I hear ya Gip, nor am I and our views are way more aligned than apart. The biggest travesty in this whole thing is how badly have we f'd things up over the course of a generation that we have created a process that has stricken the greatest nation on the planet with two old men as the likely finalists for the job of most powerful man on the planet and leader of the free world that the majority of both sides don't want either and both parties electoral chances are demonstrably worse off as a result. Can't make this stuff up....
4 more years with the Trumper...we'll be back on track. Then I can get my kid to move outa the house. DRILL BABY DRILL!
Stupid question, I know. But in my lifetime I can remember a number of times where we had to "raise" the debt ceiling or else and it always get raised. So why do we have one in the first place? Nobody seems to pay attention to it, didn't Newt get into it with Clinton and they actually shut down the govt for a day or two before they reached a deal? What were the "dire" consequences back then?
The big problem now is the fact that China and their buddies are ready to swoop in and replace the dollar as the world reserve currency should we default. We can argue if that will or will not happen, but it's an awful big risk to take considering the consequences if they are successful.
Why do we have one? Good question....I've gone both ways but at the end of the day, I'm currently in the camp of it being beneficial. Why? Simply because it promotes the very kind of debate that we are presently undergoing and as such "should", in theory, help to promote some sense of fiscal discipline or at least a public airing of the issues we presently face. IMHO, the current state of our federal finances and fiscal operations is unsustainable, FUBAR comes to mind. Both parties have contributed and neither party seems equipped to address or at minimum the least bit interested in real solutions. Politics and finance do not make good bedfellows. The numbers are such that, imo, there can be no lasting solution without some combination of tax increases, spending cuts including defense and restructuring entitlements....
Pretty big risk indeed...my best take is akin to global economic meltdown. Fast and furious.....duration uncertain, but not something I want to consider. Ugly.....
Agreed. Problem with tax increases is that the discussion is only a political football. Dems demagogue the big business and want "the rich to pay their fair share of taxes." Problem is that taxing the heck out of business increases costs to eveybody (hello lower and middle class) and walloping the "rich", however you define the term, won't generate squat, even if they can't come up with loopholes. The European countries that are high tax/high social spending function by taxing the crap out of the middle class.
Perhaps part of the problem is the selective tax breaks given to billion dollar "green companies." "WASHINGTON, DC – Billion-dollar corporations and big banks will be the primary beneficiary of corporate tax breaks stuffed inside the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. These tax breaks are a massive transfer of wealth from working-class families to multi-billion dollar companies—they also expand China’s dominance over America’s energy and critical mineral supply chains." BREAKING ANALYSIS: JCT Confirms Green New Deal Tax Breaks Flowing to Big Banks and Other Billion-Dollar Corporations - House Committee on Ways and Means
To get f'd up as much as our federal finances are takes a multi-faceted, multi-lateral failure. I have come to the conclusion that to suggest that $trillion$ structural deficits are the fault of the other guy, as I have often done in the past, is a cop out and will solve nothing. They are the result of years of political and fiscal stupidity and lack of discipline on both sides. The great spender Obama, during his 8 year administration was responsible for increasing the government debt as much as ALL Presidents before him - from Washington to Bush....COMBINED. The next guy outdid even that incredible achievement and oversaw larger deficits and incurred even more federal debt than did his fiscally inept predecessor. Neither party has a leg to stand on, there is zero accountability in the federal bureaucracy and today, as we speak, the cost of interest expense to carry our federal debt is in excess of our national defense budget by almost $100 billion, has doubled in the last 3 years and is projected to grow at 2x the amount of our national defense expenditures for the next 5 years. Not raising taxes, not addressing entitlements and not capping discretionary spending, including defense, is not an option....we just don't have anybody with the political chops, sack or integrity to step up to the plate, admit it, put forth a compelling vision, unite our people and lead. We squabble like children over the most recent inane legislative proposal from the other side and the Chinese just grin knowing they're playing the 100 year game and we're only interested in the next, ever incessant election cycle......
I'm sure it's just me but I think that there's a difference between spending billions to develop and purchase vaccines during a pandemic, and propping up small businesses ravaged by government lockdowns and spending trillions on green boondoggles. I also think that there's a difference between 2% inflation and 8%, but again, that's just me.
