Let’s Get Real
Posted by Ray on July 25, 2011 under Economy, Main, Markets, Politics | 
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Listening to the talking heads TV and our political leaders about this debt crisis is merely subjecting you to unneeded heartburn. First and foremost, the USA is not “defaulting” on anything on August 2nd, period. The USA will not be downgraded on August 2nd by any of the ratings agencies, even though we should not be carrying the AAA rating to begin with. Bonds only default is interest or principal payments which will not happen on August 2nd as the Treasury brings in enough money to cover our debt payments on a monthly basis. Social Security checks and Medicaid/care checks will go out and the sun will rise in the East and set in the West.
All that happens on August 2nd is the Treasury Department looses the ability to issue new debt beyond the stated debt ceiling. I have not witnessed such scare tactics in my entire life and the misinformation the media and politicians are giving the public is shameful. In fact this entire debate is shameful as we are not having an honest discussion about debt and the US government. Everything you hear being discussed is merely kicking the can further down the road and I believe the markets will not let this can kicking continue on forever. Everything comes to an end at some point and our crazy spending will have to end and we all need to pay the Piper.
Let’s get real about our debt problem. We are hearing all sorts of nonsense about $4T in deficit reducing spending cuts or a combination of cuts with higher taxes over a ten year period. That means we are raising taxes or cutting spending, or a combination thereof, of $400B a year, big deal. If we subtract the $400B a year from our recent annual deficits we are still running $1 to $1.2T of deficits per year for as far as we can see. These tax hikes and spending cuts are meaningless to our long-term financial health and all the talk we are hearing from Washington or the other experts is meaningless until they lay out the facts like I just did. In my opinion even if we raised taxes and cut spending by $400B a year the USA will be downgraded within 2 years anyhow, which is what should have happened a long time ago.
The talk we are hearing from the left about wasted tax surpluses is so far off base it is ridiculous. The talk from the right about spending controls and how a 4% tax increase will kill jobs is equally as moronic. The surpluses in the late 1990’s and in 2000 were bogus to begin with. We had massive surpluses on Social Security and Medicare which the government simply took and replaced the entitlement surpluses with IOU’s and called them budget surpluses. It was accounting gimmickry and those surpluses should have remained in the entitlement programs. Do tax cuts really spur more jobs? I don’t think so and there is no proof that it does either. What spurred job growth in the 1990’s was technology. What spurred job growth in the 2000’s was housing, both bubbles I might add, but in both cases it was a new “killer app” that spurred economic growth and I do not believe we have anything like that in today’s world. Not to say we couldn’t have a new technology or other “killer app” materializes as fast as tomorrow, but there simply is nothing I see right now that will spur growth and jobs which is the real problem here.
Most people do not want to hear this, but taxes do need to go up, I hate taxes for the record. To prove my point we often hear the right complain that 47% of the USA’s citizens do not pay anything in taxes. Well, if you are going to use that line you simply cannot support tax cuts. Why would I say such a thing? Well, it was the Bush Tax cuts that caused 47% of people to not pay anything, which is not exactly true either, in taxes. The reductions in middle class tax rates were massive and the lowest tax bracket was erased. It is also important to realize that 20-30% of the population will never pay taxes because they do not earn enough to live on.
The Bush tax cuts, all of them, cost the USA $3.7T over a 10 year period or $370B a year, interesting figure don’t you think? The left says the rich need to pay more, but the rich in terms of the Bush tax cuts only account for $700B over 10 years. Raising the top income tax brackets only raises $70B a year which is nothing when we are spending $4T a year. Simply raising taxes on the rich will do nothing to solve our problems as it is the totality of the Bush tax cuts that are part of the problem. I do not like taxes, but let’s get real about this, OK? We cannot reduce our debt with phantom spending cuts and tax increases on a select few people, everyone needs to pay up.
We are in serious trouble and no one has put it all together yet. It is unreal to me that the President can say; “I cannot guarantee that Social Security checks will go out on August 3rd” and no one questioned him about why that would be. Social Security was supposed to be fine until 2036 and self funded but if we cannot issue new debt the checks will not go out… what! Well, our Einstein news anchors and the political talking heads simply do not want you to know that Social Security has no money in it, it is broke. I just talked about this earlier, our political leaders took the surpluses in Social Security and spent it replacing those surpluses with IOU’s. Since Social Security has only IOU’s in order for checks to go out the government must issue debt. That should scare you to death, we have to fund Social Security with debt. That is also why Social Security can never be privatized either. However, no one has put this together yet, unreal.
The fact that the US government cannot do anything without issuing new debt should be a real wake up call for the citizens of the USA, but no one seems to get it. The USA, the so called richest nation in the world, is bankrupt! If we cannot survive without using the credit card we are technically insolvent, if I am wrong what would you call it? The USA has also never paid of our debt, except for when Andrew Jackson was president, and simply rolled over all of our national debt year after year and this was hidden from you by using certain terms like we retired the 30 year treasury instead of we called in and paid off all of our 30 year treasuries, we simply rolled that debt into shorter term debt instruments. The USA also has “grown” our way out of recessions and past debt problems. Growing our GDP is a great way to hide the debt problem and it causes the government to do everything possible to always grow our GDP which is why hedonics accounts for over $2T of our annual GDP, hedonics is made up benefits for certain things like free checking, Google it.
You should be terrified about what you are seeing and not because we are going to “default” but because this whole show is basically telling you how bankrupt the USA really is. If our world shuts down because we cannot issue new debt we are in huge trouble and that is exactly what is happening now. The reasons I have listed here are the reason why everyone should own gold and silver as it is the ultimate hedge against out of control government spending and if the truth was ever told we have already defaulted on our debt through depreciation of the dollar and by simply rolling over old debt into new debt. If we ever really got real about our debt issues I can assure you that the story is even scarier than what I have just laid out. Luckily we have politicians that will always lie to us and hide the truth until it is so obvious you already knew it and it is too late to do anything about it. Good day and good luck.
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