Hat tip to Jack M for the email.
Lesson # 1:
* U.S. Tax revenue: $ 2,170,000,000,000
* Fed budget: $ 3,820,000,000,000
* New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
* National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
* Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000
Let’s now remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:
* Annual family income: $21,700.00
* Money the family spent: $38,200.00
* New debt to the credit card: $16,500.00
* Credit card Balance: $142,710.00
* Total budget cuts so far: $385.00
Lesson # 2:
Here’s another way to look at the Debt Ceiling:
Let’s say, You come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighborhood…. and your home has sewage all the way up to your ceilings.
What do you think you should do ……
a): Raise the ceilings, or..
b) Remove the crap?
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
c) Call your local CONgresscritter for an immediate Crap Bailout.
d) Sue the living crap, heh heh, out of the city’s sewer department.
e) Apply for a new mortgage under the Obama mortgage modification program to buy a new house.
f) Apply for SSI disability for the stress and permanent damage to your olfactory nerves.
THAT is how we solve problems in Obama’s 2013 Amerika.
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14th January 2013 at 9:21 am
Administrator says:
The Market Ticker ® Commentary on The Capital Markets Posted 2013-01-14 08:44
by Karl Denninger
Death By Debt: The US Options
I hope you’re all ready….
The showdown over the nation’s debt ceiling could force the government to consider drastic steps to manage its limited cash, including delaying trillions of dollars of payments to employees, Social Security recipients, contractors and others.
The Obama administration has said it has no backup plan to pay the government’s bills if Congress refuses to raise the $16.4 trillion federal borrowing limit. The White House said Saturday in a statement that “there are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills or it can fail to act and put the nation into default.”
Yeah yeah.
Congress and Obama share equal blame here. Government is spending about 40% more than it takes in via taxes, and this is utterly irresponsible and unsustainable. Alleged “GDP” must be adjusted to subtract back out deficit spending, and when you do that you find that we’ve been in a strong recession or economic depression for the last four years — and still are!
The fact of the matter is that this is all coming from one place — medical spending — when one looks at the facts and trends. And this is not a new phenomena either; I was noting and writing on 10+% annual increases in medical costs in the private sector in the 1990s, and here we are a decade later while Congress has diddled itself and so have two successive administrations.
We simply must put a stop to this — right now. Congress and The White House have only one option that can actually work:
Break the medical monopolies. All of them. Remove all special protections and make medical services and commodities subject to Robinson-Patman, along with the rest of anti-trust law. Put a stop to cost-shifting in all of its forms and end the ability of these firms to abuse the law to enforce pricing disparities of 1000% across national boundaries. This will ultimately drop the cost of care by as much as 80%, and while there will be therapies, drugs and devices that will disappear as their cost of provision will exceed what people can pay, virtually everyone will be able to pay cash for the services and goods they actually need (as opposed to want.)
No other move will work because nothing else addresses the problem at its root. But neither Congress or the White House will even tell the truth on this matter, say much less do anything about the problem. Instead we get BS and “unicorn games” from both the left and right, and as a consequence you need this:
And a strong stomach for what is to come.
Everyone seems to think that the GOP will cave when push comes to shove. This time I’m not so sure. There is, however, plenty of reason to believe that a cave-in is the most-likely outcome, especially with the spineless and puerile idiots in the House such as Cathy McMorris-Rogers who knows damn well what’s driving this and refuses to stand up and speak the truth, along with others like Paul Ryan (ditto) who has put forward multiple knowing lies in the form of alleged “budget proposals” that have no chance of actually leading to balance in federal spending.
May you live in interesting times.
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14th January 2013 at 11:48 am
Kill Bill says:
This exactly marks the difference between Colo Hamilton’s views & mine, that I would wish the debt paid to morrow; he wishes it never to be paid, but always to be a thing where with to corrupt & manage the legislature. -Thomas Jefferson
The federalistas [Hamiltonians] might cut some programs but the debt will continue.
Book It.
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14th January 2013 at 11:55 am
JIMSKI says:
Everyone seems to think that the GOP will cave when push comes to shove. This time I’m not so sure.
Base on what?
Thought so.
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14th January 2013 at 12:49 pm
DaveL says:
If raising the debt ceiling has nothing to do with future spending, and Congress hasn’t passd a budget in 4 years, the how the fuck did they get to spend more than the previous debt ceiling allowed?
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14th January 2013 at 1:15 pm
AWD says:
“We Are Not A Deadbeat Nation” – Full Obama Transcript
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-14/we-are-not-deadbeat-nation-full-obama-transcript
A deadbeat borrows from others to pay his bills. We’re way beyond a deadbeat nation, way beyond being bankrupt. We owe $16.4 trillion, and Obama can’t raise the debt ceiling high enough, can’t pass new taxes fast enough.
I don’t know how they get away with it. As long as people get their free shit, they just don’t care.
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14th January 2013 at 1:57 pm
AWD says:
Report: House GOP ‘Seriously Entertaining’ Debt Default Idea
Now that the magic coin is no longer on the table, Politico is kicking off the next stage of the debt ceiling fight with a report that House Republicans are “seriously entertaining dramatic steps,” including letting the government default or shutting it down altogether. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers even went on the record with the shutdown threat, saying “I think it is possible that we would shut down the government to make sure President Obama understands that we’re serious.” Republicans will continue to hold both options over the head of the country—particularly the shutdown option—unless they can get the president to commit to serious spending cuts in this year’s budget.
One of the underlying premises of the platinum coin kerfuffle was that it may be a silly idea, but that’s just how you behave when negotiating with crazy people. So the purpose of this Politico story seems to be a reminder from the House Republicans that they are indeed, still crazy. The message is that the White House (or Ben Bernanke, at least) may have taken its most extreme options off the table, but the GOP hasn’t, so don’t get too comfortable.
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14th January 2013 at 2:08 pm
Maddie's Mom says:
lol
Obama will get his debt limit hike in return for oh, say… withdrawing that executive action on gun control bs.
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14th January 2013 at 2:32 pm