Obama is already over. In six short months the now-spattered bumper stickers with “Hope and Change” seem like pathetic remnants from the days of “23 Skidoo,” the echoes of “Yes, we can” more nauseating than ever in their cliché-ridden evasiveness.
Although they may pretend otherwise, even Obama’s choir in the mainstream media seems to know he’s finished, their defenses of his wildly over-priced medical and cap-and-trade schemes perfunctory at best. Everyone knows we can’t afford them. His stimulus plan - if you could call it his, maybe it’s Geithner’s, maybe it’s someone else’s, maybe it’s not a plan at all - has produced absolutely nothing. In fact, I have met not one person of any ideology who evinces genuine confidence in it.
On the foreign policy front, it’s more embarrassing. He switches positions every day, such as they are, while acting like a petit-bourgeois snob with our allies and then, when people with genuine passion for democracy emerge on the scene (the courageous Iranian protestors), behaves like a cringeworthy, equivocating creep. Enough of Obama. Only the Republicans are barely any better.
The country’s finances are not in good shape on this Independence Day. David R. Burton and Cesar Conda express a little concern over the Obama economic policy in a Washington Times piece called why stagflation is coming:
The monetary base (coins, currency and bank reserves) has doubled over the past year. It is increasing at a rate 12 times the average since 1981. M1 (the monetary base plus checking deposits) increased last year by roughly 16 percent, a near record and three times faster than average since 1981. M2 (M1 plus most savings deposits and money market funds) increased 9 percent in the past 12 months (a rate more than 50 percent higher than the average since 1981)…
fiscal 2009 federal outlays were $3,938 billion compared to $2,983 billion in fiscal 2008 — a 34 percent increase in one year. Federal spending has grown from 21 percent to 28.1 percent of gross domestic product in only one year. Only during the last three years of World War II has federal spending been a larger share of the economy.
These figures understate the degree to which federal spending and credit creation have increased because various federal entities have guaranteed something on the order of $10 trillion to $12 trillion in private debt…An economic train wreck is coming.
we’re now stuck with some of the most absurdly counterproductive legislation imaginable. The national debt is growing faster than the GDP. According to the Congressional Budget Office, within 10 years Uncle Sam’s publicly held debt will double to 82 percent of GDP. The CBO predicts that by 2038, our debt will be 200 percent of GDP. Debt siphons off growth for the simple reason that dollars go to paying it off rather than investing in something productive.
Meanwhile, thanks to ongoing trade deficits and relentless borrowing, America’s financial status is deteriorating rapidly. The Commerce Department reported last week that the value of foreign assets owned by Americans is $19.89 trillion, while the value of American assets owned by foreigners is $23.36 trillion. In other words, we are a “net debtor” to the tune of $3.47 trillion. That represents a 62 percent increase over 2007. Foreigners, most significantly China, own nearly 50 percent of our government’s public debt.
It appears that the political class is too corrupt or too irresponsible to govern. Worse, it appears that a majority of the citizens of the US are either too fat and lazy or too uneducated and ignorant of basic bookkeeping to prevent the fiscal disaster that looms just over the horizon.
Paul Krugman comments on cap and trade and finds “treason” among the global warming “deniers”:
the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement. But 212 representatives voted no…as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.
To fully appreciate the irresponsibility and immorality of climate-change denial, you need to know about the grim turn taken by the latest climate research. The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course…
researchers at M.I.T., who were previously predicting a temperature rise of a little more than 4 degrees by the end of this century, are now predicting a rise of more than 9 degrees. Why? Global greenhouse gas emissions are rising faster than expected; some mitigating factors, like absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans, are turning out to be weaker than hoped; and there’s growing evidence that climate change is self-reinforcing — that, for example, rising temperatures will cause some arctic tundra to defrost, releasing even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Temperature increases on the scale predicted by the M.I.T. researchers and others would create huge disruptions in our lives and our economy. As a recent authoritative U.S. government report points out, by the end of this century New Hampshire may well have the climate of North Carolina today…
Gosh! Other government reports, suppressed by the government, draw very different conclusions. And it certainly seems that global cooling has been going on for some time, likely as a result of solar activity. For the record, we’re skeptical of AGM because an increase of 100ppm in CO2 causing such catastrophic problems just doesn’t pass the test of common sense, in our opinion. Indeed, it has been argued that increases in CO2 are an effect of rising temperatures, not the cause. We could be wrong of course, but Krugman’s rather hysterical tone doesn’t help the hypothesis he’s trying to sell.
