Forum Post: America in danger of credit default?
Posted 12 years ago on Jan. 25, 2012, 6:39 p.m. EST by dreamingforward
(394)
from Gothenburg, NE
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
How does a Nation that has escalating liabilities, nearing the end of its inherited natural capital, unable to balance its budget with an outstanding debt of over $14Trillion, and which fails to live up to the "principles on which it stands" SURVIVE ??
Elect a Republican, File for bankruptcy, Screw its people and move on .In other words just act like any corporation.
as long as the working man cannot afford to pay his way and his taxes, it looks like the rich will have to float it. as long as the working man doesn't have the capital to create demand, the rich will become less rich. eventually, in the end, on this path, it doesn't survive.
Exactly. That's also why it's legit to Occupy, even to snatch basic food. Right to Live trumps Right to Property, especially property that you did not create. In any case, for consumable goods, take the least value-added product you can. For permanent goods, you'll have to assess how much you're willing to risk and fight for.
You will be the first one eaten.
Well, in a country where it was considered right to shoot/kill people to acquire land, you (or perhaps your children?) will probably be shot beforehand. Are these the "principles on which you(we) stand?"
Great! The right to protect my property trumps your right to live. If you come humbly and ask for food, I will do my best to help you. If you come to my house to snatch my food, you will find yourself seriously lead poisoned and probably be used for the meat portion of the food help I will do my best to help the next person who asks humbly for help with food.
You didn't create the food or the land. Get off your false sense of righteousness and remember who was on this land before you.
No, but I own them and the guns I use to protect them and I have the law to back me up. I really don't know what Mr. Slabauch has to do with the property I bought from him at this time, other than I hope he is doing well.
Not Mr. Slabauch, sir. The native peoples suffer to this day. This isn't just something that happened centuries ago that you can just "forget". So either own up to the idea that murder is a principled way to acquire property (yours this time) which is your very basis for law or know how to fix it.
It has worked throughout time and the US and the Christian ideals that founded it are the only reason it is being debated at this time.
Yes, your latter statement is true. The Christian assumption about this land and its people turned out to be WRONG, hence it is being "debated" at this time. Look up the story about how Christianity was co-opted by the Roman Emperor Constantine, and how he practically blessed genocide with the arrogance of his "requierimiento".
Until that issue is understood and rectified, your claim of land "ownership" is not worth a damn. OCCUPY.
It is what it is. I have clear title to my land and it is mine. You can invent any story you want, but the truth is that the indigenous people warred and claimed land before we came and warred and claimed land.
No, it is what the principles that stand the test of time determine it is. And you are the one who is inventing the story, through your assumptions of what the law is and who the indigenous people were. "Clear title" is just a social agreement, nothing more.
Land ownership granted by murder and thievery simply do not stand "throughout time", as you say.
Are you saying the indians never warred amongst themselves?
I'm saying you cannot try to compare the Hebrew storyline, with its own calendar, its own (and different) origin and homeland, its own cosmology and bloodlines to the story, history, and cosmology of the Natives.
Brothers warring against brothers has it's own checks and balances, but when one cosmos wars with another, hell is what happens, this is the grievous crime of the Christians -- they were murdering the very Tree of Life here.
It is the way of the world. You cannot change what is. You are tilting at windmills.
It is only "the way of the world" if you agree that it is. If you want that which "stand the test of time" you will have to do better than that.
Have you moved out of the US to make room for the native American to move in? I doubt it. I will stay in my house that I have worked hard to pay for.
That's not true, life=liberty=property
That "equation" is just an idea of the landed gentry of England. It should only hold true for those who fight for the principles of the country (of mankind). Most land owners aren't doing that, they'll just living off the fat of the land.
This land was peopled by millions of native people. They welcomed us and offered to be equals. But what did we/you do? You moved in with all your family and shoved them out the door. You should be ashamed.
That's not what we're discussing, what happened to the Native Americans sucked but you can't bring down all of Europe for that, and the Fifth Amendment clearly states "life, liberty, and property"
Well, Queen Isabella of Spain underwrote the whole expedition and conquest of the Americas. And much of Europe seems to continue to benefit from the event or at least remains passive to the truth of it.
