Countries' Debt Is Hot & Cold (Germany couldn't sell all it's debt this week. Unprecedented?)

I don’t get why the yen is advancing. They have more debt than anyone, except Zimbabwe. Japan is in debt 170% of their GDP.

I thought I read weeks ago that no one wanted to buy germany’s bonds anymore.

That *can't* be - the ShamWow guy says they make good stuff in Germany!

Option 3 (taking a chainsaw to the Welfare State) is not considered to be on the table, but is the only thing that would work.

Every public housing complex I've seen since the Clinton administration has been surrounded by serious security fencing. You can bet that fencing is not there to stop Bill Gates from coming in to steal their stuff.

Those fences are to keep people *in*, and they were erected by Democrats.

Maybe there's more "on the table" than you can I can imagine(?) Soylent Green, anyone?

I do have relatively optimistic views about the economy. As ludicrous as it sounds, I am still one that does believe the fundamentals are sound. I think many of the suffering banks and mortgage holders and car companies are getting their just desserts in present economic conditions. I recently moved from Ohio to Texas and I can see rather vividly that most of the economic downturn is Blue State induced. Blue states deserve their high unemployment rates. Their economic policies have been junk for quite some time and they have survived via the larger prosperity of the more functional policies of red states.

I also think low gas prices are a huge windfall to our economy. Oil prices were jacked in an international effort to trash our economy for the election. I think that worked pretty well but now the petro states are feeling the burn of low oil prices. This breaks the global conspiracy against the US economy.

This leads me back to my original argument. The world cannot pass us by as various Doomsday analysts keep trying to assert. The US economy must lead the recovery just as it lead the downfall. Therefore, the world will invest in US treasury notes and other investments because everyone knows that the brigher future begins in the US prior to any other nation.

Pretending that China, India or Russia could surpass us is absolute folly. China may be subject to its worst year of civil unrest and reduced american consumerism is devastating to them.

I am a big believer in perception shaping reality. I do think that with a diminished drumbeat to kill our economy from the Media worshipping Obama, the economy will improve by the second half of this year. I don’t relish that fact since I don’t want Obama to get credit for this. Nonetheless, I think a 40 trillion dollar economy does not hang on the same threads that the tiny American economy of the 1930s held on.

I still think the economy of the late 1970s was far worse than today.

I still do not see how all the America bashers imagine the global economy restoring itself without America. I also don’t see how Americans would just willingly resign themselves to being permanently unemployed. Honestly, we all know there are jobs out there. They are not the jobs we are willing to accept because the benefits and wages are too low. That is completely different than a structurally deficient economy where one can literally not find work.

The automakers are a microcosm of the larger probelm. You actually cannot and should not pay a person 80-100 dollars an hour to build a car when someone could make it for half of that wage. Cars could still be made in America— which they are— but not at that wage. The completely restructuring of housing prices, gas prices, wages and other skewed values will yield a more productive an efficient American economy than any other economy of the world. We can only delay the inevitable with government spending. These inefficiencies will be resolved.