[iThinkBig]

The “so what” part creates quite a bit of misery for a population whom only a scant few years earlier felt rich. I could say I have my back-up plans and “so what” also, but in the absence of a representative government, some of us must not be obtuse in our actions.

[palmer]

The feeling of wealth is nice but it was based on a fake AAA rating. The full faith of that rating was implicitly inherited by entities like Fannie and Freddie and then by extension to the to-big-to-fail financial entities. The bondholders in Citi and the others have the backing of the Fed and Treasury which means our federal balance sheet includes their trillions in liabilities and many trillions in derivatives. There is no way for them to fail now, so the federal government must fail instead, and that will take time.

In fact the way we retain that feeling of wealth is financial warfare and it is no coincidence that the week after Switzerland was accused of covering for tax evasion they started their own quantitative easing. If countries can not be persuaded that way, then we can simply do it for them. Then we print dollars to our heart's content to maintain our foolish illusion of wealth while knowing that the competitors to the dollar are doing the same. The physical warfare you keep alluding to is much too crude and will only be used as a last resort.