Pelosi: Give Obama Power to Personally Lift Debt Limit to Infinity

[Poncherello]

Originally Posted by XQIZT

I thought you'd have 5 by now.....as well as enroll in enough other free cash programs to have a solid gold Lamborghini by now....hows that goin?

It's going well so far.....although I did not get the phone yet I do get free internet and free gasoline for my government backed Volt.

[walleyfisher]

This country is now officially "Fantasyland" Money to our government is no longer real only the power to hand it out is real

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlVDGmjz7eM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlVDGmjz7eM

[92Roadster]

Originally Posted by Upheval

This is the first time we have become crossed. I tend to enjoy are post and your middle of the road stance, for the most part I have the same opinion too.
I mistaken Constructive for something positive, brain fart on my part.

Its been a long road to get where I am and I take nothing for granted.

Back to the topic

A constructive Idea is to Cut Spending! We have a hugh untapped work force in the prisons. Let them do the jobs that Americans dont want to do, picking vegetables out of a field or what ever else the illegals do. They should have to work to get their privileges because IMO they lost their rights when they took the rights of others and that would kill two birds with one stone.
Welfare, you better be medically certified unable to work or a child under 18, other then that you should be looking for work Monday thru Friday and earn your entitlement check by doing small jobs for the State on the weekends. Police calling the streets or removing graffiti off of buildings, things of that sort.
Here is another idea lets quit giving other countries our money especially the one that dont like us.
Lets tax imports based on how the country where the imports come from tax our imports. Brazil has a 100% tax on imports. Brazil is not the only country doing this, there are others.

There, now I think those are constructive ideas. I know they are flawed but its a start.

....I know how you feel, yes there are many untapped
resources, but I see an enormous complexity in the problem
at hand, (flawed) isn't that what is happening now under
this administration, 332 electoral votes tend to agree in
whole or partial with what is transpiring now.....

Originally Posted by Dr. Egon Spengler

Don’t cross the streams.

......

[raidmagic]

Originally Posted by 92Roadster

.....I'll be 65 in June and have been paying the national debt
for most of those years, and I have never been close to
$250/year, consider yourself one of the lucky ones
() in this day.....posting something constructive
was meant as a solution or possible solution to the problem
at hand.....

....finding ice on Mercury is good, just look for the Motel 8 sign
"we'll leave the light on for ya"......

...I guess I might be irritating at times.....

Get it right jackass....it's Motel 6

[walleyfisher]

Originally Posted by Upheval

Back to the topic

A constructive Idea is to Cut Spending! We have a hugh untapped work force in the prisons. Let them do the jobs that Americans dont want to do, picking vegetables out of a field or what ever else the illegals do. They should have to work to get their privileges because IMO they lost their rights when they took the rights of others and that would kill two birds with one stone.

Now what are you going to do with all the un-documented? send them to college maybe?

Originally Posted by Upheval

Welfare, you better be medically certified unable to work or a child under 18, other then that you should be looking for work Monday thru Friday and earn your entitlement check by doing small jobs for the State on the weekends. Police calling the streets or removing graffiti off of buildings, things of that sort.
Here is another idea lets quit giving other countries our money especially the one that dont like us.
Lets tax imports based on how the country where the imports come from tax our imports. Brazil has a 100% tax on imports. Brazil is not the only country doing this, there are others.

There, now I think those are constructive ideas. I know they are flawed but its a start.

Make the welfare recipient have to get out of bed and show up for services to receive a government check. I would go one step farther, food stamps you can only buy the basics milk bread vegetables and hamburger. If you want anything else use your own money. BTW the amount would also not guarantee 3 meals a day either maybe only 1...get a job and pay taxes is my slogan

[92Roadster]

Originally Posted by raidmagic

Get it right jackass....it's Motel 6

....you must stay at the cheap one, I upgraded....

[Upheval]

Originally Posted by Junkman2008

Not at all. I'm glad SOMEONE is posting something other than all the whining political threads.

Whining is apart of freedom speech too. So is whining about whining.

