patrick.net

Overwhelming debt is crushing once vibrant economies

Goddamit Ray, there's a correlation there that you're either too stupid to see or intentionally eliding. Ireland was trying to be a tax haven. Both Ireland and Iceland had immense bubble economies driven by bankers gone wild making loans to anyone.

continue to struggle to provide even basic services to people that have been accustomed to government aid and services for generations

And that's the goddamned lie that you continually spout here. Sweden, Norway, and Canada have their fiscal houses in order.

http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Norway-Investor-Haven-World/2010/11/18/id/377414

Spain and (I think) Portugal had right-wingers in power that allowed a very similar pump & dump in real estate that the Bush team allowed to happen here 2003-2006. Greece, same thing, tax-evasion and borrowing money to pay for social services.

Also, eurozone countries can't print their way out of trouble. Unlike us.

What causes fiscal train wrecks is too little taxation and too little regulation of banking, not too much of either.

The government’s efforts to help stabilize and stimulate the economy has only put us into a deeper debt hole

The hole was dug 5-10 years ago Ray.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CMDEBT

If that $14T continues to go to money heaven, it's going to have to come out of the economy somehow, like maybe $4T of draindown from banking sector, which only has around $600B of market cap right now.

Even bullets won't help you in this scenario. If we go the Austerian way, better learn a self-defense regimen that doesn't have so many consumables, like aikido or wing chun, or hire somebody who does.

Troy says

The hole was dug 5-10 years ago Ray.

One huge problem I have with people like you (amongst others of course) is that you continue to blame Bush and the GOP for the very same thing that Obama and the Dems have exacerbated. Bush and the GOP did enormous damage by spending excessively through the six years they held the House, Senate & White House. To illustrate to you how different I am than you, amongst the dinner guests on Thanksgiving was the son of the former party GOP chairman for a very large metropolitan county. His father personally knew and worked with all the GOP big wigs (including Pres. Reagan & Bush 41) up from 1970 until his death in 1990. To say his son is a dyed in the wool GOPer is putting it mildly. After dinner, the two of us engaged in a “state of the country” discussion, in which I put a lot of the blame for the mess we're in on Bush 43 and the GOP. Needless to say, he wasn’t very happy about my views. If looks could kill, I'd be a dead man. The point is, you and your ilk (and other partisan political types) are water carriers for everything concerning your particular POLITICAL party, along with its leader. You consistently point to the past while failing to see the damage that is being done in the present. Just continue to argue for your side, Troy. In the mean time, the country continues to self destruct because people like you fail to see the damage BOTH parties have done and CONTINUE to do.

Ray sees no difference between irresponsible deficit spending and tax gifts to the rich (against the future of the middle class) during relatively boom times versus Keynesian spending to prevent the mother of all economic collapses.

If we could have had the recession we needed to have back in 2002 - 2003, we would have avoided so much of this. But then Bush might not have been reelected in '04 to continue taking care of "his base."

If it ever does happen though, thank goodness for our debit and credit cards. We definitely won't be doing the wheelbarrow thing. The waste and labor and inefficiency in involved in that was rather amazing if you think about it.