'Imminent Crash'

From the Market Ticker:

Here's the problem though with the sigh of relief you're probably letting out this morning after the drubbing the market handed you Friday -- nothing has in fact been fixed.
That is, the collapse is coming.  Soon -- months, if not weeks from today.  It's coming because there is still not one government that is facing reality -- that one cannot spend more than one makes, and that when governments do that via monetary machinations it is simply debasement of purchasing power.
This must inevitably force increasing numbers of people into poverty, when then forces them to turn to government for "help", and that swells demand for government services.
If you discern that this pattern is a self-reinforcing cycle of destruction, you're right. 
It is.
Those who have even a rudimentary understanding of middle-school arithmetic -- specifically, exponents -- understand that this path must eventually end in disaster. 
Go back and again read the Ticker entitled "What You Simply MUST Understand".  Read it however many times you need to until it sinks in.  You may need to read it once, twice, three times, ten times.  Get out your calculator or pencil and paper and verify everything in it for yourself.
If you're a politician, spend the time to contemplate that Ticker and what it means in the context of "growth of 3%", "growth of 5%" or, the nightmare, medical spending that has been growing at 9.3%, approximately, from 1980 to 2011 at the Federal level.
Now consider that this means that medical spending doubles every 7.5 years, and last year it was $820 billion, more or less.  In 7 year it will be $1.6 trillion, generating an additional $800 billion in deficits every single year.  In 15 years it will generate $1.5 trillion of additional deficits every single year. 
Well, it would generate that level of deficit if our government didn't collapse first -- but it will if we try to do that.
Think about it long and hard folks.
That is the issue in the election this year and in our government in general.  It is the issue for Federal, State and Local governments.  If we do not address this, and do it now, nothing else -- not foreign policy, not gay marriage, not legalization of pot, nothing -- will matter.
We must deal with the fact that this situation has arisen through 30 years of fraud committed by both politicians and financiers in concert with The Fed that have intentionally distorted markets and lied to the public for the explicit purpose of skimming off more and more of the earnings power of the common man.  This has constituted an effective doubling of what the average person loses to "taxation" just in the last three years alone and the "benefit" of that taxation has gone to the banksters to cover up their insolvency-- just as the "Troika" money has in Greece -- rather than actually being spent on programs the voters have desired and clamored for!
The only issue that will matter if we do not address this right now is your Second Amendment rights, because with the inevitable failure of our government you will need to provide for your own personal defense at all times, as there will be no cops, no judges, no courtrooms and no juries -- but there will be lots of thugs.
No man and no woman running for public office is qualified to stand for that election until and unless they address this issue, explain how they're going to solve it and that they understand the inevitable consequences of doing so -- right here, right now, this year, not "in the intermediate term."
And they cannot, in doing so, resort to yet more fraudulent claims of infinite exponential growth.

If you haven't prepared yourself for the eventual collapse of our economy,I suggest you should!

'How The Economic Collapse Will Start'

Don't be deceived!If we don't get our fiscal house in order soon,even though they are those who still don't believe deficits matter,either this or another horrible scenario will play out against us.This can not go on forever,at some point we are going to have to face the music.

'Time Bomb'

From CNBC:

US and European regulators are essentially forcing banks to buy up their own government's debt—a move that could end up making the debt crisis even worse, a Citigroup analysis says.

Regulators are allowing banks to escape counting their country's debt against capital requirements and loosening other rules to create a steady market for government bonds, the study says.

While that helps governments issue more and more debt, the strategy could ultimately explode if the governments are unable to make the bond payments, leaving the banks with billions of toxic debt, says Citigroup strategist Hans Lorenzen.

This is beyond belief.It is literally insane.This reminds me of a relative who sold his house for dope,unbelievable.

'6 Reasons for Hyperinflation'

Hat tip to That Mr. G Guy's Blog.

'The Deficit's Even Worse Than We Thought'

From the Indianapolis Star:

The federal deficit is worse -- much worse -- than you may think.

That's because there's government-style accounting, which reported an official deficit in the last budget year of $1.3 trillion.

Then there's real-world accounting, the kind that applies to businesses and state and local governments. By federal law and under accounting rules set by oversight boards, most entities have to include retirement commitments in their financial records.

But Congress and the president use a different set of rules (of course), so shortfalls in obligations such as Social Security and Medicare aren't included in the official deficit report.

