“The short answer is: It isn’t. And that’s a good thing. For any attempt to meet those “liabilities” would bring on the dollar’s demise. But that doesn’t mean America would be in default — the “liabilities” aren’t real. But the treasuries purchased freely and in good faith are real, and their default would make America a pariah state around the world.”
So is he saying that those liabilities are not going to be paid for? A lot of entitlements are going to need to be rolled back or a lot of people are going to have to die in order for that to happen!
You might tell hundreds of millions of voters that the soft debt is not real. Voters will reject any meaningful entitlement reform until a catastrophe occurs. Even then, it is not clear if a catastrophe will prompt reform. The Democrats plan for reform involves soaking the rich and taking away entitlement benefits from the rich. Not much will be gained from eliminating entitlement benefits from the rich. Confiscatory tax rates will backfire leading to economic decline and lower tax revenues.
Entitlement spending contains a hidden trap for inflation induced debt control. Entitlement spending will grow with inflation so we cannot inflate our way out of debt.
The Democrat fall back provision is stealth of private retirement accounts. Democrats know that real money is locked in these accounts. As John Dillinger once said, rob the banks because that is where the real money is stored.
We, in Canada, heard this same story time and again from liberals, and other “deniers” — right up till we hit a wall in the mid 1980’s & decided to get serious about our debt. Eliminating the deficit was painful — but, once we did so, and started reducing the debt, the benefits started rolling in.
As every “12 stepper” knows — the first step is admitting you have a problem.
Now I get it!!!!!
There is PRETEND debt!
Why was I getting so worked up?
I’m not so sure this article is a good one. If I read it correctly, the author is saying the US dollar demise is not inevitable because all that needs to be done to save it is to renege on SS.
I don’t think that is an option. If SS was abolished tomorrow, the SS payments to citizens would simply turn into unemployment and welfare payments instead.
He misses the obvious. That is, for the congress to get its house in order means that they have to cancel Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. In short, congress, no matter who runs it, cannot do this.
But the individual States can do this, in a constitutional convention.
Even before the convention was to meet, called by 34 States, 38 States would have to agree to erase all US federal debts and obligations. Then add a balanced budget amendment, a line item veto amendment, replace the Income Tax with a different, limited means of raising federal revenue, and prohibit future federal largess to individuals.
Once these 38 States were in agreement, they would call a convention, sign the new constitution, have the 38 State legislatures vote to affirm, with the convention remaining seated until the changes were carried out.
This would relieve the crushing political weight from the shoulders of congress and the president, created by three dozen congresses before them.
This is an excellent forum for reading about gold and the dollar.
http://goldismoney2.com/forum.php/forums/
So now the infamous SS lock-box has been down-graded to only ‘soft debt’.
This peabrain needs to understand the that "money we owe ourselves" is money that effectively has been printed by the Federal Reserve. (The Federal Reserve gets I-O-Me's in return.) And that is the dangerous stuff. Someone who actually purchased debt with his own money, whether Chinese or not, cannot purchase anything with that debt until he is paid back and so does not compete for goods and services with other "dollar" holders.
ML/NJ
So, the hard debt matters and the soft debt doesn’t. I can prove the false idiocy here in one line.
Let’s move all the hard debt to soft debt, and then the entire $13 trillion won’t matter.
See how easy it is to expose the lies of the cheerleaders?
So the “soft debt” is inconsequential because we “owe it to ourselves.” The country will not be harmed with a default on the “soft debt.” In fact, it will be strengthened when all us old folks on social security starve to death or cannot get medical care when we are sick and on Medicare. Actually the whole population is transitioning to a sort of inferior medicare now and that makes for more soft debt that won’t hurt the nation if it is welshed on.
But we don't "owe it to ourselves." Some of us owe it to others of us. And what the author is saying, we can solve the problem by repudiating the debts that some of us owe to others of us.
I think that would really start a revolution.
Most people and our govt are cash flow managers. It only becomes a problem when there is not enought cash flow. The debt is not the problem.
So, what stops the cashflow for our govt?