can default without wrecking its currency, the can also wreck their currency without defaulting. All the fed res needs to do is stop buying treasuries, otherwise known as turning off the printing press.

5/19/2011 12:01:56 PM

Right, which is why I say that without QE3 (or something like it), we enter the depression that should have come three years ago, only it'll be way worse. The problem is that the Fed had no problem serving as a backstop in 2010, 2009, and 2008. What's different now? Are they suddenly going to impose austerity, hiking interest rates and stopping treasury purchases? It's hard for me to believe that they will let that happen. The politicians will fully nationalize the Fed before they allow the gravy train to come to a halt.

Either way, there's no exit strategy here for the United States, and there never has been. Market discipline is going to come down like a hammer, crushing anyone that doesn't have the foresight (or the financial means) to get out of the way.

[Edited on May 19, 2011 at 12:46 PM. Reason : ]

5/19/2011 12:43:20 PM

It's motherfucking life raft time. I'm stocking the food and water this weekend.

In case you haven't heard the CDC (center for disease control) just issued a statement that Americans should be preparing an emergency kit complete with food and water. Laugh all you want but when the assistant attorney general says get on the fucking arc you don't just sit there you grab two of every species you can find.

This is a double doozy straight needlenose Ned style. Were talking a global recession with a side of rice pilaf. It's not everyday you get a currency collapse in your own backyard.

Check out the ny post article today where hedge funds are in panic mode and buying all the farm land they can. This is straight Jim Rogers prophecy coming to you live and direct. This is no time to break out the champagne and motherfucking condoms this is it.

Bunker down, embrace the zombie apocalypse

[Edited on May 19, 2011 at 12:59 PM. Reason : theres no place like home thetes no place like home]

5/19/2011 12:57:20 PM

Quick question to you and the doomsdayers...is there a time frame in which if something as devastating as you claim doesn't happen, you will be proved wrong. And if that time comes, will you admit you were spouting bullshit or make up some reason as to why you were right at the time, but something changed?

5/19/2011 1:12:19 PM

I'm not gonna say you are necessarily wrong about the cropland, but you have to recognize the possibility that this is just another bubble



[Edited on May 19, 2011 at 1:24 PM. Reason : better pic]

5/19/2011 1:23:28 PM

Quote :

"Quick question to you and the doomsdayers...is there a time frame in which if something as devastating as you claim doesn't happen, you will be proved wrong. And if that time comes, will you admit you were spouting bullshit or make up some reason as to why you were right at the time, but something changed?"

Been asked many times, never answered.

5/19/2011 1:41:55 PM

That's because anyone who gives a time frame is just bullshitting. Economics (just like environmental science) has no way of perfectly forecasting the future with exact dates. You can use models as a general indicator, but giving a time something will happen in terms of day/month/year is impossible.

The problem is that no one wants to admit that, and the other side won't believe anything they say because of it.

tl;dr - by 2014

5/19/2011 2:14:33 PM

Well if that's truly the case then perhaps the person predicting something needs to step outside economics and clarify themselves in other terms. For instance, someone is advocating going and buying food and water. As most people should know, canned food DOES have a shelf life.

Face (or anyone else with these suggestions), if I went out and bought 100 cans of creamed corn this weekend and they went bad before this complete financial meltdown caused me to resort to eating them, would you admit then that you were wrong?

5/19/2011 2:22:20 PM

No, it's been answered many times, and you haven't been able to understand the response a single time, apparently.

No one knows the future, but many of us pay attention to current events. There are many possible outcomes, here. I desperately hope that I'm wrong, and that everything will go back to normal in a couple of years. Hyperinflation is not an inevitability. Default is not an inevitability. A severe downturn, however, is an inevitability, the question is what the nature of that downturn will be. Many factors (foreign and domestic) are at play here.

When you guys hear about "the national debt," what do you imagine that to be? I'll tell you what it is: the U.S. treasury issues bonds, which means buyers pay a set amount for a bond, and the U.S. government will pay you back that amount at a later time, plus some interest. So, the debt is all of the money that we are going to have to pay back sometime in the future once the currently existing bonds reach maturity.

At the moment, we're in a crisis. China, one of our main bond purchasers, is buying fewer bonds every month. However, our budget deficit is not shrinking, thus we continue needing to borrow more money, which means issuing more bonds. Since China and other foreign creditors are not buying as much, the Federal Reserve has been picking up the slack. That is the practice known as quantitative easing: the Federal Reserve buys treasury bonds and other financial assets with electronically created money.

As foreign demand for bonds continues to decrease, the burden weighs more heavily on the Fed to create money. The United States has a few options. We can eliminate the deficit by raising revenue and reducing spending, which would mean we had to issue fewer bonds. To put things in perspective, Congress is squabbling over under 100 billion in cuts over many years - we need to cut between 1 and 1.5 trillion per year. The government can ignore the deficit, and the Fed can continue buying bonds, which will mean accelerating inflation as foreign investors lose confidence in bonds. Finally, we could default, meaning that we tell people that we can't give them the full yields of their bonds, if any yields at all. At that point, demand for bonds plummets, interest rates skyrocket, and we lose the ability to fund deficits at all, meaning a quick and traumatic cut in all government spending.