As for the fifth amendment, how can one reconcile what the forefathers were thinking in light of their knowledge of the original people here? I can only imagine that they were reacting to the pressure of limited land in England and trying to lure/market the idea of "America".
I disagree, as for the Native Americans, that was in the past. Now, many are proud Americans, others are still disgruntled, and I say move on. It was in the past and we must not dwell on it but instead work together for a brighter tomorrow.
But that is my point -- you can't bring a brighter tomorrow if you are sweeping the sins of the past under the rug.
And, besides, if you go to a reservation in Nebraska, you'll see that it is not "in the past". They suffer to this day because while they welcomed you to share their land, you shoved them out the door of their own house.
Maybe they should get off the reservations and join us
The rich can't float it - they did a cnn poll today saying that if anyone making over a million dollars paid 35% in taxes across the board it would only contribute about 400 billion which is less the 5% of the national debt.
Government needs to be "downsized" to solve the problem.
I have no argument with that. The fact remains that the unfair tax burden on the wealthy is a result of the working class not being able to contribute to the tax base. Even with smaller gov, the balance of taxation can only be restored when every working person is able to contribute to the tax base as well.
because they keep printing money.
The national debt is an illusion. Nothing is going to collapse and the 1% know it. They are just using it to further their own agenda.
That would be equivalent to telling your credit card company you aren't paying because credit is a myth. Except your creditors have armies and only need the ok from a few other credit providers to invade and kill you.
I'm sorry but it is not the same at all. An individual credit card is very different from a national debt.
Please, enlighten me...
So why was there a big fear on people running for the banks as the economy starting going insolvent? And why is the state of the economic crisis still being covered up?
Orchestrated by the 1%. All a diversion to the real problems: racism, economic injustice, peace.
Just ask Newt Gingrich, he's says he can give us a moon colony by 2020 http://goo.gl/iL8Cu
US resources are held by private companies
We eat the rich and seize their phat assets at home and abroad, before they read this!
http://www.usdebtclock.org/ has a real-time display that shows some good data. I do not know how reliable they are but the total of a "tiny-little-bit" over $15,000,000,000,000 is plausible because the U.S. government has been running deficits more than a trillion dollars every fiscal year recently.
I see that the Gross Debt to GDP Ratio is slightly over 100%. Other countries encountered problems borrowing a little bit above this ratio. The U.S. is throwing its lasso at those runaway euro-area countries. We will catch up - NO COUNTRY LEFT BEHIND!
US total debt shown at the webpage is about $56,500,000,000,000. Total national asset is about $77,200,000,000,000. The U.S. is still solvent. Assets per Citizen is $246,713. That means on the average families of four members are millionaire families. Not too shabby at all - albeit ON THE AVERAGE!
Historically, the method that worked very well is persistent "benign" inflation - also known as stealing money from the fools holding U.S. dollars or debts. When nobody believes in the old U.S. currency any more, we will issue NEW U.S. dollars with an astronomical exchange rate so that the prices of everything will be renormalized. The U.S. will show the world that we ARE superior to the Weimar Republic - we KNOW how NOT to lug around big wads of heavy cash. Savings per family is $4618 so the fools holding U.S. dollars by and large are probably NOT U.S. families so the method may be in our national interest and feasible.
Let's be realistic and talk the Mean or Mode Income which more like less than $40,000 for a household. Average means you pretend to dump the majority of the top 1% income into that non-existing Working Middle Class Person as to pretend the Middle Class is making far more than they really are.
They aren't and you should be ashamed to even suggest they are!
Anyone proporting average is a crook and sham artist, don't be fooled as we are being robbed and need to hold those accountable for it!
Great! Somebody actually knows statistics. All others, please let this be a lesson to you to guard against demagogues. To quote Mark Twain: "There are lies. Damned lies. And statistics!" The above statistics stating that the most average U.S. family of four is almost a MILLIONAIRE family shows how wealthy the U.S. as a country is IN AGGREGATE. This shows foreign creditors that the U.S. as a whole is fully capable of paying off its debts, ONLY IF THE U.S. HAS THE POLITICAL WILL! I am not a crook nor a sham artist. Observe that I actually wrote, "albeit ON THE AVERAGE!" See the capitalization there. That should have made people think! Folks, please remember that all statistics are specialized ways of looking at data so people with a secret agenda can pick and choose and distort to prove many so-called facts without being untruthful. The partial truths deliberately chosen can be worse than blatant lies! That is why I advocate reflections and ruminations rather than knee-jerk reactions to safeguard your own best interests.
