US government shutdowns
<div class="IPBDescription">Probably not as dire as it sounds</div>But still pretty serious, that's a lot of lost jobs if I'm reading it correctly.
<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110408/ap_on_re_us/us_spending_showdown" target="_blank">http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110408/ap_on_...ending_showdown</a>
Anyone in the know that can say what exactly this all means?
<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110408/ap_on_re_us/us_spending_showdown" target="_blank">http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110408/ap_on_...ending_showdown</a>
Anyone in the know that can say what exactly this all means?
Comments
Somebody's pretty full of himself.
<img src="http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/4889/automationf.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
My thoughts exactly.
And laughing?
Well there's nothing much to see. It's a slow motion train wreck that has gone on for well over a decade now and it's going to continue for years before anything interesting happens.
You had the tech bubble because of rampant fraud; nobody went to jail, nothing was fixed. You had LTCM who were effectively running in front of steam roller and picking up pennies, until one day they ran out of luck and were crushed; they were of course bailed out. Greenspan lowered interests rates to paper over the recession from the tech bubble; Wallstreet got the message that heads we win, tails the public loses. In what should have been a serious recession in the early 2000's you had record car and home sales. As early as 2004 the FBI began warning of an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud then proceeded to do nothing for 6 years while one of the largest frauds in history were perpetrated. Then came the bail-outs, which kept the crooks in their respective instituions(paying them large retainers to stay) and legalized accounting fraud(suspension of mark-to-market so the crooks can claim dog-poo is worth 90 cents on the dollar). The current round of cheap money and deficit spending is papering over a depression, barely. There's no sign of any recovery but you could hirple along like this for years before you lose the ability to deficit spend; when that happens the $1.5 trillion/year, along with whatever keynesian multiplier it has, gets taken out of GDP and you are forced to recognize a depression. US total debt(private and public) has grown much faster than GDP ever since Reagan; this can't continue forever; the longer you wait, the larger the disparity becomes and when it eventually breaks, it will break spectacularly.
You had the tech bubble because of rampant fraud; nobody went to jail, nothing was fixed. You had LTCM who were effectively running in front of steam roller and picking up pennies, until one day they ran out of luck and were crushed; they were of course bailed out. Greenspan lowered interests rates to paper over the recession from the tech bubble; Wallstreet got the message that heads we win, tails the public loses. In what should have been a serious recession in the early 2000's you had record car and home sales. As early as 2004 the FBI began warning of an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud then proceeded to do nothing for 6 years while one of the largest frauds in history were perpetrated. Then came the bail-outs, which kept the crooks in their respective instituions(paying them large retainers to stay) and legalized accounting fraud(suspension of mark-to-market so the crooks can claim dog-poo is worth 90 cents on the dollar). The current round of cheap money and deficit spending is papering over a depression, barely. There's no sign of any recovery but you could hirple along like this for years before you lose the ability to deficit spend; when that happens the $1.5 trillion/year, along with whatever keynesian multiplier it has, gets taken out of GDP and you are forced to recognize a depression. US total debt(private and public) has grown much faster than GDP ever since Reagan; this can't continue forever; the longer you wait, the larger the disparity becomes and when it eventually breaks, it will break spectacularly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah, it's already well past the point of recovery...the US has been printing money (since 2009 I think) to pay down its debts, and the only reason it can do this is because the dollar is still the international currency for trade. When that changes it'll be all over (same sort of thing that happened in Greece and a few other places, but with nobody to bail us out) - hyperinflation, massive unemployment, etc. Could happen in as little as a year or two.
Part of the problem is how nearsighted our elected officials can be...rather than a little pain now, they'll always opt to "solve" the problem for the short term, because nobody wants to have these problems happen on their watch.