Posted on 05/07/2013 10:50:10 PM PDT by Perseverando
Obama has done it. He has brought America down. It only took him just over four years. The Republicans could have stopped him. They didn’t.
How did the nihilistic left succeed in destroying America? Simple. They learned just a little of the capitalism they hate, and they drove your nation into outright bankruptcy.
And here is what the GOP has to say about it: just about nothing.
The once-mighty United States is now the most indebted nation on Earth. In round numbers, here are just some of the vital statistics as the patient dies:
National debt: $17 trillion, or $50,000 per man, woman and child, or $150,000 per taxpayer. Annual federal deficit: $1 trillion. Medicare/Medicaid/Obama”care”: $1 trillion a year. Social Security: another $1 trillion a year. Defense: two-thirds of a trillion. Unemployment handouts: $2 billion per working day. Debt interest: $1 billion per working day. Federal pensions, ditto.
Now for the big numbers. Your government’s Social Security liability is as big as the national debt: $17 trillion. Its prescription drug liability is $22 trillion. Then there’s the Medicare liability of $86 trillion. Total unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government are $125 trillion.
Net assets for each U.S. citizen are $300,000. The net liability of the U.S. government, shared among its citizens, amounts to almost four times that: $1.1 million a head. And the government’s debt is growing at $1 million every 45 seconds. To cover its annual deficit, it is printing $1 trillion a year of currency that is not backed by any asset whatsoever.
Here is what will happen next. When the crash comes, don’t say you weren’t given fair and clear warning.
First, the dollar will cease – no, make that “is already ceasing” – to be the world’s reserve currency. China, as
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Ok, I buy that. But what about the growing unfounded liabilities and the cost of Obamacare.
I think the Chinese are in as much trouble as us—we are Thelma and Louise...going over the cliff together.
Any one still supporting Free Trade with Communist China....yep this is on you....
Bump
I see...would you prefer we just post from PMSNBC or the HuffinGlue Post?
Can you not post in your own words?
My 2 yr old uses U-tube for his kiddie programs, but I am not interested in political post there.
I probably was not as clear as I should have been. I do not object even at this time to calling my Country the United States OF America as this is geographically accurate. I do with negative feelings these days hesitate to calling the USA just simply America for the reason given. It makes my heart very sad and conflicted when as a veteran of WWII and with an only brother killed on Okinawa in WWII to refer to the USA as America for the reasons given. ‘America the Beautiful’ has been compromised by all those other people of the other Americas countries who have only hatred and disdain for the USA.
In discussions like this everyone forgets China would starve half its populace without hesitation.
What form of growth, here in the U.S., will cause the dollar to go up?
Hey, come on - Obama knows that purchasing votes to stay in power is very, very expensive.
It’s not about America - he couldn’t care less about America - it’s about bringing the country to its knees to generate sufficient social unrest to foment his Marxist revolution, as his idol Lenin did in Russia so many years ago.
Massive corporate taxation, limitless legal vulnerability, crushing environmental regulation and pro-Union arbitrary Government: these are why industry chooses to locate away from the USA.
Protectionism would be the final nail in the coffin. The last vestiges of American industry would be turned into feather-bedded welfare cases, and freeborn Americans would be forced to buy their stuff from the Government store.
Protectionism would also increase Government power. The Democrats will collect all of that lovely tariff money and spend it on union pension bailouts or some damn thing.
America has tied its own hands behind its back with a ludicrous knot of EPA regulations, crushing taxation and arbitrary Government (just ask Gibsons guitars).
America needs to untie those knots - not wrap itself up in more of them in a fit of misplaced faux-patriotic anger.
Its not all bad news. You guys really do have a way out. Natural gas is going to save America. But will America turn into an immoral extraction economy like Saudi, or will it wisely return to its can-do anti-statist roots?
“Eagle diesel” - otherwise known as natural gas. You guys are headed for a revolution in energy production.
Will the new revenues be enough to beat the colossal self-imposed burdens on America? Maybe.
But America should beware of becoming an arid, socialist extraction economy. It needs to reduce Government and use its cheap energy to bring industry in from abroad.
When I was in elementary school, one of the things we had to do was make a map of the USA with small drawing of what each state produced - you know, Iowa-corn, Minnesota-iron, Texas-oil, etc, etc.
In June of 1945, all the Reichsmarks is the world could buy you nothing.
The idea that the final destruction of the phony paper “economy” and the end of globalization will “destroy” the United States is absurd, The United States has, under the earth and along our coasts and rivers, more wealth than the entire rest of the world put together.
We also have the most resourceful and creative people in the world.
We have a severe misgovernment problem, which presumably will end soon, as it always does.
THe “dollar” is toast? Well, the little green pieces of paper are, most likely, going out of fashion soon. Repay China by enslaving several generations of our children? Don’t make me laugh.
The “dollar” is supposed to be a unit of account and a store of value. It is supposed to be defined by Congress, which body is supposed to also regulate its value. They have failed to do this for 100 years (except for the gold coin act of 1986 which set the value of a gold dollar as .02 ounces of fine gold but lacked enabling legislation).
Anyway, a future Congress wil have to undo all the fiscal and monetary mismanagement and cancel all the debts, which they will undoubtedly do.
“Destroyed”? Compare and contrast Berlin/Hiroshima/Detroit/Camden 1945 and Berlin/Hiroshima/Detroit/Camden 2013. The destruction has happened already. The phony economy is next.
Then and only then can we start rebuilding.
Burn, baby, burn.
Heh. I don't care much for WND, but I'll read [and usually agree with] anything written by Lord Monckton.
