US defaulting ...

Didn't some right wing loony finance spokesman predict this a few months ago?

Didn't some sage treasurer regard this prediction as an infra-nasal turd, and generally decry it as irresponsible if not insane piffle?

lardbucket wrote:Didn't some right wing loony finance spokesman predict this a few months ago?

Didn't some sage treasurer regard this prediction as an infra-nasal turd, and generally decry it as irresponsible if not insane piffle?

Well, to be fair, we all said this about Bucky's posts.

And there really were black helicopters hovering over Laden's compound.

Bucky must be busy stabilising his weight after a period of overnight 25 kg fluctuations. He hasn't even been chewing his own fat recently.

To be fair, he could have been Bin Laden, in which case it would be a tad difficult for him to chew his own fat.

Posturing pollies from both sides of US Politics threatening to bring the world into economic meltdown over who has the bigger c0ck. Charming.

Useless quants the lot of them. Esp the Republicans.

Interesting factoid is that the current Administration has added more to the US debt than every other US Administration in history from George Washington to GWB Jnr. added together. The result of all this expenditure - the US unemployment rate currently stands at 9.2% with unemployment being above 6% for the longest period in 2 decades:

US Unemployment Rate

Amongst those who were the most enthusiastic in supporting him in 2008 - African-Americans and those aged 18-25 the unemployment rate is probably nearer 25%. Whilst the billions of cash spent on the 'shovel-ready' schemes in his stimulus programme proved, by his own admission, not to be quite as shovel-ready as he thought the banks, hedge funds and giant corporations like General Motors were all swiftly rescued and returned to business as usual.

The hedge-funds in particular have not been reticent in showing their appreciation:

Wall St boosts Obama campaign cash haul

In public he excoriates "fat cats" but in private he holds $3000-plate dinners whilst he pleads for their financial support. He is alone in believing that raising taxes in the middle of a recession is a good way of raising revenue. Even the Senate Democrats, led by Harry Reid, hardly Obama's sternest critic, in the plan they have published for dealing with the debt crisis have abandoned that particular piece of chop-logic.

Whilst there is a good case to be made out for abolishing tax loopholes and special entitlements, especially for the very wealthy, and substituting a broader, simplified tax system this should be done at a lower, not a higher, rate enabling the wealthy to invest more of their income into creating jobs as well as increasing tax revenues. When Nigel Lawson abolished allowances for higher-earners as well as reducing the top tax rate to 40% tax in the UK in 1985 revenues from the top 10% of earners actually doubled.

The tax-break on Lear jets which Obama finds so offensive (despite getting free use of one during his 2008 campaign) was actually put in place not to benefit the super-rich but workers in the aircraft industry whose jobs were under threat from foreign competition.

If Obama is so concerned at tax avoidance he would do well to ask his Chief Adviser on Jobs and Competitiveness, the CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt, whom he appointed in April last year (yet whose advice has still to bear fruit), whose annual salary is $15.1 million dollars (a 50% increase on the year before), why his company did not pay any Federal taxes despite reporting a $5.1 billion dollar profit in the US alone:

Jeffrey Immelt, the 'Jobs Czar From Hell'

Immelt, of course, is one of Obama's most prominent business supporters as well as his company owning NBC, one of the four national television networks as well as its cable-news channel, MSNBC, both of which, despite progressively falling ratings, endeavour to portray Obama in as sympathetic light as possible (the two factors may well be related).

He might also ask his current Treasury Secretary why he didn't make any Social Security or Medicare payments in the 3 years he was employed by the International Monetary Fund (based in Washington D.C.), the organisation which gave us French Presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who, as we have all recently learnt, likes to have consensual sex with hotel maids after breakfast. Those New York breakfast must be really something!

The point Obama struggles to understand, or more likely wilfully chooses to ignore, is not that the US' credit rating will be downgraded if the debt ceiling fails to be raised (a ceiling put in place by Obama himself) but even if it is raised and a credible plan is not put in place to prevent it from having to be constantly raised in the future. He prefers to demagogue instead, about "fat cats" and "Lear jets" which are irrelevant to the subject at hand.

Meanwhile he muses about how much better things would be if it weren't for irritating complications such as the US Constitution and the doctrine of the separation of powers and he could just be left alone to do things as he wished, just like, say, Gaddafi In Libya or Assad in Syria. Well, things don't appear to have worked out too well in those instances.

