Posted on 04/11/2011 5:55:48 AM PDT by Robert Drobot
I seriously doubt there will be any significant inflation (beyond the 2-3% a year the Fed wants). Why? Because politicians stand to gain very little from it. All the entitlement programs driving our debt problem are indexed to inflation. Hence higher-than-expected inflation will only make the short term budget situation worse.
Historically, politicians have only resorted to hyperinflation when nominal debt service was the main driver of their fiscal problems. That is clearly not the situation we are in today.
That chart you posted is misleading because all US debt will be calculated and repaid in Yuan after the collapse.
It's not as bad as you think. For the government, unlike for a corporation, reducing promised payouts to retirees is not an event of default. Hence fixing our budge mess isn't all that difficult. All we have to do is slow the growth of Social Security and Medicare benefits, such as in the manner as Paul Ryan proposed.
“Most US debt is held in America by Americans.”
Ok. 53% is “most”, but foreign held US debt is “almost” close to it with 47%. Compare this to Japan where the domestic held dept is at about 83%.
No matter who is holding our debt, we’re already going belly up.
Entitlement programs aren't even liabilities!
Conservatives need to stop calling them that. Why? Because if we keep calling them "liabilities," we are implying that we can't cut them without defaulting on some obligation. But that's just not true!
Cutting entitlement programs IS NOT an event of default! Congress has no legal obligation to keep the benefit forumals unchanged!
This cannot be emphasized enough.
First of all, future entitlement program payments are not liabilities for the reasons stated elsewhere on this thread.
Second of all, while it's true that entitlement beneficiaries have the right to vote and many of our creditors do not, our creditors have something much more important: capital and the ability to cut off our access to credit.
If our government actually defaulted on Treasury securities, its only actaul liabilities, its ability to borrow would be gone. Politicians value that waaaay too much in order to ever give it up through an actual default.
Where did you see 47%?
No matter who is holding our debt, we’re already going belly up.
No argument here, we need massive spending cuts.
I agree.
Congress has no legal obligation to keep the benefit forumals unchanged!
Or to pay any benefits at all.
“...reducing promised payouts to retirees is not an event of default. “
People who have had their money stolen for all of their lives won’t see it that way.
Politically, you post that the US can just shove entitlements off and not suffer for it is a VERY sad joke. The masses depending on that won’t tolerate it. And the productive class can’t pay for it anymore.
It might even be technically correct, but realistically, it is the most uninformed comment that ignores humans and their natures. The whirlwind that would be unleashed will tear this nation apart. And who will the elites blame? Who will be their scapegoat? Who ever it will be, they won’t have caused this.
Politicians LYING has caused this, along with the FASCIST FED.
Pretending away an UNsustainable debt has brought us here, and you advocate more of the same. That is NO solution at all.
“... the ability to cut off our access to credit.”
GOOD. It is that access to credit that has allowed congress to over spend all these years.
“... its ability to borrow would be gone. Politicians value that waaaay too much in order to ever give it up through an actual default.”
So politicians can’t give up the money train of endless credit while they tax the productive class into oblivion? You don’t say. Too bad that is what Bennie and His Inkjets are busy doing just that. They ARE going to default, the NWO order demands that this nation be brought down, and to do it easily is by economic destruction.
I'm not saying our government would simply shove entitlements off. It doesn't have to in order to stay solvent. All it has to do is tweak them a little. For example, raising the retirement age to 70 plus limiting Medicare and Social Security benefit growth to the rate of inflation would do the trick.
It might even be technically correct, but realistically, it is the most uninformed comment that ignores humans and their natures. The whirlwind that would be unleashed will tear this nation apart.
I assure you that the whirlwind that would come from defaulting on our actual liabilities, namely, Treasury securities, would be orders of magnitude worse. Reducing entitlement benefits would not cause a global financial meltdown. Defaulting on Treasury securities would.
And who will the elites blame? Who will be their scapegoat? Who ever it will be, they won’t have caused this.
Unfortunately, the people to blame for this are mostly dead: LBJ, FDR and the politicians who passed Medicarea and Social Security, two disasterous programs that should never have been created in the first place.
