Debtocalypse

[pxmcc]

the u.s. debt has just passed 31 trillion dollars. as in, $31,000,000,000,000.00
no, that's not a typo.

https://www.usdebtclock.org/index.html?taxpayer

any suggestions?

do we need a manhatten project or moonshot type of approach to solving it?

what will be the actual impact on regular Americans if we do nothing, or if we do something?

will there ever be a moment in politics where we seriously address this issue, or are we headed down the path to Greece's sorry fate?

finally, are we all just completely fucked?

[winn dixie]

Its a made up number that really means nothing. We could walk up to the debt counter and hit reset. Nothing would happen or change.
Real Talk from a Republican

[pxmcc]

so, are you saying we can default on our obligations and it would be no big deal?

[hodoggie]

Originally Posted by pxmcc

so, are you saying we can default on our obligations and it would be no big deal?

If we could print our own money that we force others to trade with, backed by the most powerful military on the planet... then yes, we could rack up as much debt as we want without much consequence. Unfortunately if any of these things change, a "great reset" will occur.

In the short term inflation will decrease our debt (and wages, etc).

[boardman]

Why do you think the Fed isn't in a huge hurry to curb inflation any time soon?

[pxmcc]

If we could print our own money that we force others to trade with, backed by the most powerful military on the planet... then yes, we could rack up as much debt as we want without much consequence. Unfortunately if any of these things change, a "great reset" will occur.
umm, well said sir..

In the short term inflation will decrease our debt (and wages, etc).[/QUOTE]
umm yes, but don't forget the fed. to combat inflation, it jacks up the prime. perfect, right? sure, until uncle sam's own rates get jacked up too. not so fun.
we can't technically default on our interest payments, or it would be The Great Depression: one more time, with feeling..

but unlike greece, uncle sam could moneytize the debt by printing 31 trillion greenbacks. so not greece, which got fucked cause its debt was denominated in euros, not drachmas. but maybe the greenback goes the way of the ruble: just a bunch of worthless sheets of paper that work great as kindling and toilet paper..

i maintain that our twin chronic budget deficits/crazy debt and chronic trade deficits spell our doom, unless we get our house in order. call me sadly bearish on the present flight path. i would be stoked to be proven wrong.

i call for a change in the flight path so we don't have to just hope for good luck.

@boardman: i dunno. lately, they've been pretty freakin serious. enough to scare the crap outta wall street and elizabeth warren. (those are some strange ass bedfellows..) they both are preaching to the fed that if we keep on the present trajectory, we're in for a f-18 style carrier landing with 40 foot swells and a nasty crosswind..

how bout a carbon tax big enough to run a balanced budget and start paying down the debt? 2 for 1: save the planet and the country. a jfk type statesman would be needed to pull it off tho. maybe one of his grandkids could step up to the plate. (i'm legit at least only half joking!)

[winn dixie]

Im saying just reset the ticker to 0! Its an artificial number thats made up. No one has to be affected. The Dollar will have more value and I believe would instantly help inflation.

[pxmcc]

Originally Posted by winn dixie

Im saying just reset the ticker to 0! Its an artificial number thats made up. No one has to be affected. The Dollar will have more value and I believe would instantly help inflation.

that's sorta like the u.s. declaring bankruptcy. maybe that's the answer..

[boardman]

Originally Posted by pxmcc

@boardman: i dunno. lately, they've been pretty freakin serious. enough to scare the crap outta wall street and elizabeth warren. (those are some strange ass bedfellows..) they both are preaching to the fed that if we keep on the present trajectory, we're in for a f-18 style carrier landing with 40 foot swells and a nasty crosswind..

They are too far behind the curve. They should have been raising rate over a year ago when inflation was taking hold. I don't understand how they are measuring CPI and PPI but the summer of 2021 is when it started hitting me hard. They wouldn't admit to inflation when it started going through the roof, calling it transitory and acting like it was no big deal. Now they won't admit were in a recession, totally ignoring the traditional definition. So yeah the landing is gonna hurt.





The whole problem has to do with perpetual Keynesian economics. It's fine for a short time, when you have a period of instability, to prop up the economy with fed intervention. It's not sustainable though. The pendulum swings wildly and the fed keeps feeding the beast.

[Unique_Carpenter]

Boardman is quite correct.
The inherent time lag is simply not understood.
My group noted the PPI on selected items 3Q20 and we saved a few client's wallets.

Although the Keynesian model is one of the best around, the updated version that considers perpetual, does not consider the issue of politicians ignoring relevant data, and then at a later date (as in to late) meddling incorrectly (and expecting instant results) which will always make situations 2 or 3 times worse that what it could have been. And, we end up with what we have today, with the pendulum swinging to far to the wrong end.
Basically, politicians can't hit a barn wall with a Jart.

In that all economic theories are fundamentally based on the economy as a whole, politicians jacking with just a small handful of items will, of course, always jack up everything else regardless.

My biggest humor item is that Yellen, supposedly a career economist, went full politician several years ago.

To close, wall street has better economists than the fed. And those guys will protect their clients, and let the fed strategy room leak data they can take advantage of.