Far from the overblown and fatuous comparisons with Lincoln and JFK he has become President Rodney Dangerfield, the lugubrious US comic who mourned that

I don't get no respect

In democracies, as opposed to dictatorships, leaders have to earn respect by competence in governance and winning the trust of the voters. Obama has achieved neither.

The truth is that Obama, with minimal experience of government was swept into office on a wave of bloated expectations and impossible promises and the American people as well as the rest of the world are now having to count the cost. I am reminded of Neil Kinnock's peroration in a famous party conference speech attacking the Militant-run Liverpool City Council in 1985:

'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in...grotesque chaos

If, as seems likely, the present crisis does end, sooner or later, in "grotesque chaos" I believe the American people, and rational observers generally, have the intelligence to place the blame where it firmly belongs and it won't be with Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.

Allan D wrote:Interesting factoid is that the current Administration has added more to the US debt than every other US Administration in history from George Washington to GWB Jnr. added together.

interesting. any figures or links for this?

Maybe a bit of an exaggeration but not much of one. This time last year it appears, after only 19 months in office, he had overhauled every previous President from Washington to Reagan combined so he must be close to adding the two Bushes and Clinton in the intervening period by now:

Obama Added More to National Debt in First 19 Months Than All Presidents from Washington Through Reagan Combined, Says Gov’t Data

The idea of an Obama Administration balancing the federal budget is about as credible as a junkie giving up drugs.

The One wrote:

Allan D wrote:Interesting factoid is that the current Administration has added more to the US debt than every other US Administration in history from George Washington to GWB Jnr. added together.

interesting. any figures or links for this?

Here's some stats, from wikipedia(!)

US National Debt by Presidential Terms

President	Years	Increase in debt/GDP (%)
Harry Truman	1949-1953	-21.7%
Dwight Eisenhower	1953-1957	-11.0%
Dwight Eisenhower	1957-1961	-5.2%
John F Kennedy + LBJ	1961-1965	-8.3%
Lyndon Johnson	1965-1969	-8.3%
Richard Nixon	1969-1973	-3.0%
Nixon + Gerald Ford	1973-1977	+0.2%
Jimmy Carter	1977-1981	-3.3%
Ronald Reagan	1981-1985	+11.3%
Ronald Reagan	1985-1989	+9.3%
George Bush	1989-1993	+13.0%
Bill Clinton	1993-1997	-0.7%
Bill Clinton	1997-2001	-9.0%
George W Bush	2001-2005	+7.1%
George W Bush	2005-2009	+20.7%
Barack Obama	2009-	+9.0%

So by "interesting factoid" Allan meant "made up dribble"?

Clinton reduced the debt, Bush 2 massively increased it.

This documentary explains how much up the sh!tter the US is, China owns then.

http://www.iousathemovie.com/

I really, really think you should all watch this. It's something I feel very strongly about.

So eighties, so lovely, Danny. Thank you for keeping things real x

eowyn wrote:So eighties, so lovely, Danny. Thank you for keeping things real x

Thanks Ange, I thought we could all do with some perspective. Maybe a little synchronicity. We can't just post gushing adulations slash right-wing propagandist Yankophile posts and return with Wikis as counterpoints and other semi-factual material.

Too right, mullets and shoulder pads are made fun of of but they never caused global implosion, only love in the first degree.

Aye Ange! BRING BACK REAGAN!!!!

And maybe Phil Collins.

Guilty, Reagan and Maggie love

I love Bananaramaamamanra, I had dungarees and everything...

Hate Phil Collins he was 70's pretending to be 80's. King, Mother's Pride, there's true 80's.

#They wouldn't go for my stor-eh, they wouldn't hear my wee...

They were on my smash list.

eowyn wrote:I love Bananaramaamamanra, I had dungarees and everything...

Hate Phil Collins he was 70's pretending to be 80's. King, Mother's Pride, there's true 80's.

Well, obvo Ange. Don't bring back Reagan either. He was a f*ckwad. And he's popped his clogs. Since when did all this become real?

Real!? It was the mention of PC sent me off on one, will try and remain mentally unbalanced from now on

Reagan would have loved this

You'd sort of fit in well with a lot of this thread! Kerching!