From now until February I will be posting article after article after article on the debt ceiling and the worries it will have on the economy if nothing is done, dont worry though as each article will make you think what if, there should be zero worries because the debt ceiling is going higher and the US is going even deeper into debt, but no worries, as long as you can buy that garden style burger, grab that latest tablet, drink the newest IPA and go zip lining there are zero worries about what the US plans to do to pay off its debt...because there are no fucking plans 
Really, the debt ceiling is far scarier than the fiscal cliff, who believes this pathetic nonsense....this has to be the millionth time I have heard about the debt ceiling being a problem in how many years, how many more times is the US going to bump up against the debt ceiling? and what does it matter anyway, every single time we get to the point, They raise it, so what is the big deal here, like I said a few times before raise it to $982 Trillion dollars..and the talk about the US defaulting is just too fucking funny, do you REALLY think, I mean realllllly think they are going to let the US default, the answer is NO, did we go over the "fiscal cliff" no we didnt...so why even write pointless articles on this topic.
Alan Blinder says,
"this is downward spiral toward depression."
HAHA really, keep hyping up whats not going to happen....just like I said the fiscal cliff would be solved last minute, they will now raise the debt ceiling once again so the US can continue to pay their bills..
Why Debt Ceiling Is Far Scarier Than the 'Fiscal Cliff'
CNBC.com | January 15, 2013 | 01:55 PM EST
As far as menacing metaphors go, there's almost no contest between the fiscal cliff and the debt ceiling. The cliff summons up images of plunging to our doom. The ceiling is just something that keeps the rain off our heads.
This is unfortunate because the reality is exactly the opposite. Impact with the debt ceiling would be far worse than stumbling off the cliff. Both remind us that our government has become so dividedâboth on principles of taxes and spending and along partisan linesâthat is very nearly dysfunctional. But the economic impact of the debt ceiling is far more severe than the cliff.
Yesterday the Obama administration appeared to indicate that it could prioritize interest payments on Treasury bonds, which probably takes the worst case scenario of a default by the government of the United States off the table. Our full faith and credit will remain full of faithfulness.
At least for now. One of the things that the discussion of a possible default by the United States has revealed is that a default is possible. The president took default off the table only elliptically yesterday, by leaving non-payment of debt off the list of things that wouldn't get paid if we go off the debt ceiling. We still have no direct statement of policy from the White House that it will definitely make all debt payments regardless of ceiling constraints.
What's more, the very fact that this appears to be a matter of policy choice may make some investors nervous. Many people had assumed that the United States government is under some kind of legal or constitutional obligation to make debt payments. Or, at least, to pay debt before paying any other obligation. We now know that the question of debt payment isâlike so many other questions about what the Constitution requiresâmurky at best. The importance of the 14th Amendment's line about not questioning the validity of the debt is very much in the eye of the beholder (and not necessarily the eye of the bond holder).
Some even raise the possibility of an accidental default. Like a household that has set up automatic payments of bills through credit cards, the payment systems of the United States are set up to pay all bills as they come due. Turning off some payments while leaving the others on is a technical challenge. Some doubt it can be done with 100 percent certainty that there will be no errors. So there is at least a chance that some of the bills we plan to pay will go unpaidâand if one of those is an interest payment on a bond, we'll have accidentally defaulted.
In today's Wall Street Journal, Alan Blinder points out that running into the debt ceiling would provoke a severe fiscal contraction.
"At current rates of spending and taxation, federal receipts cover less than 74% of federal outlays. So if the government hits the debt ceiling at full speed, total outlaysâwhich includes everything from Social Security benefits to soldiers' pay to interest on the national debtâwill have to be trimmed by more than 26% immediately. That amounts to more than 6% of GDP, far more than the fiscal cliff we just avoided," Blinder writes.
The fiscal cliff, by contrast, would have erased 4.5 percent of GDP.
Any sustained captivity below the debt ceiling, in other words, means that the economy will enter a severe recession. This recession will be made far worse because the so-called automatic stabilizers that kick in when the economy slumpsâthink unemployment insuranceâwill not be able to function because of the budget constraint. So unemployment will grow while unemployment insurance contracts. This will not only pose a hardship on the people out of work, it will mean that the spending power of the American consumer will shrink rapidly.
Where the fiscal cliff might have led to a recession, this is downward spiral toward depression. The shrinking economy will shrink the government's tax revenues. And since the budget deficit cannot increase, the spiral will go unchecked. Falling taxes will trigger falling spending. "Downward spiral" may be too mild. Economic black hole better fits the bill.
"In short, the consequences of hitting the debt ceiling are too awful to contemplateâworse even than going over the fiscal cliff. A sane Congress wouldn't even think about it," Blinder writes. He's absolutely correct.
