The Greenback Effect (Warren Buffett Warning!)

NY Times ^ | 8/19/2009 | Warren Buffett

[freekitty]

The main thing for people to understand is to pay off their debt if not all.

[neverdem]

He screwed up his OpEd with his lame anthropogenic global warming analogy. This economy needs cheap energy for it to recover in addition to cuts in useless government spending.

[editor-surveyor]

"If he is now telling you what to expect, you can rest assured that he is well prepared to profit from your response."

Absolutely!

[SunkenCiv]

If we leave aside the war-impacted years of 1942 to 1946, the largest annual deficit the United States has incurred since 1920 was 6 percent of gross domestic product. This fiscal year, though, the deficit will rise to about 13 percent of G.D.P., more than twice the non-wartime record. In dollars, that equates to a staggering $1.8 trillion.

The price of crude oil dropped by 2/3rds, then bounced around upward; imports bbl per day for 2008 times $70 per bbl (current price) times 365 days gives $249,955,650,000 per year, one quarter trillion dollars.

The figure at the peak crude price (which was something like $150 per bbl) means that the US was importing a half trillion dollars worth of crude oil. That'll buy a lot of flight lessons.

Anyway, I was worried about the sheiks, I know you were too, but I'm pretty sure they'll somehow manage to get by.

It may seem like one of those drop in a bucket things, but there really couldn't have been a better time to blow out the federal budget.