Free Republic

Here's my response to Commander Zer0's verbal assault on reason that took place last night. I realize that our Dear Leader's plans to provide al-Qaeda air cover may not materialize, but keep this in mind: We have a failing dictator who's willing to start world War III to distract the country from his varied scandals and Zimbabwe-like economy. Anything is still possible with this pile of human debris in the White House. Without further ado: *** For the last couple of days, we've been exposed to an endless stream of war propaganda in support of Chairman Obama's Syrian adventure. Without...

The Treasury Department’s latest official daily accounting of the U.S. government’s receipts, expenditures and borrowings—released this afternoon at 4:00 p.m.—indicates that the legally limited debt of the federal government has now been exactly $16,699,396,000,000 for 100 straight days. The Daily Treasury Statement released today showed the status of the government’s accounts as of the close of business on Friday, Aug. 23. Because the Treasury does no business over the weekend, the federal government’s debt did not change on Saturday or Sunday. The statement for Aug. 23 said the federal debt subject to the legal limit set by Congress was $16,699,396,000,000—or...

Today's US National Debt Clock status.

The U.S. national debt would reach 1.1 million miles into space if stacked in one dollar bills. According to the latest available data from the U.S. Treasury, the total public debt outstanding is $16,738,105,803,858.21. A dollar bill is .0043 inches in thickness. … Thus, the national debt would stretch 1,135,951 miles into the air. …

Rep. Michele Bachmann wants to know: How in the world has the federal government not reported any increase in the national debt in 56 days? As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday, Bachmann asked how there could be no increase reported in the total debt when the government is racking up about $4 billion a day in new debt. “After nearly 10 years as the head of the Federal Reserve, Chairman Bernanke could not answer my question today in Financial Services Committee,” Bachmann told WND. She wondered if there’s a political motive involved....

#2 During Obama's first term, the federal government accumulated more debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined. #4 If you started paying off just the new debt that the U.S. has accumulated during the Obama administration at the rate of one dollar per second, it would take more than 184,000 years to pay it off. #27 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid, and things are about to get a whole lot worse. It is being projected that Obamacare will...

House Speaker John A. Boehner on Thursday flatly ruled out chances of the House passing the Senate’s immigration bill, saying his chamber will debate its own bill instead. Mr. Boehner and his top GOP lieutenants issued a joint statement that seemed designed to tamp down some of the momentum behind the Senaate bill, which emerged from a Senate committee on a bipartisan 13-5 vote earlier this week, and to stake out a House GOP position

Obama has done it. He has brought America down. It only took him just over four years. The Republicans could have stopped him. They didn’t. How did the nihilistic left succeed in destroying America? Simple. They learned just a little of the capitalism they hate, and they drove your nation into outright bankruptcy. And here is what the GOP has to say about it: just about nothing. The once-mighty United States is now the most indebted nation on Earth. In round numbers, here are just some of the vital statistics as the patient dies: National debt: $17 trillion, or $50,000...

Granting amnesty to illegal immigrants would cost $6.3 trillion, according to a new report by the Heritage Foundation. … Not only would the federal deficit increase, but the cost of benefits and services to millions of newly minted citizens would reach nearly $10 trillion. …

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog_post/beyond_the_echo_chamber/ Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 12:55 pm Advice from "beyond the echo chamber" We just learned the economy lost another 600,000 jobs last month. It's a staggering number, and it underscores just how deep this crisis is – and, as the President pointed out this morning, it’s accelerating. That's why he created the Economic Recovery Advisory Board -- to solicit ideas from "beyond the echo chamber of Washington, DC." "I’m not interested in groupthink, which is why the Board reflects a broad cross-section of experience, expertise, and ideology," he said. "We’ve recruited...

Washington (AP) — The Federal Reserve on Wednesday stood by its extraordinary efforts to stimulate the economy. And it signaled that it could increase or decrease the pace of bond purchases depending on how the job market and inflation perform. After concluding a two-day policy meeting, the Fed said in a statement that the job market has shown some improvement in recent months, on balance. But it also notes that unemployment remains high and government budget policies have begun to restrain economic growth. The Fed maintained its plan to keep short-term interest rates at record lows at least until unemployment...