Cap and trade: a solution that doesn’t work for a problem that doesn’t exist?
“To prevent the deficiencies in the main reserve currency, there’s a need to create a new currency that’s delinked from the economies of the issuers,” the People’s Bank of China, or PBOC, said. China is the biggest foreign holder of U.S. Treasuries, with $763.5 billion in April.
You can’t look at the chart above without thinking that America has lost its mind. The intergenerational theft from our children and grandchildren is evidence of insanity or idiocy. James Lewis in The American Thinker makes some points that have appeared here as well:
As a nation we are under the thumb of idiots. Not just indoctrinated, or wrong-thinking, or power-hungry, or manipulative, or even malevolent people. No, I mean real lowbrows, people who constantly fall for really stupid ideas. Neanderthals. (Look at the Governor of California just running the state budget into the ground. See what I mean?…
Or look at the global warming farce, still hotly pursued by the political classes in Europe and this country, although the Australians seem to be coming to their senses. China now has more millionaires than the UK, because they use all their resources, like coal, to fire their industrial plants. They will never sacrifice a single luxury car to the cap and trade fraud. Neither will India. China and India have been under the thumb of egomaniacal socialists (in the case of India) and communists (in the case of China). They’ve been there, done that, seen the suffering…
No wonder those Chinese college students fell all over themselves with laughter when Timothy Geithner assured them that Obama would never spend the United States into debt. What an idiot! They laughed because Geithner’s stupidity or mendacity was too obvious for words…
On the last point, health care, it is very hard to believe that Americans are that stupid or gullible. There are fewer than 800,000 doctors in the US. The Obama plan intends to provide insurance to 47 million additional people. So there is a 15% increase in potential demand from physicians, and a 0% increase in supply. Whether you support Obama or not, increasing demand while supply remains constant raises prices, the opposite of what Obama claims. It’s just not possible to do what he says he wants — price control regimes always result in rationing, lower quality, and black markets — but no one seems to care (at least so far).
Here’s the thing, perhaps: The young are disconnected from the past, and live in a world of digital utopian images. They don’t remember a hard past. So they are in the process of creating a hard future. This seems to us one of the greatest avoidable tragedies in history. Sigh.
More on the folly that is called cap and trade from Bloomberg:
America’s biggest oil companies will probably cope with U.S. carbon legislation by closing fuel plants, cutting capital spending and increasing imports. Under the Waxman-Markey climate bill that may be voted on today by the U.S. House, refiners would have to buy allowances for carbon dioxide spewed from their plants and from vehicles when motorists burn their fuel. Imports would need permits only for the latter, which ConocoPhillips Chief Executive Officer Jim Mulva said would create a competitive imbalance.
“It will lead to the opportunity for foreign sources to bring in transportation fuels at a lower cost, which will have an adverse impact to our industry, potential shutdown of refineries and investment and, ultimately, employment,” Mulva said in a June 16 interview in Detroit. Houston-based ConocoPhillips has the second-largest U.S. refining capacity.
The same amount of gasoline that would have $1 in carbon costs imposed if it were domestic would have 10 cents less added if it were imported…One in six U.S. refineries probably would close by 2020 as the cost of carbon allowances erases profits, according to the American Petroleum Institute, a Washington trade group known as API. Carbon permits would add 77 cents a gallon to the price of gasoline
So what? Who cares anymore in the ridiculous TV show that is called America? Who cares if cap and trade won’t even address any real problems, and creates incentives that are precisely the opposite of its stated goals? Don’t bother us. We’re America and we’re sleeping.
