Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Dunedan
Here's the thing, folks.
Mr. Obama has proposed a HUGELY expensive budget. The deficits he wants to run outstrip those of every previous President COMBINED, to the tune of multiple trillions of dollars per year. Even Bush's deficits only grew by a trillion dollars every 18-24 months, but this is ridiculous!
Now, since the Chinese won't buy any more of our debt (ie our biggest and most powerful creditor has cut us off from further loans), with the Japanese and Saudis likely to follow suit, how does Mr. Obama propose to -pay- for his 1,001 social programmes, a new "light rail" system, payoffs to ACORN, expanded this, improved that, studies on X,Y, and Z, PLUS more bailouts, while giving 95% of taxpayers a cut?
Simple. Either he's lying (hardly new from a politician) and he -does- intend to raise taxes, or he's planning to simply print several trillion dollars. Given that we've already begun to monitize our debt, and have already printed several hundred billion dollars -just- to pay for these never-ending bailouts, my guess is that he just plans to print-n-spend his way through this.
Welcome to the Weimar States of America.
THAT is what a lot of these folks are pissed about. He is deliberately creating (or more correctly, worsening; he did inherit Bush's lunatic policies, after all) a situation where drastically higher taxes or an horriffically-devalued currency are absolutely unavoidable, a situation which our kids will have to live with and pay for. Maybe in 2-3 Quarters, when you can wipe your ass with a $100.00 bill, some of this will sink in. For now, keep taking comfort in your assurance that the whole thing's manufactured by, and for the benefit of, corporate interests who are -benefitting- from Obama's fiscal insanity, as opposed to working people who are pissed as Hell about this nincompoop flushing their children's financial and social futures down some Chicago sewer with giveaways to his Wall Street backers, leftist pressure groups, failed auto companies, ludicrously-mismanaged banks and anyone else with their hands out.
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Well, let me just correct something here.
When you say that the deficits he wants to run are larger than that of every previous president combined, that is technically true, but that in itself doesn't mean much. It was also true for Bush, and for Reagan before him.
Deficits only matter in relation to the size of the economy. And as a percentage of GDP, Obama's deficits are not even close to being the largest in US' history, and after the first couple of year of this recession, will go down to about Reagan's levels, which are high but not in any measure unprecedented.
US Federal Deficit As Percent Of GDP in United States 1900-2014 - Federal State Local
Of course, if the Dollar ever stopped being the global reserve currency, things would be worrisome. But the fact is that as of right now, most nations including China are desperately buying US treasury bills, which shows a strong willingness to keep financing the US.
And while Obama's stimulus bill is a significant part of the deficit this year and the next, the real troublesome part for the deficit is actually unfunded liabilities for medicare, which really is not discretionary spending and depends on congressional efforts to change.