It won't happen - the country is on a verge of "collapse" even if the Millionaires and billionaires are taxed 100%
The problem is with the government and govenment regulation and the size of the government.
Solve those three problems and the country will "prosper" once again. Don't solve those three problems and I will guarentee you 5 years from now we will be having the same discussion.
Well I think the problem is that the American idea to create a "perfect union" was flawed. It will take a new purpose to re-vitalize things.
I don't know - like I said before we need to get people in government who will "look out for the good of the country as a whole" instead of looking out for the good of a few individuals.
When that happens things will start to change. Everyone has got to hold our representatives "feet to the fire" so they know we are keeping tabs on them.
The "country as a whole" has simply gotten too complex for mortal man. I think it needs dissolved unless it addresses it's history of genocide and the continued suffering of native people who have been unjustly denied access to the land they held sacred.
The reason it doesn't is because the U.S. dollar is the reserve currency for international trade.
If that were to change, the dollar would plummet like a rock, and all would be over here in the good old U.S. of A.
That's why we invade anyone who is seriously proposing putting an end to the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Like Iraq, Libya, and now Iran ......
I'm not joking, it's the truth. That's all America has going for it right now.
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It doesn't without substantial reductions in spending. The dingalings here want to tax it out of existence but they will fail because people with triple digit IQs aren't interested in going back to a barter system and eating twigs and berries and that's where these idiots would take us.
Yep, no more free lunch for the moochers, work or starve.
No more free lunch for the billionaires. No more oil industry subsidies. No more unnecessary wars to fund. No more too-big-to-fail banks that get bailed out even as they throw millions of people out of work and out of their homes.
There are moochers all right, They are the 1%.
confiscate all the money the the rich have and you could run the govt for slightly less than one month, cutting govt spending is the only answer.
and the cuts should start here.. not with americans!
this is only one of thousands of hand outs that should be cut! before you attack an american on welfare.. start attacking those countries that take our welfare tell them to work or starve! no more free lunch for the moochers!
(egypt)Also startling is the military's willingness to clash with its longtime top ally, the United States, over the issue, particularly since the army itself receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington.
http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-bans-travel-us-officials-son-9-others-164826371.html
Who's talking about confiscating anything? Nice straw man.
even you raise their tax rate to 100% you couldn't run the govt for more than 1 month. RUNAWAY SPENDING is the problem
Another straw man. You're on a roll.
it's the truth.
It certainly doesn't address my post about who the real moochers are, or the one-sided "the poor are to blame" mentality I responded to in it.
Perhaps it is relevant to someone else's comment. It is an entirely different subject in relation to mine.
As a response to my post, it is a straw man.
you dear are the strawman,.................if you only had a brain.
LOL, You'd better start looking for a job to tide you over until that free government cash kicks in. :)
That government cash has just save millions of people from starving to death during this depression. Glad it's available.
Of course the bankers got all their government cash by the hundreds of billions. Perhaps they should be laid off now, after the fact.
No, dude. We don't need "free money". We need land. No entrepreneur made the land. The earth can grow food enough food for everybody. The industrial economy and mindset has been a disaster, it been a gross subsidy that has robbed the public good for a dream that could never come true.
Taking a job actually steals more from us.
Ah the dichotomy, only in a country as rich as this one can someone like you exist. :)
Haha. Mafia families talk like you do when their kids complain within the opulence of their mansions.
A country as "rich" as this one? The artificial prosperity of this country has been propped up by oil subsidy and the backs of Native Americans. Is this the "wealth" you're talking about?
You sir, have drunk the koolaid and are another idiot.
And you don't even understand the insult. :)
It just wasn't sufficiently compelling. You are right in a way, but I didn't choose to be here, but I can choose to enforce the principles on which it stands. Just as the mafia kid might rebel against the family that raised him in order to transition out of a world of war.
It's a good think, that government money: it has saved millions of fellow citizens, for whom you clearly have contempt, from starving after the banks collapsed the economy,
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Frank Raines and the CRA crashed the economy. Blaming the banks is like an addict blaming the needle for her addiction.