Iraq is planning to increase oil production substantially, just as Saudi Arabia has been doing. WSJ:
Iraq…intends to auction off oil contracts to foreign companies for the first time since Iraq nationalized its oil industry more than three decades ago…Some 120 companies expressed interest in bidding for the contracts at the June 29 and 30 auction, according to the oil ministry. Thirty-five companies qualified to bid, including Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Italy’s Eni SpA, Russia’s Lukoil and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., or Sinopec. The six oil fields at stake are believed to hold reserves of more than 43 billion barrels…
Just over 20 of Iraq’s roughly 80 known oil fields have been fully or partially developed, and most of its production comes from just three giants, North and South Rumaila and Kirkuk. Because lots of the black gold is considered relatively easy to extract, oil experts estimate that exploration and development in Iraq costs $1.50 to $2.25 a barrel, compared with about $5 in Malaysia or $20 in Canada…
Iraq is thought to have one of the world’s largest supplies of crude oil, with 115 billion barrels in proven reserves. But foreign know-how is key to its plans to boost oil output to 4 million barrels a day within four to five years, from 2.4 million barrels currently.
It is gross negligence on the part of the American political establishment for the country to be up to 70% dependent on imports of this strategic material. And the tiny SPR is but a drop in the bucket. But no matter. The US is in fantasyland for the moment. One day that will end, and in all likelhood it will not end well.
Andrew Sullivan, who has done a very good job of linking the various internet postings in the Iranian civil strife, said this amusing and absurd video was “why Obama was watching his words” on Iran. If that is valid, and this crude anti-American propaganda is effective, then it hardly matters what an American government says, the people are so paranoid and gullible. (There is evidence to support this contention.)
We see the government video quite differently. The video shows that the Iranian government is very concerned about “secret messages” coming in over satellite TV, and about the use of the internet for subversive purposes. The video makes the point that if you plot against the government you will get caught because the government has spies everywhere.
The creepiest element is that the bad guy (pro-American) in the film gets caught because his sister rats him out by calling 113, the national hotline to the secret police. Question: if a government is that paranoid and its security apparatus is deployed against the people in such a gross and obvious way, why should we be concerned that pointing out the truth offends them?
Quick: name two countries or leaders that Barack Obama dislikes or disfavors, and two more countries or leaders that he likes or shows deference to. It was easy, wasn’t it, even after five short months of Obama’s Presidency? Here are some potential candidates as answers in case you were stumped: (a) England, (b) Israel, (c) Saudi Arabia, (d) Honduras, and (e) Iran.
It appears to us to be more than strategy and tactics that President Obama shows disrespect to, or bullies, America’s traditional allies, while appearing inappropriately obsequent to certain countries, including outright enemies.
You may think that President Obama’s vision is correct, and that the “re-branding” of America is a good thing, or you may think that the President’s policies are foolish, even dangerous. For us, Obama’s reticence at the atrocities in Iran have finally made it very clear whom his gut reactions favor and disfavor, and we find that the conclusions we have drawn are pretty disturbing.
As they note over at Powerline, you don’t have to be much of an American to side with besieged democracy protesters over authoritarian anti-American dictators who are comfortable in their thuggish ways. And then there’s Obama…..
Byron York says that fired AmeriCorps inspector general, 77 year old Gerald Walpin (who denies the White House’s claim that he was “confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions”), didn’t seem too confused when York talked with him:
“The fact that the board doesn’t like what I was doing in order to perform my duties as an IG is not a reason for removing me,” Walpin said. “In fact, the more diligent an IG is in reporting criticisms of the board and the running of the corporation, the more the board doesn’t want the IG there. But that’s exactly why the IG position was created.”
In this case, the board and top management were unhappy with Walpin’s aggressive investigation of the misuse of federal AmeriCorps funds by Sacramento, California mayor — and prominent Obama supporter — Kevin Johnson. The board was also unhappy with Walpin’s probe into the waste of AmeriCorps money at the City University of New York.
Those two investigations were on the agenda of the May 20 meeting. Walpin believed the board and management were not supporting his findings about the Sacramento and CUNY matters, and he let them know it. “There was no confusion in my opening remarks at the meeting, in which I chastised the board for what appeared to be the board’s refusal to perform its duty, independent of management, in overseeing what management was doing, particularly as it regards determining the merits of the two reports I had issued,” Walpin says.
“I started out by chastising the board and telling them their duty was not just to accept what management says, but to make their independent analysis of those reports,” Walpin continues. He says board members were “clearly angry at my temerity in telling them they should not be acting in the manner of many for-profit boards, which have been recently criticized.” Walpin says there was “no confusion whatsoever about our two reports, and our clear findings, which were a major part of the meeting.”