[92Roadster]

Originally Posted by Upheval

Whining is apart of freedom speech too. So is whining about whining.

...

[raidmagic]

Originally Posted by 92Roadster

....you must stay at the cheap one, I upgraded....

Maybe you do make 250K?

[the machine]

So lets just inject a bit of reality into this discussion.

Unlike our own personal budgets where we use American currency to buy what we need, the US is a soveriegn nation and holds the currency that the world uses. Oil is traded in dollars as are most other commodities. This means that the US has the sole ability to print money to pay it's debts. This means that they can spend in times of poor income with little down side. The usual down side to printing money is run away inflation. We do not have that. In fact we have more of the opposite problem, the risk of deflation. That is why fed rates are at zero and have been for years now. Many countries that want to buy US securities are getting negative interest. That means they are paying us for the security of investing in the USA.

So now lets look at our debt. At 16 trillion it is at almost 70% of GDP. For historical comparison, just after WWII we were at 115% of GDP. We can pay our way out of debt through austerity like Greece is doing and Our economy would tank, our tax reciepts would plumet again and we would sink further into debt. We could cut more and the results would be more of the same....that is what is happening to Greece, and all the other countries that must use austerity to reduce their debt.

Now after WWII we did not use austerity to pay off our debt, we spent. We built the national highway system, and lots of other infrastructure. We rebuilt europe even as we gave them money, and lots of it, which they then paid back to us to rebuild them. We could do this because unlike every other nation who could not spend after WWII because they were out of money, we could print as much as we needed and did, and spurred our economy to grow at such a fast pace that just ten years later, even though we owed much more money our debt to GDP ratio was the lowest it had ever been. What happened??? We grew our way out of trouble.

To understand this concept, imagine yourself at the begining of your financial life. You scrimped and saved and stretched to buy your first home. When you bought your home it probably represented the largest part of your debt. The amount of debt was sure to be far more than 100% of your anual income...and probably many times that. So your GDP ratio was far worse than what the US now faces. While we are currently at about 70% of GDP, you were probably at 300% or even 400%. But as your financial life grew through inflation and merit increases in income, and payment of that debt, that ratio has come way down. Many of us at about 50 years old are nearly paid off on our homes or very nearly, so your personal GDP ratio is now a much more reasonable 50% or even lower.

So now lets look at that pesky spending limit. The spending limit is authority to pay off the debt we have already incurred. In other words it is simply the authority to write the check for what congress has already authorized to buy. If we don't pay those debts then we default, and that is where we get into real trouble. If we fail to pay off our debt, we risk the full faith and credit of our nation. The price for that loss of faith and credit would be run away inflation, and the possibility of the end of the Dollar as the world currency. If we lose the ability to be the world currency, we lose our self determination and other countries could force us to do what they want us to do to solve our debt problems. Just like Greece, we could be forced by Germany , or China into austerity measures to reduce our debt even if in doing so we actualy increase the amount of our debt just like what is happening to Greece.

So de-politicizing the debt ceiling is not only good for our country....it is down-right treasonous to play politics with it, because the result of default would spell the end of what makes the USA special in the world...our full faith and credit.

[ddregehr]

Originally Posted by the machine

So lets just inject a bit of reality into this discussion.

Unlike our own personal budgets where we use American currency to buy what we need, the US is a soveriegn nation and holds the currency that the world uses. Oil is traded in dollars as are most other commodities. This means that the US has the sole ability to print money to pay it's debts. This means that they can spend in times of poor income with little down side. The usual down side to printing money is run away inflation. We do not have that. In fact we have more of the opposite problem, the risk of deflation. That is why fed rates are at zero and have been for years now. Many countries that want to buy US securities are getting negative interest. That means they are paying us for the security of investing in the USA.

So now lets look at our debt. At 16 trillion it is at almost 70% of GDP. For historical comparison, just after WWII we were at 115% of GDP. We can pay our way out of debt through austerity like Greece is doing and Our economy would tank, our tax reciepts would plumet again and we would sink further into debt. We could cut more and the results would be more of the same....that is what is happening to Greece, and all the other countries that must use austerity to reduce their debt.

