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The Debt Ceiling Crisis Thread

Since business, which is really just the banks now, are doing fine there is no reason for them to engage in any activity just to feed the masses. They have to be cut out of the chain. We will have to establish an economy of producers and consumers under their vaunted level. After TARP we have done all we can do for the retirement funds, state treasuries, and foreign banks that would have failed with the major investment banks. Now we have to get some action back for American workers besides calling each other on the phone to sell something.

A stimulus that is all cash with tax incentives for “results” could be injected at the community bank level, or administered by states. In any case, it can’t be controlled by the banksters.

Such a plan would be entirely questionable if our infrastructure wasn’t so pi$$ poor. Our children will inherit debt no matter whether we spend it or they borrow it. The bridges, hiways, ports, grid, etc simply won’t serve them. It barely suffices now. We can borrow cheaper, build cheaper, and the activity would spur on the economy on Main St. Wall St would want in on the obvious demand that would be created, but they simply don’t have the mindset to initiate it.

» Posted By oldandgrumpy On July 23, 2011 @ 12:49 am

I believe that Obama would rather have attacked the mortgage mess directly but the entire scheme was so tied to 401k’s and state funds that there was little choice but to simply pay the banks their blackmail. One also has to consider that the melt down was global and would have taken down many entire countries if the banks failed all at once. He put Geithner and Summers in the drivers seat for a reason, and it wasn’t entirely that he is our Wall St President.

» Posted By oldandgrumpy On July 23, 2011 @ 12:31 am

I believe that almost everyone who voted for a bagger will do so again in 2012. Sadly, they are the rabid right that never misses an election since the Tundra Twit woke them from their political slumber. Our challenge isn’t in changing minds, it’s in convincing those who stayed home in the mid terms that they are relevant, in spite of Obama’s tendency to ignore them.

» Posted By oldandgrumpy On July 23, 2011 @ 12:22 am

This dangerous game of chicken has little to do with Boehner. He is just the reluctant messenger for the TEA party caucus trying to avoid a primary challenge. The game is between Obama and the Koch brothers at the moment. All others are just bit actors.

» Posted By oldandgrumpy On July 23, 2011 @ 12:13 am

President Obama and congressional Dems, with a few exceptions, have caved on a “perceived” position of weakness, when they should be selling their policy from a strength that the facts would support. America has been a nation in decline for the thirty plus years of RayGunomics. Wall St has done well, but has become the economy where it used to be the “indicator” of the economy. All else has tanked.

Our infrastructure is horribly inefficient and in disrepair. It is as much (perhaps more) a contributor to our worth as a nation than the bottom line of American corporations and investor earnings. We have neglected our house in our zeal for trinkets and toys. Coupled with the desperate need for employment, this need to repair and maintain our house could be our path out of this recession if it were only explained properly to America.

While many can relate to the “kitchen table” economics that would call for sacrifice and austerity, until the masters of the universe decide we have suffered enough and the stars align for them to create jobs, we could also relate to the need to maintain our first world status by updating our infrastructure. Faced with Americans with wages to spend and invest the “job creators” would leave their power grab on the back burner to take advantage of the relative cash glut that would result. Once ignited, the flames of prosperity are hard to extinguish.

The argument against this would be “spending our grand children’s money”. If we don’t take this opportunity to rebuild and repair they will have to. It won’t be a choice for them. We can do it cheaper now and a reinvigorated economy would be able to pay down the debt that would be incurred. If this were sold with a reasonable overhaul of other government spending America would choose it overwhelmingly. A broken down country with no jobs and no debt is not a grand gift.

» Posted By oldandgrumpy On July 22, 2011 @ 9:25 am

Is All That Anger Out There Making You Mad?

Anger is going to be the dominant theme of the next few decades in America. We are an empire in decline and there is no practical way to reverse that. We can be salved and stroked by those who might promise to soften our landing, but the direction we are heading is our destiny.

We have adjusted to an economy and lifestyle that was built upon Americans consuming 4 -5 times their share of our world’s resources. That was, and is, unsustainable. Had we gone into “protective” mode after the 60’s, instead of deluding ourselves into thinking that we could maintain our living standard while allowing the global capitalists to dilute it with unfair trade, we might have stretched out the time to our reckoning. Of course, we would have missed all those wild rides that we experienced from the resulting “bubble” economy that only burst completely three years ago.

The financial powers in America are just sweeping up the last tidbits of wealth remaining before moving on completely to greener pastures. America has an immense debt to the world without any mechanism to repay that debt. This will very soon be reflected in run a way inflation that will leave even millionaires in the dust as the dollar readjusts to the nation’s “real” worth. Our infrastructure is broken and in disrepair and most of us make our living by servicing each other in some fashion. This is our current reality and will only reverse itself when China and India eventually begin shopping for a source of cheap labor. And the wheel goes around.

» Posted By oldandgrumpy On July 9, 2011 @ 12:26 pm