There are now assertions that the Obama administration is clamming up and possibly changing its story on Walpin. We’ll have to wait for further developments. In an interesting footnote to the story, Dan Riehl says there are other IG’s who are being fired or let go for doing their jobs.
The WSJ has some quotes from the President on Iran:
The President yesterday denounced the “extent of the fraud” and the “shocking” and “brutal” response of the Iranian regime to public demonstrations in Tehran these past four days. “These elections are an atrocity,” he said. “If Ahmadinejad had made such progress since the last elections, if he won two-thirds of the vote, why such violence?” The statement named the regime as the cause of the outrage in Iran and, without meddling or picking favorites, stood up for Iranian democracy.
Great stuff! Taranto adds: “Speaking very broadly, there are two possible outcomes in Iran now. The regime may succeed in crushing the opposition, enhancing its own power at the expense of whatever pretense of legitimacy it might have had a week ago. Or it may fail to do so and be weakened or overthrown. The free world has every interest in encouraging the latter outcome.” Indeed it does.
A decision by China to reduce its US Treasury holdings suggests concern about the US attitude towards its economic woes, Chinese economists were quoted as saying in state media Wednesday…”China is implying to the US, more or less, that it should adopt a more pragmatic and responsible attitude to maintain the stability of the dollar,” He Maochun, a political scientist at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times…Beijing owned 763.5 billion dollars in US securities in April, down from 767.9 billion dollars in March.
China — you know, the country where they laugh out loud at our Secretary of the Treasury’s assurances that their investments are safe.
President Obama reacts to the news of the day in a way that sounds bizarre to us, given the level of violence and oppression currently underway in Iran. WaPo:
“I do believe that something has happened in Iran where there is a questioning of the kinds of antagonistic postures towards the international community that have taken place in the past…When I see violence directed at peaceful protesters, when I see peaceful dissent being suppressed, wherever that takes place, it is of concern to me, and it’s of concern to the American people…That is not how governments should interact with their people.”
What’s the deal with this? Why is the first sentence so contorted and unclear? Why is it so false — the Iranian people are demanding some freedom, not “questioning Iran’s antagonistic postures towards the international community”? Why are the next sentences so at pains not to single out Iran and its government? Why is the murdering of protesters reduced to the banality of “that is not how governments should interact with their people”? This is bizarre. Taking a “wait-and-see” approach to Iran might seem practical, but exactly what sort of enduring, enforceable agreements are possible with governments that do not hesitate to kill large numbers of their own people when they decide it is in their interests to do so?
By contrast, this reaction by a President to a somewhat similar situation seems a lot clearer: “I want emphatically to state tonight that if the outrages in Poland do not cease, we cannot and will not conduct ‘business as usual’ with the perpetrators and those who aid and abet them. Make no mistake, their crime will cost them dearly in their future dealings with America and free peoples everywhere. I do not make this statement lightly or without serious reflection.”
Maybe it’s just us, but we get the feeling from the way that Obama talks that he is desperate to do a deal, some kind of deal, any deal at all, with Khamenei — the man he calls even now “supreme leader“. Obama so appears to want not to offend him, or to say a clear, good word about some real “community organizers“. Perhaps it goes too far to say that Obama seems to identify with the authoritarians around the world, but the question is not unreasonable, given his taking over vast parts of American industry.
Given how far things have gone in Iran, it is a total cop-out to say “the easiest way for reactionary forces inside Iran to crush reformers is to say it’s the US that is encouraging those reformers.” (Even the man once the designated successor to Ayatollah Khomeini has a good word for the protesters.) Furthermore, even if the US is not causing any provocation, the Iranian regime still declares that we are behind the protests, so what’s the point?
It’s a sad day in America when we shouldn’t express our fundamental beliefs about freedom and liberty because some dictator somewhere might try to use them against his own people. If Obama believes the statement he made above, he has poor judgment. If he doesn’t believe it, but is using it as an excuse, the explanations are not pretty to contemplate.
Final thought: Roger Simon’s reflections on this matter seem pretty similar to ours, and even David Ignatius thinks Obama should be speaking out clearly and in favor of the protesters.
WSJ: “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday consumers need to stop using certain Zicam cold and allergy products because they can cause permanent loss of smell.” The letter to the maker of the product is here.