Yesterday, my colleague, Marty Biancuzzo, explained why America is on a path to inevitable economic and government collapse. After reading Marty’s piece, another colleague asked me: What will America look like after a government collapse? It’s an important question, and I want to give a satisfactory answer. But I can’t do that in one short column, so I plan to return to this topic several times over the next few weeks. I hope that when I’m done, you will have a better understanding of where the country is headed. Now, consider our current situation… It’s clear that Barack Obama and...

The Economic Depression Is Deepening Economics / Great Depression IIApril 23, 2013 - 05:47 PM GMT By: Bill Bonner Gold seemed to be stabilizing at the end of last week. Commodities remained weak. Steel has fallen 31% this year. Brent crude is off 17% since early February. And copper is down 15%. Copper is the metal you need to make almost anything – houses, cars, electronics. When it goes down, it generally means the world economy is getting soft.At the start of last week, the conventional analysis of the gold sell-off was that the central banks' efforts to revive global...

OMB: Obama Will Become First President to Spend $4T in One Year April 10, 2013 In the historical tables it released along with President Barack Obama's fiscal 2014 budget proposal this morning, the White House Office of Management and Budget revealed that in fiscal 2016 it expects Obama to become the first president in the nation's history to preside over a federal government that spends more than $4 trillion in one year. The OMB's historical tables also reveal that the White House does not expect this administration to ever run an annual deficit as low as $458.5 billion, which was...

As the Senate prepares to produce its first budget since the FY2010 cycle four years ago, Barack Obama will finally submit his own budget proposal — two months late, of course. The last actual normal-order budget passed by Congress spent, according to the White House’s own figures, $3.456 trillion dollars on revenues of only $2.163 trillion. With even the President talking about fiscal discipline and deficit control, we must be seeing some cuts in this budget cycle, no?No: President Obama plans Wednesday to unveil a $3.77 trillion spending plan that proposes modest new investments in infrastructure and education, major new...

The U.S. Treasury Department has revised its estimates of the foreign ownership through the end of Fiscal Year 2012, which means that we can now finalize our picture of just who the major holders of the 16.027 trillion dollars of the outstanding U.S. government debt issued through 30 September 2012 are: Overall, U.S. entities own 66% of all debt issued by the U.S. federal government. Ranking the major U.S. entities from high to low, we find that: U.S. individuals and institutions, which includes regular Americans, banks, insurance companies and other government entities, own 30.5% of the nation's debt. The...

The Obama Administration has posted their last budget offer to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). The Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee have a different take on the President’s budget: Obama’s budget turns off the sequester, adds stimulus extension, $50 billion in transportation spending and universal pre-K (better known as government baby sitting centers). And by getting rid of the sequester ($1 trillion), they propose cuts in discretionary spending of $100 billion only. In addition, Obama’s budget plan, to be unveiled April 10th (the same day that North Korea is threatening to nuke us), would prohibit taxpayers from accumulating more...

Preparing For Inflationa​ry Times Economics / InflationMar 29, 2013 - 11:06 AM GMT By: Jeff Clark "All this money printing, massive debt, and reckless deficit spending – and we have 2% inflation? I'm beginning to believe that either the deflationists are right, or the Fed's interventions are working." – Anonymous Casey Research reader The CPI, in our view, does not accurately measure inflation, which accounts for some of the discrepancy our reader is pointing out. However, the proper definition of inflation is "an increase in the quantity of money," which we've had in spades. We've not experienced the concomitant increase...

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Thursday that the nation’s current debt of $16.7 trillion is “not endangering” the country, adding that “some debt is not a bad idea” and that he and other congressional Democrats “don’t think there’s a problem.” … Conyers and other liberal Democrats spoke at a Capitol Hill press conference about their initiative to compel Congress to cancel the across-the-board budget cuts (sequester) of $1.2 trillion over 10 years, which actually are reductions in the rate of increase in federal spending and amount to $44 billion for this...

If you are a regular reader of American Thinker, you already know that our nation's debt and deficit problems are unsustainable. We need to look no further than the European Union to understand the problems associated with welfare states run wild. The violence in Greece is a harbinger of things to come in the United States if we fail to take action to get our nation's fiscal house in order. It's as simple as 1, 2, 3. No nation can spend its way out of a debt and deficit problem. It is true, however, that a growing economy produces increases...