I don't which of these scenarios seems preferable to you, but to me, none sound great.

[Edited on May 19, 2011 at 2:35 PM. Reason : ]

5/19/2011 2:33:58 PM

If I bought health insurance this year and didn't have any medical emergencies should I drop my coverage?



You think its a fucking coincidence that the head of the deficit committee went over obamas head today? This is a full fledged meltdown we are on the brink of.

Someone link Tom coburns article.

I've been telling you this shit is coming for two years and now that its upon us you start to doubt?

It's a near certainty this happens within five years. But 6 months isn't impossible. Next week isn't impossible. I don't think you realize how fast this shit happens.

What happens when liquidity vanishes from an overleveraged system? Assets plunge, equity disappears. POOF. Then there you are staring into the abyss holding an empty bag.

My bag will contain doritos bc Im swiping my mvp card now while there's still food on the shelves.

Don't forget to hit the Abc store. Liquor barters well

PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN

5/19/2011 2:36:42 PM

face is the best troll on this site

5/19/2011 4:05:24 PM

so what should i do to prepare for the worst case scenario?

[Edited on May 19, 2011 at 4:26 PM. Reason : besides buy doritos and liquor?]

5/19/2011 4:23:20 PM

So what's up with this chart?



[Edited on May 20, 2011 at 3:02 AM. Reason : ]

5/20/2011 3:02:08 AM

Don't just call me a pessimist.
Try and read between the lines.

I can't imagine why you wouldn't welcome any change, my friend.


I've a suggestion to keep you all occupied.
Learn to swim.

5/20/2011 10:51:06 AM

Quote :

"Congress is debating raising the country's $14.3 trillion borrowing limit. White House officials say the government will run out of cash to pay expenses Aug. 2, but lawmakers have said they want spending cuts before they agree to raise the debt ceiling. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/20/jpmorgan-ceo-jamie-dimon-_n_864877.html?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main-n%7Cdl1%7Csec3_lnk2%7C213882 "

Shitballs.

5/21/2011 10:43:48 PM

so where's all those jobs that tax cuts supposedly create?

5/25/2011 2:54:00 PM

Tax cuts don't create jobs, they just mean less jobs will be destroyed. Tax revenue collected by the government is money that can't be used for private sector progress.

I find it interesting, though, that some people view "tax cuts" as giving money away. It seems to suggest that the government owns us and everything we produce, and any money they decide to let us keep is just generosity on their part.

5/25/2011 2:58:30 PM

Quote :

"Tax cuts don't create jobs, they just mean less jobs will be destroyed. Tax revenue collected by the government is money that can't be used for private sector progress."

As a fiscal conservative, it bothers me that these arguments get made from a basis that isn't exactly honest.

You can have as an ideology that government spending (very important here) could and often does result in the mis-allocated investment. However that doesn't mean that it always will and regardless of how the money gets spent, there will be a job done in it's spending. So this part:

Quote :

"Tax revenue collected by the government is money that can't be used for private sector progress"

Doesn't answer this part:

Quote :

"where's all those jobs"

Jobs were simply done in a different endeavor than the private sector might have allocated, not that they were never created. I suppose you could claim some second order effects in that mis-allocated investment ultimately results in less jobs than the optimal market allocated investment but this is going to be pretty hard to do.

As far as the Bush tax cuts creating jobs or not, it's probably impossible to separate what jobs were created because of the cuts and what jobs were created (and ultimately destroyed) because of easy credit. We really have no way of knowing if our rate would be higher or lower right now had the tax cuts not been enacted.


[Edited on May 25, 2011 at 4:55 PM. Reason : .]

5/25/2011 4:52:44 PM

Quote :

"You can have as an ideology that government spending (very important here) could and often does result in the mis-allocated investment. However that doesn't mean that it always will and regardless of how the money gets spent, there will be a job done in it's spending. So this part:"

Actually, some of the revenue will be misallocated 100% of the time. If any money is spent on paying bureaucrats/government agents during the process of collecting or distributing the money, then that portion of the money is wasted. Nothing of value is created by an IRS agent while they're working in that capacity; they only take from the tax base.

You could make the argument the some of that waste is necessary for a functioning society, and I would disagree with you. Bureaucracy destroys wealth, because it is never constrained; every government agency seeks to secure its place in the pecking order, even if it has outlived its usefulness. Private enterprises can only continue if they still have customers.

5/25/2011 5:21:59 PM

didn't you know? only republican-created debt is bad

5/25/2011 5:23:41 PM

It is upon us. There is not much time left to prepare yourself and your family.

We just experienced the 2nd biggest selloff of all-time in the us treasury by foreigners.

The largest? August 2007. You remember what happened then right?

Good luck everyone, I will pray for your safety.

5/27/2011 10:54:43 AM