Though the company insists its products are safe and do not cause anosmia, that is not true. Though Zicam works great on colds, it also kills the sense of smell. We have recovered a little from this terrible side-effect of Zicam, and now can report, nearly some two years after losing our sense of smell, that one food has recovered its original taste: barbeque. One unfortunate aspect of losing one’s sense of smell and taste is that it is impossible to recall in any meaningful way just what different foods tasted like. Caveat emptor.
ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House. The network plans a primetime special — ‘Prescription for America’ — originating from the East Room, exclude opposing voices on the debate.
This can’t be the same ABC that allegedly blocked the potentially very profitable sale of the Path to 9-11 DVD because it was politically inconvenient, can it?
The WSJ discusses the current resuscitation of the concept of “pay as you go” and finds that it has heard this all before:
Some things in politics you can’t make up, such as President Obama’s re-re-endorsement Tuesday of “pay-as-you-go” budgeting. Coming after $787 billion in nonstimulating stimulus, a $410 billion omnibus to wrap up fiscal 2009, a $3.5 trillion 2010 budget proposal, sundry bailouts and a 13-figure health-care spending expansion still to come, this latest vow of fiscal chastity is like Donald Trump denouncing self-promotion. Check that. Even The Donald would find this one too much to sell.
But Mr. Obama must think the press and public are dumb enough to buy it, because there he was Tuesday re-selling the same “paygo” promises that Democrats roll out every election. Paygo is “very simple,” the President claimed. “Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere.”
That’s what Democrats also promised in 2006, with Nancy Pelosi vowing that “the first thing” House Democrats would do if they took Congress was reimpose paygo rules that “Republicans had let lapse.” By 2008, Speaker Pelosi had let those rules lapse no fewer than 12 times, to make way for $400 billion in deficit spending. Mr. Obama repeated the paygo pledge during his 2008 campaign, and instead we have witnessed the greatest peacetime spending binge in U.S. history. As a share of GDP, spending will hit an astonishing 28.5% in fiscal 2009, with the deficit hitting 13% and projected to stay at 4% to 5% for years to come.
Pay as you go? There’s been no payment so far for this tragedy. But the bill will very likely be coming due shortly, and perhaps we’ll discover that even many Democrats object to having their pockets picked by the dissembling elites in Washington.
the segment of the electorate that did most to produce the Obama victory and give the Democrats large majorities in Congress is the least concerned and least informed about health care. That segment is the 18 percent of voters under 30. Young voters preferred Obama to John McCain by a 66 percent to 32 percent margin, according to the exit poll.
Voters 30 and over preferred Obama by only a 50 percent to 49 percent margin. Some 63 percent of the young voted Democratic for the House of Representatives. Only 51 percent of the rest of Americans did so. Without the young, the votes would clearly not be there for what the Democrats are trying to force through.
But what do the young know or care about health insurance? They have the fewest medical problems of the whole population. Their image of health care, at least until they become pregnant and have babies, is university health services. You come in if you feel like it, someone else pays, you get some pills or some counseling, or whatever.
As for the downside of government insurance, pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that the young favor capitalism over socialism by only a 37 percent to 33 percent margin. The rest of us prefer capitalism by a 57 percent to 17 percent margin.
Last July we said: “Imagine being governed by the media and the kids. They’ll take the car, spend all our money, and post the video of their party on YouTube.” And now it has happened. Good grief! (HT: Mickey Kaus)
Art Laffer has a piece in the WSJ about the economic double whammy just over the horizon. It happens when the terrible fiscal policies of the Obama administration (and the debt needed to fund them) collide with the need for the Fed itself to issue bonds to contract the monetary base back to normalcy. The result will likely be the depressing picture we painted the other day:
Here we stand more than a year into a grave economic crisis with a projected budget deficit of 13% of GDP. That’s more than twice the size of the next largest deficit since World War II. And this projected deficit is the culmination of a year when the federal government, at taxpayers’ expense, acquired enormous stakes in the banking, auto, mortgage, health-care and insurance industries.