USA Today, however, calculated the deficit with entitlement programs included. And the newspaper found -- are you ready, for this? Best hold on to something firm -- that the actual deficit last year was $5 trillion.

There's more -- and you really should sit down for this one. To cover the promises it has made to retirees and current workers, the federal government would need $22.2 trillion (yes, that's with a T) set aside in reserves and earning interest. Such reserves don't exist, of course. Instead, the government continues to pile up more debt, and at increasingly alarming rates.

Hat tip to Conservatives4Palin.

'The Buffett Rule' Charade

Mark Steyn:

In the end, free societies get the governments they deserve. So, if the American people wish to choose their chief executive on the basis of the “war on women,” the Republican theocrats’ confiscation of your contraceptives, or whatever other mangy and emaciated rabbit the Great Magician produces from his threadbare topper, they are free to do so, and they will live with the consequences. This week’s bit of ham-handed misdirection was “the Buffett Rule,” a not-so-disguised capital-gains-tax hike designed to ensure that Warren Buffett pays as much tax as his secretary. If the alleged Sage of Omaha is as exercised about this as his public effusions would suggest, I’d be in favor of repealing the prohibition on Bills of Attainder, and the old boy could sleep easy at night. But instead every other American “millionaire” will be subject to the new rule — because, as President Obama said this week, it “will help us close our deficit.”

Wow! Who knew it was that easy?
A-hem. According to the Congressional Budget Office (the same nonpartisan bean-counters who project that on Obama’s current spending proposals the entire U.S. economy will cease to exist in 2027) Obama’s Buffett Rule will raise — stand well back — $3.2 billion per year. Or what the United States government currently borrows every 17 hours. So in 514 years it will have raised enough additional revenue to pay off the 2011 federal budget deficit. If you want to mark it on your calendar, 514 years is the year 2526. There’s a sporting chance Joe Biden will have retired from public life by then, but other than that I’m not making any bets.
Let’s go back to that presidential sound bite:“It will help us close our deficit.”

I’m beginning to suspect that the Oval Office teleprompter may be malfunctioning, or that perhaps that NBC News producer who “accidentally” edited George Zimmerman into sounding like a racist has now edited the smartest president of all time into sounding like an idiot. Either way, it appears the last seven words fell off the end of the sentence. What the president meant to say was:
“It will help us close our deficit . . . for 2011 . . . within a mere half millennium!” [Pause for deafening cheers and standing ovation.] 
Sometimes societies become too stupid to survive. A nation that takes Barack Obama’s current rhetorical flourishes seriously is certainly well advanced along that dismal path. The current federal debt burden works out at about $140,000 per federal taxpayer, and President Obama is proposing to increase both debt and taxes. Are you one of those taxpayers? How much more do you want added to your $140,000 debt burden? As the Great Magician would say, pick a number, any number. Sorry, you’re wrong. Whatever you’re willing to bear, he’s got more lined up for you.

If we were serious about reducing our deficit,we would eliminate the corporate welfare our government shills out,like the $600 million no interest loan Warren Buffett received a few years ago.

'Our Contemptuous President'

Some Saturday Steyn,for your reading pleasure:

Which brings us to another aspect of government that Obama apparently finds a frightful bore: budgets. In free societies, the executive is subject to the creative tensions of popular restraint, legislative restraint, judicial restraint, and fiscal restraint. All these the president has artfully sidestepped. In the last three years, the United States has ceased to have any meaningful budgeting at the national level, with the consequence that Washington piles on roughly a trillion dollars of new debt every seven or eight months. This week, before the fawning toadies at the Associated Press luncheon, Obama attacked Congressman Paul Ryan’s plan to prevent America plunging into the debt abyss and at least keep its fingernails clawing at the clumps on the cliff edge for a couple more decades. Don’t believe him, sneered the president. “Hundreds of national parks” will close. Parts of the country will see “complete elimination of air-traffic control.” We will be unable to “combat violent crime.” Two million mothers and young children will wind up without “access to healthy food.” Anything else? You bet. The Ryan plan will doom everything everywhere — “the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food that we eat.”

“This is not conjecture,” said the president. “These are facts.”
Speaking of facts, in the last year the federal government has added the equivalent of the GDP of Canada in new debt. Who’s buying it? The Chinese? Not so much. They’ve got pretty much all the Washington IOUs they need. Sixty-one percent of debt issued by the Treasury is bought by the Federal Reserve — which is to say the left hand of the U.S. government is lending money to the right hand of the U.S. government. That’s one reason the dollar is in steep decline against every major currency. Indeed, had it not been for the French and Germans et al. inaugurating the new century by inventing a currency for an artificial jurisdiction with even less connection to economic reality (the European Union), it’s likely that the markets would have yanked the rug out from under the dollar by now.

