The bankrupt banking industry is having a fire sale.
Posted on 03/20/2008 2:56:09 AM PDT by Fennie
The Bush administration forecasts a $410 billion federal budget deficit for this year, an indication that, as the US saving rate is approximately zero, the US is not only dependent on foreigners to finance its wars but also dependent on foreigners to finance part of the US government's domestic expenditures. Foreign borrowing is paying US government salaries--perhaps that of the president himself--or funding the expenditures of the various cabinet departments. Financially, the US is not an independent country.
A troubled currency and financial system and large budget and trade deficits do not present an attractive face to creditors. Yet Washington in its hubris seems to believe that the US can forever rely on the Chinese, Japanese and Saudis to finance America's life beyond its means. Imagine the shock when the day arrives that a US Treasury auction of new debt instruments is not fully subsribed...
“Saddam Hussein was trying to get OPEC to slow production before the War began. We would have been paying $5/gallon for gas 4 years ago if Saddam was still in charge of Iraq.”
Stop it, as bad as this article is he does make some good points and one of them is the $500 billion dollar war to nowhere.
The defense of the war has now reached moronic proportions, the argument of “We would be paying $4 a gallon 5 years ago if Saddam was still in charge” is frankly naive and stupid. The war has been costly, and poorly run and will only continue to affect the average American. Stop being partisan for a second and look at what this president has accomplished in 8 years. How anyone can defend these policies goes beyond me.
I agree with your point... one thing I noticed yesterday during the President’s ‘war speech’ was that he framed it in terms of getting rid of evil (Saddam) and lifting good people out of tyranny (Iraqi’s), blah blah blah.. world a safer place (might be true though, we haven’t had a problem with terror here since 2001) and I was thinking - wait! We didn’t start this war over that... we went in initially to route out the insurgents from Afghanistan and get Bin Laden.
We aren't doomed at all and that is not what anyone is saying.
What we are saying is that we are on a wrong track and need to get back to basics.
The fix from the Rino/Dino sect will probably end up being worse then the disease. For example, the Dino Hillary made a famous comment back during her Health Care Debacle Part 1 or was it her Great Dot Com Meltdown. Gee, hard to remember exactly what she was referring too, but the inference is the same. Her quote went something like, 'I cannot be held responsible for the under-capitalized businesses'.
Well, Hillary. Look who is under-capitalized now !
As far as the president goes, the buck may stop there but it doesn't originate there. Billions are being spent to override commonsense and intuition.
Some did; the rest of us pay.
Free Traitors are not capitalists -- they are socialists. Their motto is "privatize the profit; socialize the risk."
And how anyone can defend keeping Saddam Hussein in power is beyond me. He was hung by his own people for using WMD on his own people. The author stated the naive point that we have gotten nothing for our billions spent. No need to compound the authors mistake.
This is the problem....
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/22652.html
10% of the country pays 70% of the taxes. You and I have NO say in what happens until 90% pays 90% ....until then ...we’ve “sold” the government to those 10% ...and those 10% are busy having their way with the rest of us!!!
You get called a Marxist for saying things like that around here.
Wrong....
The US is also exporting plenty of goods and services and not only has the country’s GDP grown, so hasn’t tax revenues and total employment.
I say screw to unions. They increase prices and make companies less competitive in a global market.
More than that....
If I win the lottery tomorrow what happens to my mgt? If I lose my job tomorrow what happens?
Good thing name calling isn't a way to stop a conversation unless you're a teenager or younger.
I would just like to understand how Globalism and Free Trade and a huge deficit benefit the vast majority of middle class Americans.. what jobs are created for the ones we export?
I see a huge disconect... Bill Gates saying Americans aren't educated enough... and then he donates millions for education in India and in China. Meanwhile, MIT Engineering applicants dropped @ 30% this year because kids don't see a future in it. Same with IT college applicants. They know that with those degrees, they will be at risk of outsourcing/offshoring. Just got a bump in the H1-B visa holders last week... enabled more than a few companies to replace American workers with foreign workers who will stay, learn what they are taught and then take it home in a few years and compete against the very company who used them in place of Americans. I've seen this in spades for years in the industry I am in. The H1-B guys were never as good as the guys they replaced but they cost a fraction of their American counterpart. They live 10 to an apartment and don't seek medical treatment unless they can go home for it. Most of their pay gets sent home to their families.
And manufacturing... what is wrong with Americans who are content making a fair wage with their hands? Why do some around here not see the loss of our manufacturing base as a huge American loss? Especially since that shirt they used to make (when we made our own clothes in America) costs the same to consumers whether it's made here or there? The one that wins is the corporation and the executives. They do not pass much of a savings off on consumers.
Why do people blame the GOP for McCain? He wasn’t the only guy who stood for election in the primaries.
And before you rant on and on about the primary structure, plenty of people on the republican and conservative side have been voting in the dem primaries to impact that race.
“Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
Why would anyone use Chomsky for a source of wisdom? All the ideas he espouses are the opposite of freedom.
The bankrupt banking industry is having a fire sale.
Where I live a teacher’s starting salary is about $35K a year and that’s with a masters’ degree. They are in school by 7:15 in the morning and they put in an 8 hour day. Sure, the benefits are good and they work 192 days a year but they also wind up taking work home at night, working on stuff on the weekends, staying late for parent conferences, etc. In the end many of them are going above and beyond the terms of their contracts which is something a UAW, Teamster, municipal or other AFL/CIO type will ever do.
I don’t care for NEA or its politics but I do have a lot of respect for what the teachers do just like the cops and firemen.
Any American worker with a 401(k) or 403(b) is a shareholder ... many American workers with IRAs are also shareholders.
Sure since they are the only ones standing in the way of being forced to live the American Dream on a Chinese income.
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