It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Like I Need to Puke)
Mark Steyn needs no introduction, so just dig right in:
But these comparisons tend to understate the insolvency of America, failing as they do to take into account state and municipal debts and public pension liabilities. When Morgan Stanley ran those numbers in 2009, the debt-to-revenue ratio in Greece was 312 percent; in the United States it was 358 percent. If Greece has been knocking back the ouzo, we’re facedown in the vat. Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute calculates that, if you take into account unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare versus their European equivalents, Greece owes 875 percent of GDP; the United States owes 911 percent – or getting on for twice as much as the second-most insolvent Continental: France at 549 percent.
And if you’re thinking, wow, all these percentages are making my head hurt, forget ‘em: When you’re spending on the scale Washington does, what matters is the hard dollar numbers. Greece’s total debt is a few rinky-dink billions, a rounding error in the average Obama budget. Only America is spending trillions. The 2011 budget deficit, for example, is about the size of the entire Russian economy. By 2010, the Obama administration was issuing about a hundred billion dollars of Treasury bonds every month – or, to put it another way, Washington is dependent on the bond markets being willing to absorb an increase of U.S. debt equivalent to the GDP of Canada or India – every year. And those numbers don’t take into account the huge levels of personal debt run up by Americans. College debt alone is over a trillion dollars, or the equivalent of the entire South Korean economy – tied up just in one small boutique niche market of debt which barely exists in most other developed nations.
Right now I absolutely dread being on the same page as Steyn, because that decreases the odds that I’m wrong.
And on a lighter note, the new age Mayans are descending upon the Pyrenees to ascend upon the destruction of mankind in 2012.
What was it my Dad told me? Oh, yeah. When you owe a man $100 dollars and can’t pay, you have a problem. When you owe the world 900 TRILLION and can’t pay they have a problem.
These morons have let the parasites eat their picnic lunch and there will be nothing for it. Well, let me rephrase that. There will be a war with death and destruction. There will be a loss of virtue and innocence on the part of American youth who are the product of generational theft. There will be pestilence and starvation on a global scale that is unfathomable to the individual.
But in the end/beginning there was light and until the parasites can figure out and, AND implement the sun killer machine. Life will go on. That doesn’t mean you can drop your paddle into the river and just drift (well you could) with the flow and such.
Be prepared. Have a plan. Work the plan.
“Washington is dependent on the bond markets being willing to absorb an increase of U.S. debt equivalent to the GDP of Canada or India – every year.”
And as we have already seen, the Federal Reserve is ready with an open checkbook if there are no other takers. All the debt and obligations can be taken care of tomorrow. Of course the dollars already out there will be worthless but that is the price of stability…
Yeah, Stephen, me too.
It’s like some mass hypnosis has decended upon us from every angle — our economy only being the worst of it. (It’s really hard, though, for the voting public to understand this stuff — but the gross stupidity and irresponsibility of our leaders … it’s … (there are no words for it.)
Can’t help but think about (have to distract myself somehow) the “Climate” environmentalists … what will they do once their longed for de-industrialization happens — even without their cap & trade? What will be their next project to “save” the world from itself?
Depopulation?
Yes, probably the next logical step. There are going to be an awful lot of old people — Japan will have 60% retired, China, Europe, Russia, here, etc., etc.
Those old people, they’re Deniers aren’t they — they’d probably Deny that the young ones have a right to knock them off — no? And Nazi’s too — just “stealing” all that medicine, and claiming the right to life like that — and oppressing the young who only want to kill them for their own good.
Judging by what substitutes for logic and ethics these days, it isn’t so far fetched.
Soilent Green anyone?
Great timing Stephen. Thanks to you and Mark Steyn for ruining my weekend, again!
The most interesting part of this mess is that much money doesn’t even really exist, and hasn’t ever really existed. What that means when the man comes to collect the bill, I can’t even get my head around; I’m honestly not sure anyone can. I can think of something like a mass, global decoupling of currency from production (people are, after all, still working… mostly).
Banks will collapse. The entire banking system will collapse. Governments might collapse, but I’m not sure nation-states will. The inertia of seemingly arbitrary borders, in North Africa for example, astounds me.
I have a theory that the more people there are who have a stake in the charade continuing, the longer it will continue, even when it’s backed up by unicorns and rainbows like most currency and debt is. When there are more people who feel they’ll be better off with a “zombie apocalypse” scenario, however, things will look like Syria rather quickly.
Why does Math always discriminate against Democrats?
It’s capitalism oppressing the masses again
If you deposited $100 in your retirement account in 1975, today you would have $377, a 278% increase.
If you bought my house in 1975, your monthly mortgage payment would have been $342, today $2,172, a 535% increase.
You lost almost half your value. That’s why 401Ks don’t let you have your money. The government wants to steal it, and so you don’t notice it, it must take a long time.
Because that’s what we’ve been doing. That’s why every government program must have cost of living increases. It is driving inflation, always up, never down. So the govenment can pay you back in cheaper dollars.
Why do you think they’re empowering all the thugs right now? What’s going to happen to all the leeches; the overpaid, underworked academics and schoolteachers, the unions, the government workers when there is no more gravy train? I’ll survive just fine without it, but what can they do besides steal
from us? They are exempt from this societal theft, because we pay for their retirement, not them. If government invests badly, no matter. We have to pay for theirs. Just ask that idiot judge in Florida. Why would a judge side with us? He’s a government employee, too.
Flooding cash into the economy always resuts in hyperinflation. Intentionally driving prices upwards while just plain refusing to count the worst inflationary items, is also good for this. That’s what they’re doing, because they know that otherwise, the music is about to stop, and they don’t want to be
caught holding the bag.
So, they’re just going to steal it from you. With their thug enforcers, if necessary. With Bernanke and Geithner, if not. Taking the fruits of another’s labor against their will is slavery. Why do Dems always get back to that?
Don’t say you weren’t warned. Keep in mind: this whole disaster isn’t a bug, it’s a feature! They’ve been stealing from you since the income tax wasn’t ratified.
Government employees, like that judge, don’t pay taxes either.
They only file, and recycle my taxes, in a 93/7 split with other govt employees.
There are far more than just 48% not adding to the pot.
They’re not planning on paying it back.
It’s just funny money to fund the the radical faction’s takeover.
That’s what the Meltdown was developed for.
The MBS/CDO system was the growing trigger that kept them in place long enough to pull that trigger.
The Industry monopoly is ‘socializing the losses, and privatizing the profits’ of patronage!
That sounds about right. I’m far less concerned about the money we owe because we promised than I am about the money we owe because we borrowed. We simply won’t keep the promises. Retirement age will be raised (as it should be) and pensions will be reduced (as they must be).
It’s the money we owe because we borrowed that we need to worry about. But that debt will be manageable once we find the courage/integrity to manage it.