Now after WWII we did not use austerity to pay off our debt, we spent. We built the national highway system, and lots of other infrastructure. We rebuilt europe even as we gave them money, and lots of it, which they then paid back to us to rebuild them. We could do this because unlike every other nation who could not spend after WWII because they were out of money, we could print as much as we needed and did, and spurred our economy to grow at such a fast pace that just ten years later, even though we owed much more money our debt to GDP ratio was the lowest it had ever been. What happened??? We grew our way out of trouble.

To understand this concept, imagine yourself at the begining of your financial life. You scrimped and saved and stretched to buy your first home. When you bought your home it probably represented the largest part of your debt. The amount of debt was sure to be far more than 100% of your anual income...and probably many times that. So your GDP ratio was far worse than what the US now faces. While we are currently at about 70% of GDP, you were probably at 300% or even 400%. But as your financial life grew through inflation and merit increases in income, and payment of that debt, that ratio has come way down. Many of us at about 50 years old are nearly paid off on our homes or very nearly, so your personal GDP ratio is now a much more reasonable 50% or even lower.

So now lets look at that pesky spending limit. The spending limit is authority to pay off the debt we have already incurred. In other words it is simply the authority to write the check for what congress has already authorized to buy. If we don't pay those debts then we default, and that is where we get into real trouble. If we fail to pay off our debt, we risk the full faith and credit of our nation. The price for that loss of faith and credit would be run away inflation, and the possibility of the end of the Dollar as the world currency. If we lose the ability to be the world currency, we lose our self determination and other countries could force us to do what they want us to do to solve our debt problems. Just like Greece, we could be forced by Germany , or China into austerity measures to reduce our debt even if in doing so we actualy increase the amount of our debt just like what is happening to Greece.

So de-politicizing the debt ceiling is not only good for our country....it is down-right treasonous to play politics with it, because the result of default would spell the end of what makes the USA special in the world...our full faith and credit.

You really need to re-read your history books. We were NEVER repaid by most of Europe or Japan after WWII for rebuilding them. We have bailed country after country out of their problems and they have never paid back a dime like Iraq, Kuwait. It is time to spend those billions here at home instead of spending them elsewhere and not seeing any return on those investments. I would call those debts or right them off and reset our deficit accordingly because the majority of the interest and core of our original national debt comes from rebuilding Europe and Japan after WWII. Our dollar is only as good as the gold that we can back it up with and that is not as much as we have printed!

[the machine]

Originally Posted by ddregehr

You really need to re-read your history books. We were NEVER repaid by most of Europe or Japan after WWII for rebuilding them. We have bailed country after country out of their problems and they have never paid back a dime like Iraq, Kuwait. It is time to spend those billions here at home instead of spending them elsewhere and not seeing any return on those investments. I would call those debts or right them off and reset our deficit accordingly because the majority of the interest and core of our original national debt comes from rebuilding Europe and Japan after WWII. Our dollar is only as good as the gold that we can back it up with and that is not as much as we have printed!

Re-read what I posted. I said we gave europe money and they paid it back to us to rebuild them. In other words we gave them money and they paid it back to our companies that were rebuilding them.

As for gold backing up the dollar, Richard Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1971. Our dollar is only backed by the full faith and credit of the USA. In other words the dollar is worth what the world thinks we are worth. If our dollar was backed by gold, the price of gold would never change for us, as the dollar would be pegged to the value of gold. If gold went up so would our dollar if gold went down so would the dollar.

We can print money for as long as the world will accept it. The world will stop accepting it by not accepting the interest rates the fed is paying. Right now that rate is near zero. Poeple around the world are not asking for interest to keep their money safe in the USA. So the fed can keep printing money until the world says no more. For that to happen the world has to become a better investment than the USA.

We need to get some inflation, and that is achieved by printing money. With inflation your mortgage and the country's debt get paid back in cheaper dollars. Right now there is not enough inflation. The way to combat excessive inflation is to raise interest rates. That makes money more expensive, and then dollars are taken out of the system. The opposite is a lack of inflation as we have now so you print money to make it cheaper. This wil eventualy raise interest rates and as they get higher and higher the money will come back out of the system to stop the rise of interest rates. If rates rise too high even more money is taken out of the system.