Its interesting to go back and read these posts and comments today.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2155548/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2155962/posts
47% of you are the most resourceful and creative people in the world.
It's the others who are the problem. They are on your backs demanding a free ride.
The only way to get to an America where they're not in charge is to pass through the turmoil of losing reserve currency status.
That's already coming. That's reality. That cannot be avoided now. The timebase of the incipient dollar collapse is faster than the onset of the Natural Gas revenues.
The dollar may be strengthened by eagle diesel, but the step-change of reserve status is inexorable. America's creditors know that Obama's printing press can overrun any resource revenue, no matter how stupendous.
So, yes - as you say - burn baby burn. Then drill baby drill.
The 2008 crash resulted in flight to the dollar not flight from it due to failing of bad loans triggering: deflation not inflation, and that was triggered by interest rates finally having to be increased to control inflation.
I used to post predictions like above in 2009 and 2010 but the past few years shows that these things are not easy to predict in todays world economy.
IMHO the US dollar will not crash rapidly unless an unforseen crisis erupts. The US dollar is widely used and well institutionalized in fiance. China is chipping it away by having Japan, Russia and other nations settle trade with yuan. China is also building up her gold reserves. Last official number was 1100 tons several years ago, but experts think she may have up to 4000 tons and accumulating at 750 tons per year. China wants to have 8000 to 10000 tons. While she is spending time buiding up her gold reserve, she is also using that time to gain experience on using the yuan internationally.
As the US keeps devaluing the dollar by printing, China when ready may back her yuan with gold. That can be a game changer in trade. A foreign nation has a choice to use US dollars that may lose value overtime or use yuan backed by gold. Even if the yuan does not replace the US dollar but available as a second alternative, the US dollar and US financial power is degraded compared to the present. Think Britain after WW2 when the US dollar replaced the British pound. Worth reading on what happen to the British middle class during that post WW2 period. That may be the fate of the US middle class in the future.
You know how your chainsaw or weedeater revs up right as it’s running out of gas?
look for that to happen with the economy...
or... just look what’s happening right now.
but the past few years shows that these things are not easy to predict in todays world economy.
This is what I’ve come to think, as well. Linear extrapolations in either direction are usually wrong. Most historical graphs are more like roller coasters than hockey sticks. There is rarely any appreciation for Black Swans, some of which can be positive.
Hard times may be here and they may get worse. But total collapse? The temperate center of a continent reduced to irrelevancy within even a decade’s time? I try very hard to ignore normalcy bias and to think outside most boxes, but that just seems too extreme.
In no particular order and w/o re-reading the article:
A _few_ farmers? Most folks living outside the urban centers (and some who have relocated within them) know how to produce food and energy from a variety of sources by diverse means.
Lack of technical expertise in the US? It seems to me that not only is there a sufficiency, but it is distributed throughout the country. There are now IT centers and energy-producers in places outside of Silicon Valley and Texas/Louisiana.
As I age, I am amazed that the doom predictors keep telling folks to buy arable land with wood lots and pasture. Ever done this sort of work? It is very labor intensive and energy intensive. If you really believe it is all going to end within a lifetime, what will those aged over 60 do with this land? Will you plow by hand in a season such as this one, with a delayed planting? How will you feed and house the work animals, assuming you have bred and trained them and their handlers? If you had to begin to cut firewood now, without chain saws and winches and transport, it would not be ready to burn for 18 months. Those beef on pasture take time to mature, as well and need more than the grass available in a short season. How much wood does it take to make how much charcoal in how much time with how many people?
Is anyone conducting commerce in silver? I know that when I see a few pre-1964 coins selling for $20 or more (and it was worse a few months ago when $1.50 in coins was going for over $40), I just can’t quite bring myself to purchase them. I know people who bought $1000 face value in pre-1964 silver over 40 years ago. It sits in their attic and even though it has appreciated, the owners don’t even count it in their net worth.
Mockton is an excellent thinker and I see how he reaches his conclusions, but let’s just take his example of Britain.
They may be in dire straits, but they exist. They are not in a shambles, exactly. They are not grubbing in the rain with sticks and oxen to produce some Middle Ages harvest of barley. With fewer resources than the US, with a longer history of socialism, with a large proportion of non-productive natives and immigrants and with a climate that seems as variable as ours, they are still a First World nation, even though their demise has been foretold for my entire life. And I remember when the pound was worth $50 USD.
The scenario of an indigenous populace of plodding slaves ruled by invading despots and treasonous natives never ends well for the rulers. We have put our resources off-limits for extraction, but they are still there. So, we sell them to China. They then have to revive the dormant supporting infrastructure, manage the slave labor pool and, if they import their own labor, they need to mount security sufficient to protect the labor, the infrastructure and the extractives and that doesn’t begin to include the transportation and distribution issues. Seems it might be a tad more efficient to work for stability.
People were moaning about the debt and predicting collapse when I was in high school in the 1950s. In the 1970s, people migrated to the country to return to the land before the Collapse and the new Ice Age. That land is now worth 10x what it was back then and it is for sale and there are American buyers. In the 80s, the Japanese were going to own America. Instead, they lost their collective shirt. I look around my little portion of the US and I do not see a dispirited gaggle. I see commerce, innovation, families. Even where there have been concerted efforts to make people dependent, there is an underground economy. People find a way. Not everyone is ignorant and deluded. Many have weighed the odds and decided that they and this nation will endure and live their lives accordingly.
Some preparation for hard times is prudent. Living in fear and trepidation is debilitating. A lot of things *could* happen. That does not mean it is inevitable.
Just my devalued 2 cents. I think the death of the United States is highly exaggerated.
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