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Who is to blame if the US defaults on its debt?

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  1. #11

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    If you need to blame some one, then all the voters in the USA are responsible. They have elected the present Congressmen and the Senators.


  2. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by Oldtimer:
    If you need to blame some one, then all the voters in the USA are responsible. They have elected the present Congressmen and the Senators.
    Once again, as with Mat's answer that's a way of really not answering the question. The voters elect the Congress to represent them. It is up the the Congressmen to cut deals in the best interests of their constituents and the country at large. If in the pursuit of short term political advantage the representatives fail to reach a deal and a crisis occurs, you can hardly blame the voters for that. However, if at the next election the voters send back all the same representatives who were unwilling to compromise, then, yes, at that point you could start to blame the voters.

  3. #13

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    US modern culture is to blame.

    Me , me , me and all jam today irrespective of whether you can afford it.

    Both sides contribute to that.


  4. #14

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    The problem with the US politicians these days is their complete unwillingness to give any quarter to any others.

    No longer is politics an art of seeking and making compromises which while not perfect support your principles and help those you were elected to represent. No longer do we see the US cross style of sponsorship of bills and good things. Politics is a blood sport.

    Republicans want the White House and Senate back in full and the way to do it is to ensure that the President looks bad. It's politics over gov't priorities.

    The bad news in the GOP is that the Tea Party are even holding their own GOP hostage.

    All this has come from Republican style attack politics which destroys people for your gain and just elects a bunch of folks with narrow interests versus the national interest.

    No question that the US put their last two silly wars on what the White House say are credit cards and now spending $10 million US per day bombing Libya - you really got to wonder where there brains have gone. Soc. Security and Medicare are entitlement issues that must be addressed but the rich are getting Bush tax breaks and there are billions that can be realized by eliminating tax loop holes for the rich.

    We in Canada are overtaxed but at least our gov't got our fiscal house in order when the PM Mulroney conservatives spent like drunken sailors and put us in a serious situation. Now our fiscal house is okay and we can withstand the bad economy better. Funny thing is - the left in both the US and Canada have been far more fiscally responsible than the right since the 1970s.


  5. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by Football16:
    The bad news in the GOP is that the Tea Party are even holding their own GOP hostage.

    All this has come from Republican style attack politics which destroys people for your gain and just elects a bunch of folks with narrow interests versus the national interest.

    No question that the US put their last two silly wars on what the White House say are credit cards and now spending $10 million US per day bombing Libya - you really got to wonder where there brains have gone. Soc. Security and Medicare are entitlement issues that must be addressed but the rich are getting Bush tax breaks and there are billions that can be realized by eliminating tax loop holes for the rich.

    We in Canada are overtaxed but at least our gov't got our fiscal house in order when the PM Mulroney conservatives spent like drunken sailors and put us in a serious situation. Now our fiscal house is okay and we can withstand the bad economy better. Funny thing is - the left in both the US and Canada have been far more fiscally responsible than the right since the 1970s.
    Mostly agree except I would say that it was during the 2000s that the Republican mantra switched from 'live within your means' to 'lower taxes all the time while bribing voters by not cutting spending' (in fact - with the Medicare drug benefit - massively increasing medicare spending). For at least the last ten or fifteen years the House Republicans have been quite irresponsible in proposing tax cuts as a cure all. Meanwhile the Democrats are split between the post-Cllinton 'realists' who recognize that entitlements have to be contained, and the hard core liberals (e.g., Pelosi) who believe that the answer to all social problems is to increase taxes on 'the rich'.

    Also, again, while the wars don't help military spending is a relatively minor part of the problem. Spending $10 million a day to get rid of Quadaffi for the benefit of the world is money well spent - if it does eventually get rid of him.

  6. #16

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    Original Post Deleted
    To be fair, I'm not sure that I recall Bush pushing for a stimulus package (although whether he would have or not is another question - and he certainly supported the loose monetary policies that gave rise to bubble in the first place). Bush and most other sensible people strongly push for the TARP and other packages to shore up the financial system. Obama pushed for the stimulus in order to prevent the unemployment rate 'from going below 8% [sic]'. It is certainly a viable argument to say that given the crisis the stimulus was the only way to jump but of course the Austrian economists said even at the time that adding additional debt to a problem caused by debt wouldn't help

    What has happened in the past four years is that private America has cleaned up its balance sheets and delevereged considerably, whereas the public sector has basically stepped in an indebted itself to finance the stimulus. An Austrian would probably say that the deleveraging in the private sector would have happened anyway; all we have done is load up the debt on the public side to no avail. I am not sure that is true since that fails to consider the psychological element of a free falling economy without stimulus - might things have been worse? Anyway, no American politician since Reagan has been brave enough to weather a brutal recession while cutting spending. Of course, things worked out fairly well in that situation but there was a lot more panic in the air last time.

    To put things in perspective though, total US private and public sector debt as a percentage of GDP is lower than in a lot of other countries, particularly, the UK, so it is not clear that the US is, overall, in too much debt currently. All one can say for sure is that the budget deficit is going to get much worse over the next few years if something isn't done.

    We can debate whether the various government interventions over the past few years has been necessary or wise but he is the man in charge and inevitably will get the credit - or the blame.
    Last edited by Freetrader; 31-07-2011 at 01:18 PM.

  7. #17

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    Obama's to blame. he should have had a couple more terms in the senate before running for the white house.

    look back to what happened to clinton in 94. Newt thought with his new majority he could run clinton round by the nose and look what clinton did, smashed them all, while still carry on with that tubby intern.

    OB is the POTUS and he has the pulpit and the power instead he's squandering it.

    poor old bubba, every night he must just look at himself in the mirror and shake his head, before rolling off another tubby intern.


  8. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by Freetrader:
    Once again, as with Mat's answer that's a way of really not answering the question.
    Hey Johnny, there is no need to spend time trying to figure out who is responisble - WASTE of time. Get it fixed and then later look for heads if you wish too; looking for heads before it is fixed is a distraction.

    So Rep/Dem should work hard on fixing the issue, not on looking at who is to blame.

  9. #19

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    actually, US debt as percentage of GDP was much higher after WWII
    So I feel lots what we read is just to feed the tabloid press


  10. #20

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    Original Post Deleted
    Yes, I was referring broadly to TARP and government support of the financial system that was facing collapse. With the exception of the stimulus checks and certainly, if you are going to spend government money I prefer that it go back to individuals, there was no 'stimulus' on that list. The difference is money injected to keep entities solvent versus money spent to increase consumption. Except for the stimulus checks, everything else was the provision of capital to support government underwritten agencies or restore confidence in the fincancial system. TARP itself, of course, didn't actually cost the government $700 billion, in fact, if one excludes AIG (which wasn't techincally part of TARP) the government made a profit. AIG was the entity that really blew up and cost the taxpayers money; but the total cost of TARP is actually expected to total less than $25 Billion. Obama later expanded the concept of TARP to buy out GM and Chysler, which allowed the labor unions to control what happened to those companies.

    Troubled Asset Relief Program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Last edited by Freetrader; 31-07-2011 at 02:15 PM.

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