'I'm Talking To You'

The economic collapse we are headed towards will make the Great Depression look like child's play!

'Government Sets Record Deficit In February'

Verbatim post from The Washington Times:

The federal government recorded its worst monthly deficit in history in February, according to a preliminary report Wednesday from the Congressional Budget Office that said the deficit in fiscal year 2012 is already more than half a trillion dollars.
The CBO’s figures show that despite repeated efforts to trim spending, the government has borrowed 42 cents of every dollar it spent during the first five months of this fiscal year.
The nonpartisan agency projected the government will run a deficit of $229 billion in February, the highest monthly figure ever. The previous high was $223 billion a year ago, in February 2011.
It is the 41st straight month the government has run a deficit — itself a record streak that dates back to the final months of President George W. Bush’s tenure. Before now, the longest streak on record was 11 months.
For all of fiscal year 2012, which began Oct. 1, the budget analysts said the government has raised $869 billion in revenue but spent $1.5 trillion so far.
Congress and President Obama sparred for most of last year on how to cut spending, but the CBO’s figures show that spending has actually remained flat in 2012 once the timing of certain payments has been adjusted.
Mr. Obama last month released a budget that showed the government averaging $1 trillion deficits for the rest of this decade. House Republicans are working to write their own budget now, while Senate Democratic leader Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada has said he doubts his chamber will write a budget this year.

We are headed towards the cliff of ruin Thelma & Louise style.

Bernanke Warns Congress That The Nation Is Headed For A 'Massive Fiscal Cliff'

Ben Bernanke stated the obvious but still doesn't have a clue:

Congress risks taking the economy over a “massive fiscal cliff,” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned lawmakers on Wednesday.
In remarks that hit Wall Street stock prices, the central bank boss suggested the economy could hit a serious roadblock if Congress allows the Bush tax rates and a payroll tax cut to expire and $1.2 trillion in spending cuts to be implemented simultaneously in January.

“Under current law, on Jan. 1, 2013, there’s going to be a massive fiscal cliff of large spending cuts and tax increases,” Bernanke told the House Financial Services Committee. “I hope that Congress will look at that and figure out ways to achieve the same long-run fiscal improvement without having it all happen at one date.

Here is the problem,Big Ben,we are headed towards a cliff,but spending cuts IS NOT driving us over that cliff.Its SPENDING that's sending us to doomsday.We have a government that not only we,the United States can't afford,but the whole world together can't afford us either.We literally owe more money than their is in the whole wide world.

What Bernanke knows is,that our economy has been made dependent on the Federal government by the Keynesian's and the progressives,and when we cut the budget -and we will either by choice or force- it is going to hurt our economy.So many,from the poorest to the richest receive subsidies from the government in some form,that to eliminate just a small portion of those subsidies would have some adverse effect on our economy.But for us to get fiscally healthy that is a pain we must endure.

On another note,Ben Bernanke also asked Congress to vote on a Constitutional amendment that would make rocks and sticks legal U.S. currency,since Quanative Easing has made our money worth as much.

'America's Per Capita Government Debt Worse Than Greece'

Verbatim post from The Weekly Standard:

The office of Senator Jeff Sessions, ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, sends along this chart, showing that 'America’s Per Capita Government Debt Worse Than Greece,' as well as Ireland, Italy, France, Portugal, and Spain:

'Handing Out Condoms On The Titanic'

A little fresh Steyn:

This is a very curious priority for a dying republic. “Birth control” is accessible, indeed ubiquitous, and, by comparison with anything from a gallon of gas to basic cable, one of the cheapest expenses in the average budget. Not even Rick Santorum, that notorious scourge of the sexually liberated, wishes to restrain the individual right to contraception.

But where is the compelling societal interest in the state prioritizing and subsidizing it? Especially when you’re already the Brokest Nation in History. Elsewhere around the developed world, prudent politicians are advocating natalist policies designed to restock their empty maternity wards. A few years ago, announcing tax incentives for three-child families, Peter Costello, formerly Timmy Geithner’s counterpart Down Under, put it this way: “Have one for Mum, one for Dad, and one for Australia.” But in America an oblivious political class, led by a president who characterizes young motherhood as a “punishment,” prefers to offer solutions to problems that don’t exist rather than the ones that are all too real. I think this is what they call handing out condoms on the Titanic.