I know that makes you sad but truth hurts. :)
You are simply regurgitating debunk right wing talking point propaganda. It has been debunked so many times I have lost count.
The truth may hurt, but you wouldn't know, never having come in contact with it.
It was a 3 tier event - the businesses who gave out the loans, the banks who backed those loans and finally Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae who bought these "toxic" loans.
It worked like this - Businesses were forced by the government to give sub prime loans and they did. No security, no down payment - ARM's and Interest only loans and people who bought houses to flip them for hugh profits.
Once the loans were issued, they were sold to the 2nd tier bankers who made hugh profits while the loans were in "good standing".
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae didn't want to be left out so they went and bought up hugh amounts of these loans. The cycle continued because of this. By doing this it freed up the businesses to issue more loans -more selling of these loans and more buying by Fainnie Mae and Freddie Mac
Why do you think they now have over 1.5 million "toxic loans"that are in foreclosure? It wasn't because they were the ones who issued these loans - it's because they wanted to get in on the action and bought these loans.
Nope. Business were forced to do nothing. Please see this, and go to the links embedded there, too.
http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/bloombergs-awful-comment-what-can-we-say-for-certain-regarding-the-gses/
You are right - businesses were forced to "do nothing" because there was "nothing they could do" and what they did was "allowed" to happen by our government.
Let me rephrase. Businesses were not forced to do anything they did not want to do. They were not compelled to issue sub-prime mortgages that were likely to fail; they were not arm-twisted to issue toxic credit default swaps; they were not held at gun point to recklessly over-leverage derivative gambling; they were not ordered to engage in massive fraud.
Did you read the article and its supporting documents? Doesn't sound like you did, judging from your continued rhetoric.
the banks WERE forced.
No they weren't: that's just a lie the banks want you to believe. Look at the statutes. Christ, look at the article I posted. Don't just keep blowing smoke out of your ass.
banks were forced to give no income verification loans. in fact what could be listed as 'income " was welfare.
No they weren't. You are inventing this as you go along. No law forced any bank to provide a single mortgage to anyone.
Read the fucking article.
dear potty mouth, the banks were forced.
I have read other articles. You see, as long as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were buying the "mortgages" that weren't toxic at the time these companies continued to issue more mortgages.
If I am wrong in what I am saying why did Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy up all these mortgages? Explain that.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were trying to keep up with the private-sector Joneses profit-wise. They bought up all these mortgages because there WAS an implicit government guarantee on them which eventually proved valid. The two corporations are PRIVATE corporations so they have the greed for profits but they are also chimeras with implicit government backing that encouraged "moral hazard." This is NOT to say that if they had just been another two private-sector Joneses, things would have turned out differently. However, the mess would NOT have gotten as big as it got! There would have been the "market discipline." Of course, "market discipline" in the absence of transparency (due to excessive securitization) did not prevent the financial near-meltdown. At least, without the implicit government guarantee, overseas investors of the securitized debt instruments would not have engorged themselves with as much toxin.
No, you aren't wrong about why Fanniie and Freddie bought them up, if you are referring to a cycle. You would be wrong if you ascribed their activity to a government mandate.
Here read this and tell me what you think.
http://www.bos.frb.org/commdev/regulatory-resources/cra/cra.pdf
The Meaning of the law was that banks needed to serve the credit and deposit needs of their communities, with an emphasis on minority communities (which were underserved), and do so soundly and safely.
If I tell you to do X but you do Z instead, you can't say I caused you to do what you did.
What's more, none of this has much to do with the economic collapse. The law effected less than 6% of ALL the loans. The overwhelming majority of THOSE loans DID NOT DEFAULT. The loans that qualified under the law were indeed safe and sound. READ THE DAMNED ARTICLE. READ THE DATA IT LINKS TO. CRA did NOT cause, even indirectly, the bank meltdown.
Never mind. Respond if you want. I won't. Bye.
Reply to your post below.
Of course not. And that shows that banks acted badly in SPITE of the law, not because of it.
Well if they acted badly "in spite of the law", and were within the "meainging of the law" then it's the government who allowed that to happen.
Reply to your post below.
So you clearly DIDN'T read the article and follow its links, or your didn't understand it. Nor did you read my response or understand IT. Did you miss the law's mandate for SAFE AND SOUND banking practices?