[Texdentist]

Originally Posted by the machine

Now after WWII we did not use austerity to pay off our debt, we spent. We built the national highway system, and lots of other infrastructure. We rebuilt europe even as we gave them money, and lots of it, which they then paid back to us to rebuild them. We could do this because unlike every other nation who could not spend after WWII because they were out of money, we could print as much as we needed and did, and spurred our economy to grow at such a fast pace that just ten years later, even though we owed much more money our debt to GDP ratio was the lowest it had ever been. What happened??? We grew our way out of trouble.

Spending for infrastructure in the 50's when there was a booming economy and a flood of revenue was entirely different from today's TARP spending where the economy is almost at zero growth and revenues reflect that lack of growth. Spending is great for the economy when it is booming. When it is suffering, drastic reductions in spending can be disastrous. But drastic increases in hopes of firing up the economy do not work and only add to the debt burden.

[ddregehr]

Originally Posted by the machine

Re-read what I posted. I said we gave europe money and they paid it back to us to rebuild them. In other words we gave them money and they paid it back to our companies that were rebuilding them.

As for gold backing up the dollar, Richard Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1971. Our dollar is only backed by the full faith and credit of the USA. In other words the dollar is worth what the world thinks we are worth. If our dollar was backed by gold, the price of gold would never change for us, as the dollar would be pegged to the value of gold. If gold went up so would our dollar if gold went down so would the dollar.

We can print money for as long as the world will accept it. The world will stop accepting it by not accepting the interest rates the fed is paying. Right now that rate is near zero. Poeple around the world are not asking for interest to keep their money safe in the USA. So the fed can keep printing money until the world says no more. For that to happen the world has to become a better investment than the USA.

We need to get some inflation, and that is achieved by printing money. With inflation your mortgage and the country's debt get paid back in cheaper dollars. Right now there is not enough inflation. The way to combat excessive inflation is to raise interest rates. That makes money more expensive, and then dollars are taken out of the system. The opposite is a lack of inflation as we have now so you print money to make it cheaper. This wil eventualy raise interest rates and as they get higher and higher the money will come back out of the system to stop the rise of interest rates. If rates rise too high even more money is taken out of the system.

I'm sorry you missed my point. Our dollar is worthless because it is supported by credit not our savings. Credit is BORROWED money which means it is someone else's. Others control our destiny and our sovereignty because they own us financially. Sovereignty is a right of independence, but we are dependent on others for our financial viability (fiscal cliff ring a bell).

Putting people to work verses paying loans off to a country are not the same thing. If you personally lent money to an individual and then his business gave your business work, that doesn't mean you are not owed money. You are saying that out of the goodness of the US's heart that they should be grateful that companies got work even though they didn't get paid back and are now facing financial difficulties because of that generosity?

Next time I need money, I'm looking you up machine!

[the machine]

Originally Posted by Texdentist

Spending for infrastructure in the 50's when there was a booming economy and a flood of revenue was entirely different from today's TARP spending where the economy is almost at zero growth and revenues reflect that lack of growth. Spending is great for the economy when it is booming. When it is suffering, drastic reductions in spending can be disastrous. But drastic increases in hopes of firing up the economy do not work and only add to the debt burden.

Tex just after WWII spending which had been running at 53% of GDP dropped to 21%. It then increased to the mid 30s until up to the mid 90s. Today it stands at 22.9% of GDP. The economy could stand to use some more spending especialy on infrastructure which will need lots of attention for many years to come. The army corps of engineers estimates that to get our infrastructure back to safe levels we would need to spend $2.2 trillion. Now I am not suggesting that the government spend money by giving it to wallstreet or GM...I am saying we should spend to repair our infrastucture which needs to be done anyway and would increase this country's efficiency. Just adding 1 trillion this year would still keep government spending below 30% and would spur the economy. And no one is even talking about spending another trillion....perhaps they should be.