In fact,instead of trying to prevent pregnancy,we should be encouraging young girls to marry and have plenty of babies,a baby-boom for the 21st century.But alas,the left controls the culture and 'sexual liberation' is presented as the norm.The stay at home mom,instead of being celebrated and presented as a worthy goal to aspire to by any young woman,is vilified,presented as a rube or dumb,something young women should avoid like the plague.In the end,the sexual revolution will be one of the cause's to our national suicide.

A Government Induced Coma

From The Market Ticker:

What Mr. Schwab is missing here is that The Fed is hardly an "independent" central bank.  It is in fact beholden to Congress, which has pumped up $5 trillion in debt over the last three years.  That debt has a servicing cost, and it is the "ultra low" interest rates that make this temporarily affordable. 
How is Congress going to service this debt when the rate of interest rises?  More to the point, where are the adults in the room in Washington DC?  We've had this on both sides of the aisle -- "we must stimulate the economy!" -- with borrowed money.
Outright bribery of the electorate both hasn't and can't work to lead to a durable recovery.  Instead, it has backed Bernanke and Congress into a corner.  When rates rise to just a blended 4% Congress will be facing a $600 billion annual interest bill.  From where will the money come?
This is the trap into which Japan fell and what we are facing today.  It is an extraordinarily destructive cycle that is very, very difficult to break, because it requires pulling the liquidity support at the same time Congress dramatically raises taxes, cuts spending (real cuts, not the imaginary cuts from "baseline" budgeting) or both.  In short it requires admitting that we took fiscal heroin to avoid pain and accepting the accumulated damage for a period of time, accepting the "deferred depression" that we all tried to hide.

Our economy is in a government induced coma.If the economy was to take off and grow,it would cause a rise in interest rates that would make our national debt unserviceable.So our 'masters' in Washington -who sold us down the river to China- must keep a lid on our economy,lest we risk economic collapse because we can't pay the interest to our debt.

This is why Obama wants to raise taxes on richest 1%,just to pay the interest to the national debt.That's why also,he is leaving Iraq and Afghanistan,to reduce costs just to pay the interest to the national debt.

If we don't balance our budget now and get a handle on our national debt,it will swallow us whole.

A Bald Face Lie

From USA TODAY:

A key reason the deficit has surged in the past four years is that the government collected less tax revenue. In part, that's because the economy has yet to regain the millions of jobs lost during the Great Recession.

This is perpetuation of the pro-growth/tax the rich myth.The deficit was surging well before Obama took office under Bush.It wasn't a lack of revenue causing the deficit to surge then,nor is it now,but spending.

'The Vote Pump'

After watching this how can anyone NOT vote for Ron Paul for POTUS!

Everyone,but Ron Paul,seems to think we have a revenue problem.Whether its Obama who thinks we need to generate more revenue through higher taxes on the wealthy,or whether its Romney (or pick your favorite Republican) who believes we can generate more revenue by simply growing the economy at a faster rate.

Both of these are fairytale scenarios.Their isn't enough taxable income to support our government and its almost impossible for an economy to grow at a 9% rate over an extended period of time -which is what some economist say we would have to grow to sustain our current budget.

Their is only one way to avert disaster and that is Ron Paul's way,cut the budget and balance it now.

Hat tip to Hot Air.

'The Debt Generation'

Hat tip to The Market Ticker.

'National Debt- How Much Is A Billion Dollars?'

'Broker Than Any Nation Has Ever Been'

Mark Steyn:

At the end of 2011, America, like much of the rest of the Western world, has dug deeper into a cocoon of denial. Tens of millions of Americans remain unaware that this nation is broke — broker than any nation has ever been. A few days before Christmas, we sailed across the psychological Rubicon and joined the club of nations whose government debt now exceeds their total GDP. It barely raised a murmur — and those who took the trouble to address the issue noted complacently that our 100 percent debt-to-GDP ratio is a mere two-thirds of Greece’s. That’s true, but at a certain point per capita comparisons are less relevant than the sheer hard dollar sums: Greece owes a few rinky-dink billions; America owes more money than anyone has ever owed anybody ever.