Either way, we're done here. You want to believe what you want to believe and no amount of evidence to the contrary will change that belief.
If there were "safe and sound" banking practices we would't be having banks across the country going "In default" and closing, would we?
Reply to your post below.
No it doesn't. It specifically states that it requires the safe and sound operation of the institution. The rest are evaluation criteria that have to do with meeting a community's deposit and credit needs with emphasis of ensuring those needs are met in minority communities. It say nothing about unqualified loans of any sort.
The very fact that this law existed for 30 years prior to the meltdown should alone tell you it was not a government mandate to screw the mortgage industry.
You are right, about it existing for 30 years prior to the "meltdown" but the "meltdown" was a result of it being in existence.
I'm not an attorney, so whatever my impressions are would not be expert. However, the act clearly does not mandate sub-prime mortgages. It merely mandates that banks under its jurisdiction meet the credit needs of their communities. It does not force any actions that could hurt any bank's viability. Indeed, it states that the bill is to "encourage such institutions to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered consistent with the SAFE AND SOUND (caps mine) operation of such institutions".
The overwhelming number of mortgages that failed were not effected by this legislation at a all. Indeed, most of the sub-prime mortgages themselves did not meet the criteria of the legislation. They were engaged in entirely independent of this law: those loans did not qualify under the regulations. CRA , passed in 1977, had virtually nothing to do with what the banks did that led up to the economic collapse in 2008.
I thought some of the links the article had embedded analyzed it pretty thoroughly. I'll have to go back and read them again.
Read section 804 and 807 - It spells it out there.
There are 20 or more vids of Democrats on the floor of the congress defending sub prime loans on You Tube right now. I'm sure you've seen them unless you are in deep denial. The banks operated within the law as written by the congress, that's why nobody went to jail.
Fannie May and Freddie Mac were responsible for less that 6% of all defaults. That does not constitute responsibility for the economic collapse.
The government was at fault for repealing Glass/Stegal. It opened the door. But if I open the door to my house and you come in and rob it, YOU are the thief, not me. The banks robbed the house. They took advantage of a lack of regulation. And they also, clearly, broke the laws several times, but is ways that are almost impossible to prove in court.
You're living in a dream world. The banks made loans as outlined by the law, I know you'd love it not to be true but if they broke the law the Obama administration would like nothing better than jailing them by the thousands. Fact is, there is nothing there. You of the left have been pretending it was the banks since 2008, where's the beef?
You've constructed a neat little narrative about what happened, too bad none of it is true. There's too much truth out there. The MSM lost control of the narrative when the internet came about and lies that used to go without question are made fun of almost immediately by dozens of sources. You simply have no idea that millions of people laugh at you on a daily basis.
http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/bloombergs-awful-comment-what-can-we-say-for-certain-regarding-the-gses/
i suggest you take a civics class and learn exactly how a bill becomes a law. and let me tell you right now, It don't begin with a little, anthropomorphic piece of paper singing a tune on the steps of capital hill.
We are talking about laws as promulgated by the US congress, laws on the books, laws that are not ever going to put any bankers in prison. If nothing else the statute of limitations is three years on civil law. :)
If the bankers are not going to pay with incarceration, then make them pay by raising their taxes. From their point of view, poverty and scrimping seems to be worst than jail so make their worst nightmare a reality. The next politician you elect have him/her vow to uphold the anti Norquest oath.
this is only one of thousands of hand outs that should be cut! before you attack an american on welfare.. start attacking those countries that take our welfare tell them to work or starve! no more free lunch for the moochers!
Also startling is the military's willingness to clash with its longtime top ally, the United States, over the issue, particularly since the army itself receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington.
It will take more than reductions in spending if the natural capital has been depleted, you'll have to figure out how to create new wealth or reduce the number people.
Regarding the idea of taxing more: this isn't such a bad policy if the wealth holders have gained unfair advantage due to logistical issue of initial land grabs. Taxation would simply be a stratagem of re-balancing.
Good luck with that.
Traitor
No little fellow, if anyone fits the definition of traitor around here it would be you and your greedy little friends. And no, you will never, ever get free shit. The party is over and you missed it. Now, get to work and pay some damn taxes.
That's right the party is over. No bailouts, no handouts no cop outs. You and your repelicants are DONE.
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