[EBH]

In other news the market is down 151.94 at 11:56am...

[kittymyrib]

The only thing that could take the market down further would be a presser by Obama or Bernanke. Surely these people know they have no credibility on Wall St. or Main St.

[LS]

I saw this and the old tax cheat is lying again. The GOP already rejected Obammy’s little deadline.

[ConservaTexan]

BOHICA!

[kabar]

Timmy is putting pressure on the Reps to cave.

[mrsmith]

“Each side has said definitively that default is not an option,”

Meaning they’ll pass legislation requiring him to pay the debt interest with the excess funds?
Gee, he nust be disappointed that he can’t mis-spend the funds and default as he had planned.

[sam_paine]

They own the press, they frame the issues.

NOBODY has been advocating DEFAULT. EVERYONE involved knows that need not happen, including the Treas Secretary.

He is a demagogue, acting as the enemy, courting the rest of the voting public as his allies against the Republicans.

A free press is also necessary for a free people, and if we all agree that we’ve lost the free press (and they’re taking Murdoch down right now) then perhaps all the other issues are lagging indicators of the failed republic.

[Owen]

The market is down because the EU is dissolving.

The US debt ceiling is being HANDLED WRONG.

Boehner goes in and asks “how much do you need to get to Feb 2013, so there is no revisiting it with a lame duck Congress”?

He gets a number and they are marching with it.

This is THE WRONG PROCEDURE.

The correct procedure is “Here is $500 billion dollars. It lasts you 5 months. At 5 months, and no sooner, you get another $500 billion dollars. This rate of authority cuts the deficit $300 billion in FY2012 to 1.1T, and we’ll continue doing this with smaller 5 month increments each year to effect cuts of 300B per year and be at zero deficit in 4 years. Appropriations bills? We’ll make them fit, don’t worry about that. You just make sure you stretch 500B out 5 months. If you can’t manage things on $500B for five months, then we will declare you incompetent and elect someone who can.”

[kcvl]

Who believes anything these people say?!

It is always a ‘crisis’ to hear them tell it just to get more spending!

[mulligan]

Government is being run by jackasses.

[Prokopton]

Not increasing the debt limit does not = default. Everyone knows this, but the press keeps shoving down our throats the BS that not increasing the debt limit does = default.

An ignorant electorate is the only way the crazed Democrats and the weak, effete, Republican elite can get their way. They must be stopped.

[kcvl]

Power Play
Senate Throws Obama a Debt Lifeline
By Chris Stirewalt

Published July 18, 2011
| FoxNews.com

Senate Debt Deal Would Let Obama Put Political Pain on Installment Plan

“I think the McConnell plan is more of Washington not taking responsibility, it is a great political plan, it takes the pressure off all of the politicians, but allows us to pass a debt limit without making the hard choices that this country has to make.”

— Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. on “Face the Nation”

Power Play feels obliged to remind everyone that the federal government is highly unlikely to default on its debts.

The catastrophic consequences of the U.S. government reneging on existing obligations would be so dire that no serious person would consider it. President Obama may use the threat of default as part of his ongoing negotiation with Republicans over his request to increase the government’s $14.3 trillion borrowing limit, but only a madman would actually follow through on such a course.

Senate Debt Deal Would Let Obama Put Political Pain on Installment Plan

“I think the McConnell plan is more of Washington not taking responsibility, it is a great political plan, it takes the pressure off all of the politicians, but allows us to pass a debt limit without making the hard choices that this country has to make.”

— Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. on “Face the Nation”

Power Play feels obliged to remind everyone that the federal government is highly unlikely to default on its debts.

The catastrophic consequences of the U.S. government reneging on existing obligations would be so dire that no serious person would consider it. President Obama may use the threat of default as part of his ongoing negotiation with Republicans over his request to increase the government’s $14.3 trillion borrowing limit, but only a madman would actually follow through on such a course.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/18/senate-throws-obama-debt-lifeline/#ixzz1STCbnrm8

[EGPWS]

...for the average American people, it would be a substantial unfair tax on all Americans and it would bring the world economy ... to the edge of recession again,"

Is there a tax to date that is forced upon us which IS fair?

These people need to go!

[McGruff]

Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. - Barack Obama(2006)

I don’t trust this President… He doesn’t know how to make those cuts. He’s never had to do this before. He’s always just been one to spend other people’s money even if that money is just borrowed money or printed out of thin air. He’s never had to exercise real executive authority like that. - Sarah Palin (2011)

[kcvl]

His nose is growing...

“Despite what you hear, and this is a complicated place, Washington, people are moving closer together,” Geithner said in a morning interview on CNBC.

Some Republicans – particularly tea party-affiliated House members – have said that the United States could keep operating without raising the debt ceiling, but Geithner cautioned that “there’s no plausible way to run a country … for an extended period of time” without raising the credit limit.

******

So, resign if you can't figure it out!

[kcvl]

Remember this...

Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Finds

The majority report finds fault with two Fed chairmen: Alan Greenspan, who led the central bank as the housing bubble expanded, and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, who did not foresee the crisis but played a crucial role in the response. It criticizes Mr. Greenspan for advocating deregulation and cites a “pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages” under his leadership as a “prime example” of negligence.

