It always amazes me that no one ever wants to discuss what is the source of the ~$15T in debt when confronted with the fact that Soc Sec and medicare have run a surplus and are not responsible for a penny of the existing debt.
It's called war. And it's not just the war on Iraq that I'm talking about... Global military empires are high maintenance not to mention all the domestic wars going on against whatever can concievably be fought (drugs, terror, clowns).
The very claim that the United States will "go into default" if the debt ceiling isn't raised proves that the claimant believes we have reached the stage of pure Ponzi finance -- we can only afford to pay the interest and principal on maturing debt by getting even deeper into debt. If that is the case then the truly insane people are the ones who won't cut the spending. And as pitiful as the Republicans are on this issue, the Democrats are worse.
That's a fair way to look at it. But regardless of how we got here, here we are, the surplus is gone and spent. It is going to take large cuts in SS and Medicare along with huge cuts in defense to get out of this mess. Ultimately, the voters chose a war in Afghanistan and two wars in Iraq over continuation of SS benefits. Personally, I think that's a very poor tradeoff, but the thing with democracies is that the voters are always "right".
What troubles Wall St is not the idea of a default, but the idea that it might actually lead to constraints on spending.
The following link states that medicare had a surplus of ~$344B as of last year. Even if the article got it backwards and medicare had a debt of ~344B that debt is still only ~2% of the total debt. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...pawlenty-says-half-medicare-deficit-spending/ The following link states that Soc Sec had a surplus of ~$2.5T as of last year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt So, even with some slop, as of last year Soc Sec. and medicare combined to have a surplus of ~$2T. The point I'm trying to make is if the three real drivers of the existing debt aren't fixed, any gains from redoing soc. sec. and medicare will be shortlived as the problems that actually created the $15T that we owe are ignored.
here we go again: Fed: U.S. default a huge risk; Fitch may slash rating http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110608/bs_nm/us_usa_ratings_fitch like i said many times-so f** be it! default,rating cut...whatever..just stop f** scaring me..it's ain't working on me,i'm ready for this shit since 2007..but if there is a default or cut i hope the public and morons in DC might finally do something about it. and i might finally get the RIGHT rates at the banks on my money..not pathetic 0.05%,called high fu**g interest account
Go for it. DEFAULT! You need to tear down the machine before you can rebuild it. "The Dallas region was the only one to report accelerating growth, mostly because of higher oil prices that benefited the energy industry." I say there are pockets of growth in this country that will be hurt by the insane scum bag Parasites who want to raise the Debt Limit. FUCKING DEFAULT! Or......CUT SOME REAL FUCKING COST. Time to grow up Amerika.