[pxmcc]

Originally Posted by winn dixie

Im saying just reset the ticker to 0! Its an artificial number thats made up. No one has to be affected. The Dollar will have more value and I believe would instantly help inflation.

fyi winn, i can't really give you a good justification for this in the number of words i am willing and/or
able to type after a 9 hour anthills hike in the dark with no lights-it was like being in middle freakin earth, borderline mystical and kind of a religious experience-but do you remember that thing called the Great Depression? If we did what you propose, the entire world would enter into a Marvelously Super Awesome Best Ever Ridiculously Wonderful and Highly Epically Outstanding Depression To End All Depressions..

if someone could do a hobby brother a solid and explain on my behalf to winn why this would be the case, i would be eternally in your debt..

[pxmcc]

Originally Posted by Unique_Carpenter

Boardman is quite correct.
The inherent time lag is simply not understood.
My group noted the PPI on selected items 3Q20 and we saved a few client's wallets.

Although the Keynesian model is one of the best around, the updated version that considers perpetual, does not consider the issue of politicians ignoring relevant data, and then at a later date (as in to late) meddling incorrectly (and expecting instant results) which will always make situations 2 or 3 times worse that what it could have been. And, we end up with what we have today, with the pendulum swinging to far to the wrong end.
Basically, politicians can't hit a barn wall with a Jart.

In that all economic theories are fundamentally based on the economy as a whole, politicians jacking with just a small handful of items will, of course, always jack up everything else regardless.

My biggest humor item is that Yellen, supposedly a career economist, went full politician several years ago.

To close, wall street has better economists than the fed. And those guys will protect their clients, and let the fed strategy room leak data they can take advantage of.

great post UC!

lets get one bit of financial fairy dust out of the way before i advocate for anything. supply siders have this theory-footnote, they've never been right well pretty much ever and happy to view any data to the contrary that anyone can dig up-that if you reduce tax rates across the board, but especially on corporations and the rich, that that extra revenue in the pockets of corporations and the rich will be used in such a way to cause great economic activity that even at the lower marginal tax rates, the total tax revenue will increase. well believing that, based on the historical evidence of what actually happens when marginal tax rates on corporations and the rich are reduced, is the same as thinking that fairy dust will help us pay off our national debt and change our trade deficits to trade surplusses. so if that's not the answer, then what is?

i contend that keynesian policies are the correct course of action during dire economic straits, such as the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Covid-19 Clusterfuck. (can we add that last term to the financial lexicon?) and i believe the economic data supports that conclusion. (also, i believe you said that you don't object to keynesian financial policies, just to their overuse, which i think is 100% correct.)

but what do financially smart people-and for that matter, companies and countries-do when the good times roll? do they max out all their credit cards? do they borrow every nickel they can from their local bank branch which their income says they're qualified for?

nope. what they do is they pay off their debts, all the way to zero. and if they're really smart, they will ask those same lenders for credit limit increases. and max out their credit limits, not their credit card balances.

the last president to run a balanced budget, and then start to pay off the debt, was clinton. then bush came to power, passed huge tax cuts, and started two wars that he put on Uncle Sam's credit card, the second of which was fully elective and entirely idiotic, which i expressed to my law school peers at the time, most of whom, as Republicans, supported Gulf War II.

the first war-afghanistan-i made the mistake of supporting, but with the caveat that it be paid for. the second i called out as idiotic and said should be led by bush on the front lines in a tank, and be fully paid for by the idiots who supported the war. turned out it was all a basket case, as i predicted, and i advocated that bush, cheney, rummy and wolfowitz should be tried as war criminals, supporting torture and so on, in violation of the Law of War as laid out in the Geneva Conventions.

Obama inherited a trainwreck from bush, but by doing everything right, he got us out of the Great Recession and also got deficits lower and lower each year, way lower when inflation-adjusted than bush 43 and ronald reagan. i maintain that deficits should be 0 almost all of the time, but obama did a yeoman's job getting the us out of the great recession, and by his last year, deficits adjusted for inflation had never been lower since the clinton years.

trump comes in during booming economic times left by obama. what does he do? instead of reducing the deficit to 0 and beginning to pay down the debt, he passes a huge tax cut that literally blew a hole in the federal budget. total and complete lunacy.

then covid, which served as a quick and searing reminder that competence matters. Course then our deficits went through the roof, as trump correctly chose keynesian policies.

verdict still out on biden, but i predict his inflation-adjusted deficits will be nowhere near as disastrously awful as trump's.

i hate to end on a political note, but since the facts support it, here we go. Republicans talk a big game on fiscal discipline, but the only time they take that seriously is when a Dem is in the White House, when they declare the failure of the Dem president to run a balanced budget with zero deficits to be a henious example of the failure of democratic policy, and any expansion of the social safety net to be "too expensive", and "unaffordable." when a republican is in office and proposes a huge tax cut, sudddenly they could give zero fucks about deficit spending and the size of the federal debt.

mcconnell is no patriot, just a power hungry weasel who cares nothing about the country he supposedly serves. he's a disciple of machievelli, and nothing more. like trump, he's happy to throw america under the bus when it is politically expedient. instead of saying, "what can i collaborate on with obama on to make america a better place?" (including say weakening China), he said, "what can i do to assure that obama is a one-term president?" (that's why i am thoroughly amused with trump's decimation of mcconnell on social media.)