BoatShoes;1084989 wrote:It'd be neat if you conservatives would start worrying about the real problems that are, you know, actually happening, like the nearly half-a-decade long disaster of high unemployment. If you've paid any attention at all, any at all, the austerity measures imposed on the PIGS while their economies were depressed have made their budget problems worse. You're sitting here speculating about a country that has devalued it's currency against the dollars to levels that would make the inflation-obsessed have a coronary.
When BHO, and Congress, or Ben Bernanke, or everybody else with power refuses to do anything that would significantly bring down unemployment for several years and the automatic safety net spending rises instead, and you also ran large deficits during good economic times, you're going to have unconscionably huge deficits.
You're not going to be able to balance the budget when the unemployment rate is so much higher than the Fed's target rate!
1. The austerity measures being used by the Greeks are the medicine to muliple decades of spending money they didn't have. Their currency doesn't have the dollar's buying power, so they couldn't fire up the printing presses to create cash out of thin air like our leaders have done. Thus, they have borrowed hundreds of billions and their creditors aren't willing to just write off the debt without a serious attempt to stop their deficit vortex and repay their debt. The piper, in this case the financial institutions of Europe and the U.S., must be paid. There are consequences for spending money they don't have.
2. Yes, I agree their economy isn't nearly as large/diverse as ours. Yes, I agree they don't have as much impact around the world as the U.S. Yes, I agree they aren't just like the U.S. I also agree that our spending of money that does not exist is exactly the path they went down. Now they are experiencing the pain of withdrawal off of their unfunded entitlement tits. Our pain will be much much worse and thus...the violence may soon follow. Hence my reference if anyone is watching what is happening in Greece. Our decades of deficits and a godzilla of debt that will never be repaid have the exact same consequences, with different timing.
3. I will remind you that Barry is projecting trillion-dollar yearly deficits into the future. If we keep going at his pace, at some point within the next 5 years the debt service will be over $1,000,000,000,000 per year. Debt service payments purchase NOTHING, except for the opportunity to create MORE DEBT. You opine consistently that debt spending is required today as interest rates are at record lows and we must take advantage of money that is nearly "free of charge". Your hope and prayer is that eventually...sometime....someday....maybe....with crossed fingers/toes....the spending will kick-start economic nirvana and we'll grow our way out of the $16,000,000,000,000 debt sinkhole. This is a fairly tale. We simply cannot amass more debt that requires more servicing and survive. Chaos awaits sooner rather than later if we don't stop our Keynesian charade.