It also criticizes the Bush administration’s “inconsistent response” to the crisis — allowing Lehman Brothers to collapse in September 2008 after earlier bailing out another bank, Bear Stearns, with Fed help — as having “added to the uncertainty and panic in the financial markets.”

Like Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Bush’s Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., predicted in 2007 — wrongly, it turned out — that the subprime collapse would be contained, the report notes.

Democrats also come under fire. The decision in 2000 to shield the exotic financial instruments known as over-the-counter derivatives from regulation, made during the last year of President Bill Clinton’s term, is called “a key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis.”

Timothy F. Geithner, who was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during the crisis and is now the Treasury secretary, was not unscathed; the report finds that the New York Fed missed signs of trouble at Citigroup and Lehman, though it did not have the main responsibility for overseeing them.

The report could reignite debate over the influence of Wall Street; it says regulators “lacked the political will” to scrutinize and hold accountable the institutions they were supposed to oversee. The financial industry spent $2.7 billion on lobbying from 1999 to 2008, while individuals and committees affiliated with it made more than $1 billion in campaign contributions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/business/economy/26inquiry.html

******

Too Big To Fail?: 10 Banks Own 77 Percent Of All U.S. Banking Assets

Back during the financial crisis of 2008, the American people were told that the largest banks in the United States were “too big to fail” and that was why it was necessary for the federal government to step in and bail them out. The idea was that if several of our biggest banks collapsed at the same time the financial system would not be strong enough to keep things going and economic activity all across America would simply come to a standstill. Congress was told that if the “too big to fail” banks did not receive bailouts that there would be chaos in the streets and this country would plunge into another Great Depression. Since that time, however, essentially no efforts have been made to decentralize the U.S. banking system. Instead, the “too big to fail” banks just keep getting larger and larger and larger. Back in 2002, the top 10 banks controlled 55 percent of all U.S. banking assets. Today, the top 10 banks control 77 percent of all U.S. banking assets. Unfortunately, these giant banks are also colossal mountains of risk, debt and leverage. They are incredibly unstable and they could start coming apart again at any time. None of the major problems that caused the crash of 2008 have been fixed. In fact, the U.S. banking system is more centralized and more vulnerable today than it ever has been before.

It really is difficult for ordinary Americans to get a handle on just how large these financial institutions are. For example, the “big six” U.S. banks (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo) now possess assets equivalent to approximately 60 percent of America’s gross national product.

As a group, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo held approximately 22 percent of all banking deposits in FDIC-insured institutions back in 2000.

By the middle of 2009 that figure was up to 39 percent.

That is not just a trend - that is a landslide.

For example, Citigroup is becoming extremely aggressive about expanding....

Citigroup has been hiring dozens of investment bankers, dialing up advertising and drawing up plans to add several hundred branches worldwide, including more than 200 in major cities across the United States.

The American people were promised that TARP and all of the other bailouts would enable the big banks to lend out lots of money which would help get the economy going for ordinary Americans again.

Well, it turns out that in 2009 (the first full year after Congress passed the bailout legislation) U.S. banks posted their sharpest decline in lending since 1942.

Lending has never fully recovered since the crash of 2008. The big financial institutions like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase have been able to get all the cash that they need, but they have not passed that generosity along to ordinary Americans.

In fact, the biggest U.S. banks have actually reduced small business lending by about 50 percent since the crash of 2008.

That doesn’t sound like what we were promised.

http://www.benzinga.com/11/07/1771942/too-big-to-fail-10-banks-own-77-percent-of-all-u-s-banking-assets#ixzz1STGcwBN5

[atc23]

[Lazlo in PA]

Whenever these two stooges talk, I expect the opposite to happen from their proclamations. They are an embarrassment and a joke.

[Rapscallion]

Where’s my pitchfork, tar-bucket and torch....time to go to Washington.

[SUSSA]

There is no need to raise the ceiling or to default. If we pay the bond holders and Social Security and the military, we only have to cut 40% from the whole rest of the budget.

Do away with Obamacare and you have to cut $1 trillion less. Totally eliminate the Department of Education, the National Endowments for the Arts and For the Humanities, the Energy Department, the TSA, the BATF and all farm subsidizes and you’re almost there. Eliminate Pell Grants and Stafford Loans.

Eliminate Bushcare and SCHIP, Medicaid, and raise the retirement age from 67 to 70. Stop letting immigrants who never paid into Social Security come here and draw a check.

Cut the Labor Department by 3/4. Cut the EPA by 3/4. Cut the FBI by 40%, Cut the DEA by 50%

Cut all foreign aid except to Israel. Remove all restrictions on drilling for oil and gas and for mining and burning coal.

To increase the government’s income, eliminate all corporate taxes. Cut capital gains taxes to 2%. Eliminate the Earned Income Tax Credit. Cut the IRS by 50%. Economic growth will increase income.

[jpsb]

So we are going to “default” via inflation instead huh. Watch Au and Ag soar.