I haven't expressed my concerns about this to even my wife, but it's clear to me the US government will soon be insolvent. We can expect runaway inflation ( like Germany in the 20s) as the Government prints more and more paper. The people's confidence may very well plummet in the near future, leading to the revolt mentioned in the list.
Whether Congress was briefed on this future forecast or not doesn't really matter.
I try not to worry my wife too much either. In fact she is already bent out of shape with Obama getting in that I spend quite a bit some time reasurring her that “it will be okay” to calm her down a bit. (And trying to convince MYSELF that it will be okay at the same time). On the other hand - we are in this together and we both need to work on cutting down on our spending, etc. She gets it to a degree, but not as much as I’d like.
Interest on the debt alone is roughly 10% of the federal budget. There is no reason to believe that percentage will decrease any time soon, especially as the POTUS-elect promises substantial increases in spending, the “mortgage bailout” added another $1T in debt, etc. I see no meaningful attempt to pay off the principle, so the interest thereon as a percentage of federal budget can only go up - fast.
One twist: the gov’t won’t print more paper. They haven’t sped up the presses for a long time, and indications are they won’t (the US Mint is extremely proud of “we have NEVER devalued the Dollar!”). There’s only $1.5T of it anyway, far from the needed $80T. To solve it with printing would, of course, destroy the economy fast. They’re not that stupid - they’ll find a far more clever way to achieve the same result (collapse included).
I casually theorize they will follow the lead of decoupling the dollar from gold, and will decouple virtual dollars (which is what really flows thru the economy, with credit cards & bank balances & investment spreadsheets etc.) from physical dollars (which as I noted are far far fewer than perceived virtual dollars). Since most transactions use “plastic” or “online” dollars, decoupling those inconvenient paper dollars will be as easy as the stunt Nixon pulled.
Confidence will collapse anyway. The pyramid scheme can only go so far so fast. Those who see this coming don’t necessarily spread the word, even to SOs, lest the collapse come sooner. The list above says next February, which seems a bit soon but still viable.
Surely Congress has been briefed somehow. It’s a very viable sequence of events. Whether it happend as claimed above, we don’t know - but they must be aware of the possible sequence if something isn’t solved soon (hence the “bailout”). Consumer credit is next, and teetering wildly. In a panic, piling on the debt is easy (citizens and gov’t alike) - and leads to a crisis fast.
So ... we all owe >$80T, and are coughing up ~$200B/yr just to stay afloat. Allocating another 10% of the budget to principal, that should take ... um ... 400 years to pay it all off. Uh, let’s bump that to 50%, that’s ... um ... 80 years to just catch up on current debt. Yeah. We’re screwed. Maybe we should tell our wives after all.
Glenn Beck said this morning that the US normally has about $800 billion dollars in circulation, recently (he may have said when?), they added an additional $2 trillion into circulation.
Looks like my property values will skyrocket at some point...I just hope I can afford the new property tax appraisals that will come on my zero mortgage (I owe no-one) homestead.