With the crisis, the ill-conceived government reactions, and the ensuing economic downturn, the unfunded liabilities of federal programs — such as Social Security, civil-service and military pensions, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, Medicare and Medicaid — are over the $100 trillion mark. With U.S. GDP and federal tax receipts at about $14 trillion and $2.4 trillion respectively, such a debt all but guarantees higher interest rates, massive tax increases, and partial default on government promises…as bad as the fiscal picture is, panic-driven monetary policies portend to have even more dire consequences…
starting in early September 2008, the Bernanke Fed…radically increased the monetary base — which is comprised of currency in circulation, member bank reserves held at the Fed, and vault cash — by a little less than $1 trillion. The Fed controls the monetary base 100% and does so by purchasing and selling assets in the open market. By such a radical move, the Fed signaled a 180-degree shift in its focus from an anti-inflation position to an anti-deflation position. The percentage increase in the monetary base is the largest increase in the past 50 years by a factor of 10…
It’s difficult to estimate the magnitude of the inflationary and interest-rate consequences of the Fed’s actions because, frankly, we haven’t ever seen anything like this in the U.S. To date what’s happened is potentially far more inflationary than were the monetary policies of the 1970s, when the prime interest rate peaked at 21.5% and inflation peaked in the low double digits. Gold prices went from $35 per ounce to $850 per ounce, and the dollar collapsed on the foreign exchanges…
the Fed…should contract the monetary base back to where it otherwise would have been, plus a slight increase geared toward economic expansion…I doubt very much that the Fed will do what is necessary to guard against future inflation and higher interest rates. If the Fed were to reduce the monetary base by $1 trillion, it would need to sell a net $1 trillion in bonds. This would put the Fed in direct competition with Treasury’s planned issuance of about $2 trillion worth of bonds over the coming 12 months. Failed auctions would become the norm and bond prices would tumble, reflecting a massive oversupply of government bonds.
When we asked the other day who was going to buy the net new $10 trillion in Treasury securities to fund the Obama deficits, we didn’t realize that the matter was even more serious than we suggested, given the Fed’s need to issue $1 trillion in new debt itself. The strangest aspect of this situation is that our out-of-control Congress and President may ultimately be reined in by, of all things, the refusal of communist China to buy US debt.
Humorous footnotes on the Obama economic policies: (a) Guess how the NYT apportions blame for the future deficits — you got it, blame George Bush: “Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies”; and (b) the NYT’s claim in the same piece that cap and trade “doesn’t cost the government any money” is a howler — the English press seem to understand these things better than their American counterparts: “a vast and unfathomably complex new system, which fosters corruption, raises little revenue and tries to suppress the incentives that are its entire purpose.”
It is a very sad day in America when the Europeans and the Chinese can see clearly what is going on in this nation, but the American press is blinkered because of its increasingly strange worship of a President seemingly untethered from the realities of everyday life.
It’s no picnic being a businessman in 2009, let alone an entrepreneur. Here are some thoughts on the subject from Steve Jobs, whose life has had a number of unusual twists and turns. While we’re on the subject of entrepreneurs with improbable lives, we have just read on Kindle Roger Simon’s gratifying and unexpected book, Blacklisting Myself.
We had lunch with Roger a few years ago, and had no idea of the adventures of this remarkable man. We’ve read Ron Radosh, and have gone to some of David Horowitz’s events, but the journeys of those who started out on the far left and now have become something completely different continue to inspire. Fitzgerald couldn’t have been more wrong about this country. (HT: Jean Bellman)
The amount of US debt is already staggering as is our dependence on foreigners to lend us money: $6.4 trillion in public Treasury securities are outstanding now, and 71% of the recent purchases have been by foreigners. So who will buy the new American debt debt required to fund the $10 trillion in projected Obama deficits? Soaking the rich won’t pay the bill. And foreign purchases of sovereign US debt have only been $2 trillion in this decade, so it is difficult to see that foreigners have the ability to pick up the tab (even if they wanted to, which they don’t).
It appears that the $10 trillion bill cannot be paid in a conventional way; something’s got to give. Either spending must be curtailed or the Fed has to monetize the debt by printing money, generating Carter-era malaise (high interest rates, high inflation, tanking dollar), because Obama’s numbers just don’t add up. It’s that simple.
Again: an additional $10 trillion in deficits are projected in the plans of President Obama. In the entire history of the US, $6 trillion in deficits have been incurred, and now an additional $10 trillion are planned in the next few years by Obama, which will almost triple debt outstanding.
