Laurence J. Kotlikoff We are Bankrupt
- Thread starter stocon
- Start date
Yeah,
Politicians can't print any. Even the great Greenspan couldn't.
And it's pretty. The new 0.999 fine one ounce Buffalo nickel is a beaut. The new US currencies look third world. Perhaps they menat them to. I mean, PINK, in a bill?
US never had a surplus in the 1990s, the budget omitted SS and Medicare obligations. But there was an operating surplus, unlike todays budget.
US is slowly becoming more and more like Mexico, with the fastly widening rip between the rich & the poor, corruption and overinflated assets out of reach of the vast majority of the population
Europe is socialist and provides a decent standard of living even to the unemployed. Europe is also not dependent on perpetual growth in order to keep their debt afloat.
US job creation over the last 5 years is reported by engineered governemnt reports. They are almost always revised down and take many creative calculation approaches, such as counting temp jobs as longterm under optimistic assumptions.
Any real job grown is backed by real estate bubble, a.k.a. debt. Construction, which is a cyclical industry has been a big growth driver but now that has ended. Same goes for related contracting work such as electricians, plumbers, architects. I'm not even gonna get into real estate & mortgage brokers, those are fly by night industries.
Yes but this country does not produce anything significant anymore. US name brand products only get branded here, not made. Economy growth over the last 10-15 years has been from financial services since all those printed dollars needed to be put to work in a creative way. Technology also, like the ever so valuable and vital search engines. And don't forget Pharma, gotta keep the pill popping nation going.
At some point, simple math will take over. You cannot keep spending more than you produce because eventually the debt load becomes critical. It's not a question of "if" but a question of when.
Something to think about, there are 2 times more dollars outside of the US (Eurodollars) than there are in the US. I hope some of you can figure out what that suggests.
Well put. I think the only thing that stops the USD from imploding if the large holding of USD backed securities and central banks don't want the Euro too high as it would hurt them in exporting.
We do produce great WMD!
Just kidding. And we know how to print money fast too! 
One thing to keep in mind though, the US has a fair amount of social programs, theire just not as touted as Europe or Canada.
Regarding just the Banana republics, [I know that was just a way of saying we will be in a depression], but they are poor because the leadership is corrupt way more than anything else. Corruption in the USA is not in a runaway mode, there are some corrupt corporate and [many] corrupt government leaders but basically the USA can reinvent itself if it fails because there are a lot of honest and brave people that can rebuild and fight the corruption at the same time. Essentially if we crash economically we will shake off most of the government temporarily and rebuilding should happen faster than the economists will be predicting. I don't think our well armed citizenry is going to put up with warlords for very long if things break down that far.
Seems like a pretty elaborate ponzi scheme. It's kind of frightening... to me anyway, an economic layman. I worry that almighty America is a house of cards. It seems that more and more we rely very heavily on the economy to groW, grOW, gROW! It's time for fiscal responsibility in the gubberment. It's time for the people to take back America... 'For the People'... from Corporate America's historically unparalled greed and influential power. My $.002