Why am I not surprised?
More “Profiles in Courage”.......
Catastrophic Consequences? Catastrophic consequences my ....
Yeah, so are we going to get out of bombing third world countries?
Are we going to get people out of serious unemployment, where they can actually contribute to the funds?
What a waste!
Well, of course they will. Was it ever really in doubt? Seriously?
If raising the Debt limit a little is necessary to ward off collaspe, why do we not double the ceiling to 28 Trillion dollars.
Would that not be fun Awesome, Super, much better?
More doom and gloom from the people that created this mess.
IT’S all Obamaa’s fault. And he gets us into another war to boot.
They better not!!!
If I ever appear to believe so much as a single word coming out of a democrats mouth, please, put a bullet in my head.
*Boner* was probably busy all weekend writing his *post-cave* speech on why it was the only thing he could do.
Can’t wait for this one to start serving his prison sentence.
They say the same thing for everything - TARP, Stimulus, Obamacare, etc.
It has worked well for them so we can expect it.
Ramp up a “recall” petition for every spineless rump-swabbing SOB that votes to raise it!
The GOP “leadership” are an incompetent gaggle of eunuchs, clueless of the American mood! Damn fools are playing with fire... They are stoking the simmering coals of a revolt.
These Gutless Old Poltroons should be covered with hot pitch and feathers, strapped to an old ass—with a water jug hung off a stick in front of its nose... and sent packing into the into desert.
Turbo Tax timmy?
oh yeah...I believe him...totally...
They seem to be two different things...
Was Boehner crying when he said this or just cowering??
Just cancle the national debt, Germany did it and survived!
What exactly is the point of an artificial debt ceiling anyway. It does nothing tho control spending...congress has already approved the debt. Defaulting will do nothing but cause chaos. This thing is too dangerous to be in the hands of idiot congressmen.
I think that this lad Geithner should be compelled to wear his Cub Scout uniform and his Macro Economics Merit Badge to all TV interviews.
Republicans are bound and determined to LOSE in 2012. They want to be a minority party, because they’ve shown that they don’t want power.
This is not a new idea - Asimov had been anticipated, some 25 years earlier, by the "morphology of history" of Oswald Spengler, whose Der Untergang des Abendlandes I have also been re-reading.
Anyway, the early novels are structured around the plot device of a "Seldon Crisis". A crisis is a problem that must be solved, and usually there are several solutions with advantages and disadvantages. A Seldon Crisis is when there are multiple critical problems, but almost every solution to one problem makes other problems worse.
That's where we are, I think. We have economic problems that could be solved by government spending, but a debt trap that makes such spending insane (though not, alas, impossible). We have a need to rebuild our industry, but an education system that cannot turn out people able to do industrial age work, and a tax system that penalises production and rewards speculation. We have multiple enemies overseas, and a military industrial complex that makes out armed forces both ineffective and unaffordable.
I won't go on. In Asimov's contrived plots, there is exactly one solution to a Seldon Crisis, and eventually some convenient clear-sighted person implements it. In Spengler's terms, we are faced with a crisis where our choice is "to do the necessary, or to do nothing".
History does not have a plot, but I do see one way - only one way - out of this Crisis. The debt ceiling must not be raised. I will go further: The debt ceiling must never, ever again be raised. Once that is set in stone, the necessary reforms become inevitable and inescapable. Once the reforms are seen to work, the return path to sound money and limited government is open.
Thanks for listening.