The pandemic was the catalyst to what we are seeing now. You simply cannot shut down your economy while simultaneously writing billions and trillions of dollars is baseless checks which, in effect, pay people not to produce. Many businesses never recovered and now people are demanding work at home and flex scheduling and all the other woke ********. Just send me a check and leave me alone. And we have jumped headfirst into an unproven green energy that we are unprepared for, hamstringing our own energy industry in the process, while China controls 70% of the resources needed to support such an initiative. We have let political ideology guide us and we are paying the price and that same political ideology is behind our open border mess.
M2 | FRED | St. Louis Fed View attachment 446 Gip, you're confusing me with someone supportive of the Biden admin fiscal agenda. Not a fan and in fact, I've been very critical. I never referenced the current admin, but did note the poor fiscal discipline of the two prior and the stupidity of each side blaming the other. But, that said, and maybe it's just me, but I do prefer facts over political talking points crafted from the DNC/RNC or xNC which is why I stay as far away from the partisan echo chambers on either side because they have a tendency to make one look silly if one is not careful to validate their most recent hackneyed pablum. Had one been interested in facts in the case of Trump's fiscal record one would find that in the 3 years prior to the world's first Covid 19 infection, he had already amassed deficits totaling in excess of $2.4 Trillion, more than doubled the deficits he inherited from Obama, that noted practitioner of fiscal frugality, and set the US record for non-Obama, non-great financial crisis deficits 3 years in a row more than doubling W's worst year and just for emphasis, increased them at a rate of over $100 Billion a year for each and every year of his presidency. The notion that either side has any credibility to take the high ground for fiscal stewardship is laughable at best. Indeed both sides will retreat back to their corners in the fringes and answer the bell by shooting their country in the foot while simultaneously cutting off our nose. Neither is credible Happy to have the inflation discussion as well.....Biden policies clearly a contributing factor, but one of many, including the massive monetary stimulus necessitated by the pandemic, resulting demand and supply shocks, the Russian invasion and disruption to the worlds energy markets. At it's core, inflation is a monetary phenom driven by too much money chasing too few goods. See the attachment above, the greatest expansion of the supply of money in the recorded history of the world happened in 2020 as Trump's fiscal response and the world's central bankers flooded the globe with liquidity in the face of a pandemic-induced demand collapse. As global demand returned in the face of a still dysfunctional global supply chain, inflation was inevitable. Even God almighty, hell perhaps even the MAGA man the great insurrectionist himself could not have prevented the money bubbles upward pressure on prices
Perhaps this will explain my position a little better....if I was giving grades, I'd give the lefties an F-, an F both in intent, design and execution. The righties I give a D+, B- for intent, C- for design and F for execution and a note to both that only an imbecile can suggest that it's in our national interest to default on the debt. Hard to believe that we had a balanced budget a short 20 years ago.....each side has had 2 turns at the plate since and at present we can't find our way to manage our fiscal affairs to within a $1.5 Trillion deficit as far as the eye can see......
Well, we fight wars all around the world that have no direct cause or pending threat to enter. We drag them out for 5, 10 even 20 years with no discernible outcome. How much money have we spent since WWII, the last war we won outright, on wars where we left the battlefield in worse shape than we found it ? How much money have we spent since 1964 on the War on Poverty? I see more poverty now than I ever saw as a kid in the 60s. How much money have we spent on the War on Drugs? Drug use and the resultant death and destruction have reached cataclysmic levels. Now we are fighting a War on Climate Change. No one can tell you exactly what it is and some had us extinct in 2011 ( Gore ) and others today predicted we would be goners in ten years ( Jane Fonda ). We are throwing trillions at this war and we don't even agree on who the enemy is. Yes, we have had a series of Presidents who would be hard pressed to find meaningful work in the private sector. But for one reason or another Congress seems to get a pass on this financial carnage. This collection of financial imbeciles are the ones authorizing the spending. When you voted for your Congressperson, did you bargain for this outcome?
Pence and Christie jumping into the fray. Good, bad or indifferent? What say you? Christie will surely make for lively TV debates. Interested to see how Pence deals with his former ticket mate Pence, Christie prepare to face off against Trump in 2024 White House race
Pence I believe is a good man but lacks the charisma to attract the votes he needs. He served with complete distinction under Trump which I wouldn't have believed was humanly possible. Christie is all about Christie; not well liked in his home state. Spent his second term as Governor living like an Arab potentate. He was at all the Cowboy home games in Dallas with two NJSP troopers in tow as bodyguards. Went to his kids sporting events by NJSP helicopter. Closed down an entire beachfront state park over July 4 weekend so he could have the beach for he and his family alone. His ego is bigger than his waistband and he loved to live large on the taxpayer dime.