Pensions were the major form of welfare in USSR. Pensions were very low and easy to manage. Looked like they were picked up by the individual countries because they were manageable. Housing was provided to people but that was an asset that could be privatized.
Russia's workout was very simple in retrospect. Ours? I don't know.
Just reminds me that God wanted to setup the year of jubilee but the Jewish people were a little reluctant, looks like He may have done it anyway.........
True, but I think you would agree that completely eliminating benefits wouldn't be wise or politically feasible. Thankfully, it's not necessary to stay solvent. The sooner we start modifying the benefit forumlas, the less abrupt and less painful the necessary cuts will be.
I'm pretty optimistic that a hybrid combining elements of Ryan's plan and the deficit commission's plan will eventually pass. Politicians on both sides are beginning to realize it must, and at the end of the day, it can be sold to the public. Underneath it all, the case is just not that hard to explain: the money to pay the promised benefits is simply not there, no matter how high you raise taxes on the rich.
While the urgency of changing our entitlement state cannot be overstated, I think the difficulty of the task is being overstated.
But that isn’t going to happen without blood in the streets. The only way for it to happen is for the older generation and the sick and weak to die out with a quickness.
SS and Medicare are unfunded liabilities. SS has already been borrowed against with only 2 paying in and 1 paying out. I think it is close to 1 to 1 now. Either way it now requires borrowing money from other countries to fund them. China isn’t buying our T-bills much anymore and the Fed has jumped in to pick up the slack. From what I have read the Fed is getting close to the point of not being able or willing to purchase anymore debt from us either.
We are now past the point of no return in paying off our debts even if we had double digit GDP growth. All anyone can do now is hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Make sure your tray is in the upright and locked position and you assume the position for impact.
Can anything be done?
“... the people to blame for this are mostly dead: LBJ, FDR and the politicians who passed Medicarea and Social Security, two disasterous programs that should never have been created in the first place.”
It goes further back to Woodrow Wilson and the FED of 1913 being passed by a bunch of dewy eyed FASCIST lovers. It goes back that far.
AND now we have DEATHCARE!! One more added weight of debt onto the backs of the few still working people who DON’T work for the government.
It is UNSUSTATINABLE. Your arguments don’t hold water. The credit bubble will burst, and it won’t be pretty.
Defaulting Treasuries will be the fault of the FED and congress. But more the FED because they are the drug dealer giving congress their fix, credit. And that credit is based on the governments ability to TAX US. That ability is falling, because people don’t have jobs. The monster of government is causing the ability to tax to FAIL.
IT WON’T WORK ANYMORE. And credit bubbles die because the compounding interest implodes under the unreality of the impossible. 98 years of compounding interest just won’t hold up.
Pensions were the major form of welfare in USSR. Pensions were very low and easy to manage. Looked like they were picked up by the individual countries because they were manageable. Housing was provided to people but that was an asset that could be privatized.
Russia's workout was very simple in retrospect. Ours? I don't know.
Just reminds me that God wanted to setup the year of jubilee but the Jewish people were a little reluctant, looks like He may have done it anyway.........
If the people who depend on SS and Medicare are all old, weak and sick, how are they capable of producing blood on the streets?
SS and Medicare are unfunded liabilities.
No they are not! They can be modified by Congress at any time without producing an event of dafault.
Either way it now requires borrowing money from other countries to fund them.
But we don't have to fund them! Congress is perfectly free to reduce the payouts.
I have. Our situation is not comprable. Most of the USSR's liabilities were in the form of dollar-denominated debt borrowed from the West, and they were massive. Our actual liabilities (Treasury securities outstanding) are easily manageable.
Russia's promised retiree obligations were small. Ours are large. Thankfully, we can reduce ours without creating an event of default.
Russia's workout was very simple in retrospect. Ours? I don't know.
The point you seem to be missing is WE DON'T NEED A WORKOUT. All we have to do is reduce social security and medicare benefits, and we don't need the consent of the beneficiaries to do that. It's true, they get to vote, but so do all the people footing the bill, and there are more of us than them.
Yes, the entitlement state is unsustainable, but it's also changeable. Again, cutting entitlement benefits is not an event of default.
Your arguments don’t hold water.
Can you be more specific? Which arguments, exactly, do you not find convincing?
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