What I call the "Sovereign Debt Crisis" is coming

[Jim in CT]

Finally, someone in Washington is stating the obvious...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...tm_medium=RSS#!

Our federal debt, when you include unfunded liabilities for SS and Medicare, is more than 100k for every single living American. Throw state debt on top of that (27k per human being in CT).

How does this not end in a depression? I am asking that as a sincere question. we have never faced this before, not anything like it.

The actuaries have been saying for 40 years that this was coming, and all we did was elect career politicians who kicked the can down the road. On top of that, the baby boomers (as a group) made it very clear they weren't interested in paying for the benefits they were promised).

Every once in a while, we get a brave politician honest enough to highlight this. Like Paul Ryan. The recation of the liberals, is usually to make commercials of said honest politician, pushing an old lady off a cliff. That's precisely what they did to Ryan. Which discourages future politicians from tackling this problem.

If we dealt with this 40 years ago, the fix would not have been too extreme. Now, we're screwed. I think.

[JohnR]

I read this yesterday. I can't fathom what we are going to do. What can they do? Probably what some wanted to do all along - abolish money.

But what will be your baseline of trade? "I'll give you 100 bushels of corn for one carbon credit?"

It is not sustainable. It is math. How have we come to here?

Yesterday when I was replying to Eben's less than accurate rebuttal on the debt per President I followed up with how much this would be for his kid and my kid, as an example. I just could not go through with it and twice edited it out.

We are doing the same thing Greece did - the only difference is other nations had higher hopes that the US would not be so stupid and could pay back.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by JohnR

I read this yesterday. I can't fathom what we are going to do. What can they do? Probably what some wanted to do all along - abolish money.

But what will be your baseline of trade? "I'll give you 100 bushels of corn for one carbon credit?"

It is not sustainable. It is math. How have we come to here?

"What can they do?"

They can raise taxes and cut SS and Medicare benefits and cut other spending. The CBO thiks that would help. But for 40 years, no one has been willing to tackle this. Or more accurately, not nearly enough folks have been willing to tackle this.

"abolish money" - I doubt anything that extreme. But who knows, because we haven't been through anything like this.

"It is math" Correct. And we're not talking higher-order calculus here, this is simple arithmetic.

"How have we come to here?" That's the only thing to answer. For 40 years, we have known this is coming. We got here, because a large number of elected officials (not all Democrats, but a majority of whom are Democrats) decided that they want to get re-elected more than they want to serve the Republic. And the easiest way to get elected, is to convince the voters that you will give them more goodies than the other guy, and to make them afraid of the fact that the other guy may indeed reduce your freebies, regardless of whether or not the reduction is necessary.

The beauty is that if it hits the fan in 15 years, that will be exactly when I'm leveraged to th emax to send my kids to college, and when I'd like to think that a comfortable retirement is around the corner.

We are in unchartered waters here. And we better wise up. But I see no evodence of that.

One good thing. If it gets bad, that could be the end of liberalism for a generation, because it could be so bad, that no one can deny that we should have listened to Paul Ryan in 2012, and that everyone who attacked Ryan for saying we needed to change entitlement programs (i.e., all the liberals) were as wrong as you can be.

I think your kids are just a bit older than mine. It's terrifying. Unless you are in tehy small minority who are wealthy enough to ride out anything, it's terrifying. And it was all avoidable, if we had the discipline to live within our means. I predict history will view Obama as having done unspeakable damage to the country, more than Al Queda could have ever hoped to inflict.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by JohnR

I read this yesterday. I can't fathom what we are going to do. What can they do? Probably what some wanted to do all along - abolish money.

But what will be your baseline of trade? "I'll give you 100 bushels of corn for one carbon credit?"

It is not sustainable. It is math. How have we come to here?

Yesterday when I was replying to Eben's less than accurate rebuttal on the debt per President I followed up with how much this would be for his kid and my kid, as an example. I just could not go through with it and twice edited it out.

We are doing the same thing Greece did - the only difference is other nations had higher hopes that the US would not be so stupid and could pay back.

"how much this would be for his kid and my kid, as an example"

That depends upon a lot of things,m interest rates, cost of healthcare, increase in lif eexpectancy for the baby Boomers. The average of estimates that I see, is about $160,000 per person, to address the federal debt (including SS and Medicare shortfalls). Then, most states have debt in addition, CT is at about $27k per person. So my kids (ages 8, 5, 4) are in debt to CT and the feds, of almost $190k each, and that is accumulating interest every day. Is that fair to them? And if I say that out loud, I get accused of hating old people and sick people. That's how we got here. Bastards. They should all be lined up against a wall, Central American style. "Aputen...Fuego!!"

[JohnR]

I know - and this all assumes we are not in a war on the European plains this summer.

Paying off that debt could be the least of our problems.

But Russia and Bayonets are so, well, history and old fashioned.