Public debt has increased by 67 percent over the last three years, and too many Americans refuse even to see it as a problem. For most of us, “$16.4 trillion” has no real meaning, any more than “$17.9 trillion” or “$28.3 trillion” or “$147.8 bazillion.” It doesn’t even have much meaning for the guys spending the dough: Look into the eyes of Barack Obama or Harry Reid or Barney Frank, and you realize that, even as they’re borrowing all this money, they have no serious intention of paying any of it back. That’s to say, there is no politically plausible scenario under which the 16.4 trillion is reduced to 13.7 trillion, and then 7.9 trillion, and eventually 173 dollars and 48 cents. At the deepest levels within our governing structures, we are committed to living beyond our means on a scale no civilization has ever done.

Our most enlightened citizens think it’s rather vulgar and boorish to obsess about debt. The urbane, educated, Western progressive would rather “save the planet,” a cause which offers the grandiose narcissism that, say, reforming Medicare lacks. So, for example, a pipeline delivering Canadian energy from Alberta to Texas is blocked by the president on no grounds whatsoever except that the very thought of it is an aesthetic affront to the moneyed Sierra Club types who infest his fundraisers. The offending energy, of course, does not simply get mothballed in the Canadian attic: The Dominion’s prime minister has already pointed out that they’ll sell it to the Chinese, whose Politburo lacks our exquisitely refined revulsion at economic dynamism, and indeed seems increasingly amused by it. Pace the ecopalyptics, the planet will be just fine: Would it kill you to try saving your country, or state, or municipality?

'More More More'

Mark Steyn:

The advantage the United States enjoys is that, unlike Greece, it can print the currency in which its debt is denominated. But, even so, it still needs someone to buy it. The failure of Germany’s bond auction on Wednesday suggests that the world is running out of buyers for Western sovereign debt at historically low interest rates. And, were interest rates to return to their 1990–2010 average (5.7 percent), debt service alone would consume about 40 percent of federal revenues by mid-decade. That’s not paying down the debt, but just staying current on the interest payments.
And yet, when it comes to spending and stimulus and entitlements and agencies and regulations and bureaucrats, “More more more / How do you like it?” remains the way to bet. Will a Republican president make a difference to this grim trajectory? I would doubt it. Unless the public conversation shifts significantly, neither President Romney nor President Insert-Name-of-This-Week’s-UnRomney-Here will have a mandate for the measures necessary to save the republic.

'Crisis Of Decadence'

Mark Steyn:

As America sinks into a multi-trillion-dollar debt pit, it is fascinating to listen to so many of my friends on the right fret about potential cuts to the Pentagon budget. The problem in Iraq and Afghanistan is not that we are spending insufficient money, but that so much of that money has been utterly wasted. Dominant powers often wind up with thankless tasks, but the trick is to keep it within budget: London administered the vast sprawling fractious tribal dump of Sudan with about 200 British civil servants for what, with hindsight, was the least worst two-thirds of a century in that country’s existence. These days I doubt 200 civil servants would be enough for the average branch office of the Federal Department of Community Organizer Grant Applications. Abroad as at home, the United States urgently needs to start learning how to do more with less.

As I said, these are more or less conventional symptoms of geopolitical decline: Great powers still go through the motions but increasingly ineffectually. But what the Council on Foreign Relations types often miss is that, for the man in the street, decline can be very pleasant. In Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands, the average citizen lives better than he ever did at the height of Empire. Today’s Europeans enjoy more comfortable lives, have better health, and take more vacations than their grandparents did. The state went into decline, but its subjects enjoyed immense upward mobility. Americans could be forgiven for concluding that, if this is “decline,” bring it on.
But it’s not going to be like that for the United States: Unlike Europe, geopolitical decline and mass downward mobility will go hand in hand. Indeed, they’re already underway. Whenever the economy goes south, experts talk of the housing “bubble,” the tech “bubble,” the credit “bubble.” But the real bubble is the 1950 “American moment,” and our failure to understand that moments are not permanent. The United States emerged from the Second World War as the only industrial power with its factories intact and its cities not reduced to rubble, and assumed that that unprecedented preeminence would last forever: We would always be so far ahead and so flush with cash that we could do anything and spend anything and we would still be Number One. That was the thinking of Detroit’s automakers when they figured they could afford to buy off the unions. The industrial powerhouse of 1950 is now a crime-ridden wasteland with a functioning literacy rate equivalent to West African basket-cases. And yes, Detroit is an outlier, but look at the assumptions its rulers made, and then wonder whether it will seem quite such an outlier in the future.