Letters to the Editor
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Too late!
It's far too late to avoid a severe recession because we are already in it.
Manufacturing down. Housing market collapsing. Hundreds of billions in worthless subprime holdings not yet taken off the books. Growing credit levels and defaults outside of mortgages. Unemployment up. Unprecedented national debt. Absurd levels of deficit spending by government, and continued printing of new dollars by the federal reserve to cover what foreign producers aren't willing to lend back to us to finance our charade. As a result, the dollar is in a precipitous decline, and has much farther still to fall. Expect a shift from the US dollar to the Euro as the global reserve currency, which will push even more dollars back at us, fueling massive inflation even further.
No "stimulus package" is going to get us out of this one. Expect continued market losses, tremendous declines in the dollar, gold over $1500, increases in long-term interest rates, and inflation levels that will exceed that seen in the 1970's. And expect this in 2008.
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Life in the fast lane
Eager for action and hot for the game
The coming attraction, the drop of a name
They knew all the right people, they took
all the right pills
They threw outrageous parties, they paid heavenly bills
There were lines on the mirror, lines on her face
She pretended not to notice, she was caught up
in the race
Out every evening, until it was light
He was too tired to make it, she was too tired
to fight about it
Life in the fast lane
Surely make you lose your mind
Life in the fast lane, everything all the time
Life in the fast lane, uh huh
Blowin' and burnin', blinded by thirst
They didn't see the stop sign,
took a turn for the worse
And here we are. The fascists in Washington have had a grand time Blowin' & Burnin', blinded by thirst (yeah, yeah, I know - this is literary license). And now come the heavenly bills - the debt (not the deficit). Could you get even a sub-prime mortgage if your credit card payments equaled the percentage of your income that the debt repayment represents of the federal income (as opposed to net worth (GDP) which is what is usually used)?
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AMT
How can the tax cuts have been so irresponsible when they largely didn't have any effect? The AMT ate up most of them anyway. The US budget deficit is moderate and in line with most other OECD countries as a percentage of GDP (much lower than its historic highs) which is pretty reasonable considering we're conducting 2 foreign wars. Besides, I think the idea of government spending as a "stimulus" to end a recession is a pretty out of date concept.
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Good Luck with That
"Wealth can be taxed, you know, even in the lean years."
That might have been true 20 or 30 years ago, but not today. Today the wealth just gets relocated to Dubai or Shanghai to avoid getting taxed. To paraphrase an old saying about the internet: Wealth treats taxation as a malfunction and routes around it.
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Context is everyting...
It never ceases to amaze me the facetiousness of the GOP apologist.
Regarding the comment that everythng is fine because our level of debt is comparable to other industrialized nations. Fine, but you need to provide the context: other industrialized nations operate in a socialist fashion, with the large state run progammens involving a lot of that debt. This is the debt of the nation is used to pay for services for the citizens.
Where as the debt in the US, a country far from socialist in regards of social services (ironically rather fond of funding military programmes, go figure), the debt adds literally no value to its citizens.
Also you have to provide the whole picture: rate of debt is only part of the story. You need to check payment rate too. I.e. if two friends get a $10K credit card bill, sure we could equate their situations. However, in order to asses the real state of affairs and you saw one friend making a $9K payment vs the other friend barelly scrapping enough to put forth a $5 payment. Then you would be hard pressed that the economic situation of both friends was comparable.
There is a reason why the dollar is sinking, and it is the massibe leve of debt put on it by this administration of paperback economist and philosophers.
It always amazes me that whenever the supply-siders and the Vienna Randyan schoolboys get their hands on managing anything they turn it into shit. And they get yet another go at it. I once read that the definition of insanity is to do the samething over and over again expecting a different outcome. And as such, both the Republicans and Libertarians who have been at the helm of almost every recession in this past century are now firmly planted in the loony bin of history.
The "everything is fine, noting to see" sounds oddly reminiscent of Hoover. Unfortunatedly I fail to see another FDR in our near future willing to tackle the cluster f*ck we are going to be left with by the Bush junta.
Who would have thought that a lifelong failure would have made such a crappy president, eh?
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Economic Issues
I find it funny that so many of you think that the rich should take up the slack that is left by the lower economic level. So many that feel that they are entitled to free insurance, free hand outs, free this and free that. Then when great deals come along, such as ARM's, low rate mortgages, everyone in the lower middle income go head first and five into super debt. But this is all of the President's fault, right? Get over the Left vs Right deal and try to look at the faults of both sides instead of thinking this one particular administration is the doom of the country.
All of the conspiracy theories of offshore accounts and such. How about some actual proof? How come it's never in the main stream media? Instead, you have to post links to bias political sites and conspiracy sites. Some of you must be Oliver Stone fans...