Federal Deficit

How about all 30 items on this list!...x 5 stars each! That adds up to 150 total stars! Talk about stress out! Actually, I shared a similar attitude with Ralph regarding what other people were most concerned about in their lives. On 9/12/01, I all but gave up my favorite sports. I focused obsessively on current events, social issues, and politics. So, fast-forward ten years... what did all that obsession accomplish?... DICK!... I stressed too much over all the bullshit...bullshit I have no control over. I felt it taking years off my life, and it contributed to a failed marriage. I still believe people should pay attention to events and issues that are important, ((BUT))... take time away, go watch a ball game, or do whatever interests you. Contrary to what dumb fucks here say...you can do both. (YOU MUST DO BOTH) Because if you don't... you might end up a miserable fuck, like Ralphthewonderlama. Yeah...we might be totally screwed... Actually...that is my plan for tonight! Titties ... Read more

I hope all of you are brushing up on your Chinese... For eight years while Clinton was in office the Republicans bitched about spending. Then they took power and made Clinton look like a miser. Now we have Obama, who makes Bush look like a fiscal conservative. Let me be Pres. next. I'll go out with Angelina one night, Jessica the next, rest on night 3, check out Megan Fox the next, and drive around in an Aston Martin and...well, you get the point.

Overspending and deficit are a global problem...not just the US. Anyway, things tend to go in waves, but this one seems to be hanging around.

UPDATE: Some think the debt is much worse than Washington is letting on: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/the-scary-actual-us-government-debt/article1773879/ We are now over thirteen TRILLION dollars in debt. Doesn't sound like much to you? Look at it this way: If you stacked $100 bills in a single pile, a million dollars would be 43 inches tall. A billion dollars would be 3583 feet tall--three fifths of a mile. A Trillion dollars? You would have to stack $100 dollar bills over 678 MILES high to have a trillion dollars. Now, multiply that by thirteen. Our economy is on the skids. We have shipped off our manufacturing base, so we really no longer make anything of value. How are we going to get out of this one? Answer: we're not.

It is not necessarily bad to run deficits, especially during economic recessions. Sometimes public investment in key areas is necessary to get the economy growing, but only after a short period. The idea is to make more credit available to the public to spur new growth in the markets. Today, there's plenty of credit available due to the Federal Reserve's injections of new liquidity to prevent deflation, but the problem is that there is no capacity to take it down and do something productive with it. So our debt ratio's are being driven through the roof with nothing to show for it, and plenty of long term damage to our fiscal condition. The type of systemic and deep deficits that we're seeing today is neither sustainable nor is it solving the underlying imbalances existing within our economy. Credit aggregates have grown beyond reasonable expectations, especially since the beginning of the last decade and going through today. The idea is to cover up a bad debt situation with mor... Read more

Like most of the other serious items on this list this is just a symptom of the natural process of entropy.

NO MONEY= MANY PROBLEMS.

Thanks to rampant pillaging by Dubbaya & his zany pals, Obama and the next 20 Presidents (if we last that long) will have an ASTRONOMICAL deficit to tackle.(more like be tackled by) Gee,that war that was gonna last a few weeks or months at most has NOT gone well,has it ?

Although the national debt is a problem, it is not likely to destroy America. I lived through same problem in the 80s when "Ronny Ray Guns" was president and instituted his faulted and failed trickle down economics. Regan cut taxes for those in the upper tax brackets, instigated the largest peacetime expansion of the US military (by borrowing billions) and creating huge deficits, which resulted in the Savings and Loan Crisis. Because of his actions, Regan was responsible for increasing the national debt from $700 billion to $3 trillion while almost 11% of the population remained unemployed. To remedy the problem we have now, the US must return the millions of people that have lost their jobs back to work, regulate banking and finance, and assure that all Americans and businesses carry the fair share of paying the debt down to prevent it from getting worse. “I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy: it keeps interest rates lower than they o... Read more

It's not just that there is a fairly high debt to GDP ratio; we have had higher (WW2, for example). But combine the current debt levels with virtually no apparent drivers for economic growth and a weak economy leading to little or no (and maybe even negative) inflation, and it doesn't look like we can inflate or grow the debt problem away. And the level of debt will require higher and higher taxes in the future, sapping some potential economic growth as well. Having said that, I didn't issue five stars because I think a worst case *can* be avoided if we want to avoid it badly enough. Tough choices have to be made, and sooner rather than later, if the US isn't going to be another Greece waiting to happen. People will have to pay more for a government that provides less. That's no fun, but perhaps better than hyperinflation or a situation that is likely to lead to extreme social disorder.