The day of reckoning looms closer all the time: On Tuesday the Treasury Department began using pension funds to keep the federal debt below the debt limit.
This action is, at this time, only a stop-gap until the debt ceiling is raised $1.2 trillion as per Obama’s request. Nonetheless, it signals the federal government’s increasingly dire debt problems.
The day of reckoning looms: The national debt now equals the entire U.S. economy.
The amount of money the federal government owes to its creditors, combined with IOUs to government retirement and other programs, now tops $15.23 trillion. That’s roughly equal to the value of all goods and services the U.S. economy produces in one year: $15.17 trillion as of September, the latest estimate. Private projections show the economy likely grew to about $15.3 trillion by December — a level the debt is likely to surpass this month.
But don’t worry. The press is focused like a laser on more important issues, such as whether the states might someday consider outlawing the pill.
Meanwhile, in real news: The United States closed 2011 with a record $15.22 trillion debt that was officially 100.3% of GDP and only $14 billion from breaching the debt ceiling passed by Congress only five months before.
The top ten ways Hollywood can win its audience back.
As someone who spent almost twenty years in the movie business, I think Nolte hits the nail on the head. I also think Hollywood will not do any of the things he suggests, mostly because it would require them to abandon their elite, leftwing ideology that for the past thirty years has become the only thing too many Hollywood people care about.
“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 have yet to understand that the can can no longer be kicked down the road, because we’re all out of road. The pavement ends, and there’s just a long drop into the abyss. And, even in a state-compliant car seat, you’ll land with a bump. At this stage in a critical election cycle, we ought to be arguing about how many government departments to close, how many government programs to end, how many millions of government regulations to do away with. Instead, one party remains committed to encrusting even more barnacles to America’s rusting hulk, while the other is far too wary of harshing the electorate’s mellow.
A nation in economic collapse.
During “the Obama Nation”, the federal government has already accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office. Of course the Bush administration was nearly as bad at piling up government debt. Between Bush and Obama (with a big helping hand from the Federal Reserve), they have done a pretty good job of wiping out the financial future of the United States. If there are future generations of Americans, they will look back and curse those that did this to them. It is absolutely immoral to steal trillions of dollars from future generations. Unfortunately, there are very, very few members of Congress that are even objecting to this madness.
The article’s listing of store closings is also quite frightening, suggesting that the economic situation of the nation is far worse than has been reported.
The day of reckoning looms: Several of China’s biggest borrowers have been given permission to delay loan payments.
Over Friday and Saturday, 61% of House Republicans and 34% of Senate Republicans voted for the omnibus megabus bill. In doing so, not only did they violate their pledge pertaining to bundled (1200-page) bills and the 72-hour layover rule and agree to fund Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, Planned Parenthood, the EPA, the PLO and the UN; they actually agreed to spend almost $9 billion more than last year. Overall, budget authority will be $33 billion higher than the House budget, while appropriations for non-defense spending will be $45 billion more. One of the members who voted in the affirmative even agreed that he had voted for a “crap sandwich.”
One reason the budget is still growing is that two-thirds of the government is still controlled by the spendthrift Democratic Party. A second reason is that there are too many wimpy Republicans willing to compromise with these spendthrifts.
Which is why we have elections. 2012 should help fix this problem.
Another science budget update from Nature states that the budget deal will cut EPA by three percent.
This cut reduces EPA’s budget from its 2011 numbers by about $400 million. However, the agency’s total 2012 budget of $8.4 billion is still $1 billion more than it got in 2008, hardly what I’d call a draconian cut.
Once again, the inability of Congress to seriously face the deficit issue threatens to eventually destroy the U.S.’s ability to do any science. A bankrupt nation can’t do much but feed itself, as the scientists in the Soviet Union learned back in the 1990s.
One reason we are going bankrupt: The stimulus was not a one time expense, it was built into the baseline.
Click to see the chart most of all. It will make you sick.