Blinder goes on to propose a plan to avoid a crises based on the assumption that Congress is sane. Let's hope that assumption is correct.
Really, the debt ceiling is far scarier than the fiscal cliff, who believes this pathetic nonsense....this has to be the millionth time I have heard about the debt ceiling being a problem in how many years, how many more times is the US going to bump up against the debt ceiling? and what does it matter anyway, every single time we get to the point, They raise it, so what is the big deal here, like I said a few times before raise it to $982 Trillion dollars..and the talk about the US defaulting is just too fucking funny, do you REALLY think, I mean realllllly think they are going to let the US default, the answer is NO, did we go over the "fiscal cliff" no we didnt...so why even write pointless articles on this topic.
Alan Blinder says,
"this is downward spiral toward depression."
HAHA really, keep hyping up whats not going to happen....just like I said the fiscal cliff would be solved last minute, they will now raise the debt ceiling once again so the US can continue to pay their bills..
Why Debt Ceiling Is Far Scarier Than the 'Fiscal Cliff'
CNBC.com | January 15, 2013 | 01:55 PM EST
As far as menacing metaphors go, there's almost no contest between the fiscal cliff and the debt ceiling. The cliff summons up images of plunging to our doom. The ceiling is just something that keeps the rain off our heads.
This is unfortunate because the reality is exactly the opposite. Impact with the debt ceiling would be far worse than stumbling off the cliff. Both remind us that our government has become so dividedâboth on principles of taxes and spending and along partisan linesâthat is very nearly dysfunctional. But the economic impact of the debt ceiling is far more severe than the cliff.
Yesterday the Obama administration appeared to indicate that it could prioritize interest payments on Treasury bonds, which probably takes the worst case scenario of a default by the government of the United States off the table. Our full faith and credit will remain full of faithfulness.
At least for now. One of the things that the discussion of a possible default by the United States has revealed is that a default is possible. The president took default off the table only elliptically yesterday, by leaving non-payment of debt off the list of things that wouldn't get paid if we go off the debt ceiling. We still have no direct statement of policy from the White House that it will definitely make all debt payments regardless of ceiling constraints.
What's more, the very fact that this appears to be a matter of policy choice may make some investors nervous. Many people had assumed that the United States government is under some kind of legal or constitutional obligation to make debt payments. Or, at least, to pay debt before paying any other obligation. We now know that the question of debt payment isâlike so many other questions about what the Constitution requiresâmurky at best. The importance of the 14th Amendment's line about not questioning the validity of the debt is very much in the eye of the beholder (and not necessarily the eye of the bond holder).
Some even raise the possibility of an accidental default. Like a household that has set up automatic payments of bills through credit cards, the payment systems of the United States are set up to pay all bills as they come due. Turning off some payments while leaving the others on is a technical challenge. Some doubt it can be done with 100 percent certainty that there will be no errors. So there is at least a chance that some of the bills we plan to pay will go unpaidâand if one of those is an interest payment on a bond, we'll have accidentally defaulted.
In today's Wall Street Journal, Alan Blinder points out that running into the debt ceiling would provoke a severe fiscal contraction.
"At current rates of spending and taxation, federal receipts cover less than 74% of federal outlays. So if the government hits the debt ceiling at full speed, total outlaysâwhich includes everything from Social Security benefits to soldiers' pay to interest on the national debtâwill have to be trimmed by more than 26% immediately. That amounts to more than 6% of GDP, far more than the fiscal cliff we just avoided," Blinder writes.
The fiscal cliff, by contrast, would have erased 4.5 percent of GDP.
Any sustained captivity below the debt ceiling, in other words, means that the economy will enter a severe recession. This recession will be made far worse because the so-called automatic stabilizers that kick in when the economy slumpsâthink unemployment insuranceâwill not be able to function because of the budget constraint. So unemployment will grow while unemployment insurance contracts. This will not only pose a hardship on the people out of work, it will mean that the spending power of the American consumer will shrink rapidly.
Where the fiscal cliff might have led to a recession, this is downward spiral toward depression. The shrinking economy will shrink the government's tax revenues. And since the budget deficit cannot increase, the spiral will go unchecked. Falling taxes will trigger falling spending. "Downward spiral" may be too mild. Economic black hole better fits the bill.
"In short, the consequences of hitting the debt ceiling are too awful to contemplateâworse even than going over the fiscal cliff. A sane Congress wouldn't even think about it," Blinder writes. He's absolutely correct.
Blinder goes on to propose a plan to avoid a crises based on the assumption that Congress is sane. Let's hope that assumption is correct.
