We’re at the points where we’re only opening mail that doesn’t have “Past Due” stamped on it.
When we go buy something like entitlements, more money for this giveaway, that giveaway, we’re essentially rifling through out wallet to find a credit card that still has something left of the ceiling.
Let the good times roll! Stock indexes lept back up to (S&P500) or above (NASDAQ0 their 50-day moving averages gaining over a percent in mixed trade. Metals fudged ok, and futures today foresee stock fudging (-0.5%) and further profit taking w/ metals (-0.52%). Reports this AM:
Retail Sales
Retail Sales ex-auto
Export Prices ex-ag.
Import Prices ex-oil
Business Inventories
Government Accountability Office wants to abolish accountability.
We have a federal debt limit?
Who knew?
Seriously, though, how about establishing a balanced budget requirement?
I prefer the periodic kabuki theater over raising the limit.
I notice that the chart mentions that the Treasury has used “extraordinary measures” to avoid hitting the debt ceiling.
Too bad no one thinks of the one obvious measure that households must use to avoid their “debt ceilings”—cut spending. That particular common-sense measure is not mentioned anywhere.
Allowing money creation through idiots voting, with debt as the principal monetary instrument, cannot work in the long run.
As Keynes famously observed, “in the long run, we’re all dead”. But as a man with no interest in women and therefore no children, he could be indifferent to “the long run”.
The US Constitution, OTOH, was written to secure the blessings of liberty to our posterity. That’s why no State may make any thing except gold and silver coin legal tender.
Our debt-as-money system is now over the edge. More debt is necessary to service the debt. It is debt service that keeps the system afloat. In effect, your labor and the associated tax withholding have become monetized.
Of course the “debt limit” should be eliminated. It will hasten the end of this non-viable system and allow something old to emerge.
“Raising the debt ceiling doesn’t approve more spending by the government. Instead, it allows the government to borrow to pay debts it has already incurred....”
Translation: we’re at the point of paying the MasterCard with the Visa, and are begging Visa to raise the borrowing limit.
Living a financial joke is a bad sign.
“Should Congress Abolish the Federal Debt Limit?”
Why not? It’s not like Republicans and Democrats have a fundamental difference in philosophy when it comes to spending. It’s not like GOP leadership in Congress have the ability to take a principled stand over something.
We have no debt limit, in practical reality, so why not do away with the charade?
There are no limits to government until the American people impose it themselves.
YOU DID BUILD THIS CONgre$$
A long time ago, in a country far, far away people spoke about this...
Debates in the House of Representatives on the First Report on Public Credit 9–18 February 1790
James Jackson (Ga.)
But it is doubted with me whether a permanent funded debt is beneficial or not to any country.
The same effect must be produced that has taken place in other nations; it must either bring on a national bankruptcy or annihilate her existence as an independent empire. Hence I contend, sir, that a funding system, in this country, will be highly dangerous to the welfare of the republic; it may, for a moment, raise our credit and increase the circulation, by multiplying a new species of currency; but it must, in times afterward, settle upon our posterity a burthen which they can neither bear nor relieve themselves from. It will establish a precedent in America that may, and in all probability will, be pursued by the sovereign authority until it brings upon us that ruin which it has never failed to bring, or is inevitably bringing, upon all the nations of the earth who have had the temerity to make the experiment.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/875
6. But the grand nostrum will be a public debt...
8. (4) A great debt will require great taxes; great taxes, many taxgatherers and other officers; and all officers are auxiliaries of power.
11. As soon as sufficient progress in the intended change shall have been made, and the public mind duly prepared according to the rules already laid down, it will be proper to venture on another and a bolder step toward a removal of the constitutional landmarks.
http://www.constitution.org/cmt/freneau/republic2monarchy.htm
/debt slavery
Why not? They never fail to increase it when they hit the old one anyway.
I believe obama’s protectors pulled the plug on the debt meter about 2 months ago, so America is already in no man’s land
Hey boehner what time is happy hour tonight?
All I hear is one dumb@ss idea after the next coming out of the media every day.
The fact that this is even being considered is insane.
It will make our money worthless.
What a DUMB idea!
Yeah! Let’s be more greek!
Might as well, they don’t do anything with it except extend it.
Abolish the FED, and the debt limit is ‘no longer a problem’. MUCH harder to spend into infinity when you can’t just print funny $$...and take us one more step back to our Constitutional founding.