Articles tagged as

Debt

Bernanke’s Bender

Bernanke sober- or so it seems(Note:This arrived in my mail box unattributed, but I have discovered that it is from The Onion.  I have edited any questionable language by replacing letters with asterisks.  This image is not associated with the article at The Onion.)
 
SEWARD, NE—Claiming he wasn’t afraid to let everyone in attendance know about "the real mess we’re in," Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke reportedly got drunk Tuesday and told everyone at Elwood’s Corner Tavern about how absolutely f****d the U.S. economy actually is.
 
Bernanke, who sources confirmed was "totally sloshed," arrived at the drinking establishment at approximately 5:30 p.m., ensconced himself upon a bar stool, and consumed several bottles of Miller High Life and a half-dozen shots of whiskey while loudly proclaiming to any patron who would listen that the economic outlook was "pretty goddamned awful if you want the God’s honest truth."
 
"Look, they don’t want anyone except for the Washington, D.C. bigwigs to know how bad shit really is," said Bernanke, slurring his words as he spoke. "Mounting debt exacerbated—and not relieved—by unchecked consumption, spiraling interest rates, and the grim realities of an inevitable worldwide energy crisis are projected to leave our entire economy in the sh****r for, like, a generation, man, I’m telling you."

Read more

193,000 Leave The Workforce

Bloomberg News (c/o Hot Air) reports that 193,000 more people have stopped looking for work in the Obama economy, taking 156,000 off the ‘Unemployed’ rolls.  This has effectively diminished the news that payrolls added 117,000, an anemic, lateral shift in an employment picture that sees more people giving up than finding work.

But people bailing has it’s statistical advantages.  With fewer unemployed on the books the rate of employment looks better, if you can call 9.1% better.  Another problem?  Debt management.  With such a large percentage of the available work force idle, that’s a natural resource wasted.

Meanwhile, Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary, reminded us that the White House does not create jobs.  It creates the conditions for job creation.

Yes it does…in China, India, Mexico, Brazil, just about everywhere but America. 

 

But is that the real plan?  After all, remember what joblessness means for the economy…(on the jump)

 

Read more

Why You Should Run Screaming From A Balanced Budget Amendment

Run away -Photo Credit UK Daily MailI’ve never understood the Republican-conservative, Libertarian, Right-Wing-in General, love affair with the idea of a balanced budget amendment.  And it is not just my fear of letting the same modern Americans who think doing away with the electoral college is a good idea have a whack at the US Constitution.  It’s actually much simpler than that. A balance has two sides, and all things being equal, the side paying will get screwed.

And yes, I understand that almost every state has to balance it’s budget.  Even New Hampshire–despite what former governor (and dopey US Senator) Jeanne Shaheen thinks–must do this by law.  But this is no guarantee that a government will not spend more than it takes in.  The same government that decides what it spends will decide what it takes in.  And  unless you are a Granite Stater with a severe case of ADD, or just a very short memory, you may recall that balancing the budget need not have a single thing to do with austerity, control, or concern for the people who pay for government.  It merely requires you to find revenues to equal your spending.

For a quick review of how bad that scenario is, lets grab Simon and Mr. Peabody and jump into our way-back machine to the halcyon days after the 2006 elections when Democrats had complete control of the New Hampshire government for four years. " Balanced Budget" meant 100’s of new taxes and fees, many of them forced through at the last possible minute.  There were taxes that were enacted without a single hearing (in violation of other portions of New Hampshire law).  Land would be sold to raise revenue without anyone knowing what land or who might buy it, for how much, or if we could even sell it.  There was one time money, imagined cost shifting, raiding of dedicated funds, transfers from future years, and all manner of dark accounting magic used to create the illusion of a ‘balanced’ budget," perched in a Rube Goldbergian maze, upon a pedestal,  in a pentagram, guarded by straw men arranging goat entrails, scrying into alternate fiscal dimensions to hold off the demons of structural deficits yet to be.  To put a finer point on it, revenues were imagined to cover desired spending, without the revenue every actually being there to begin with, and when it failed to appear, someone had to pay for it to balance the budget. That or cut programs and spending. Typically, it is not the latter.

So having witnessed this abuse in one of the most politically active states, under some of the most withering scrutiny, with the benefit of the third largest representative body in the world, makes me wonder why anyone who lived through it would even suggest that things would be just ducky if we let distant, professional legislators, have a whack at it along the shores of the Potomac?

Sounds scary.  But could it get worse? Of course it could.

Read more

Is there a Glass Debt Ceiling?

Obama says he won’t sign anything if Harry Reid hasn’t urinated all over it, and we know Reid and the democrat Senate is running cover for Obama so he isn’t forced to lead. They call this compromise. I call it a sign. A sign that we need to fire Obama and Reid…

Americans Deserve Better

Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, ‘the buck stops here’. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

A Brief History of President Obama’s Fiscal Record

A Brief History of President Obama’s Fiscal Record

Setting the Record Straight
July 15, 2011

 
 

Despite newfound concern with the debt overhang stifling economic growth, President Obama’s record falls far short of his rhetoric.  Let’s review the decisions made by President Obama and Congressional Democrats over the past couple of years, and the disappointing results of their policy choices:

January 20, 2009 
President Obama sworn into office

  • President tells the American people in his Inaugural Address: “Those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

  • Debt Held By Public = $6.31 trillion

February 17, 2009
President Signs into Law the Spending Stimulus

  • The stimulus adds $821 billion in new spending according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

  • The White House promises this infusion of spending and borrowing would keep unemployment rate below 8%.  As millions of Americans are painfully aware, that promise was broken.

  • Debt Held by Public = $6.48 trillion

February 26, 2009
President Issues FY2010 Budget

  • The President’s budget adds $2.7 trillion in new debt in FY2010 and imposes $1.4 trillion in new taxes.

  • Debt Held by Public = $6.58 trillion

March 11, 2009
President Signs FY2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act

  • The massive spending bill includes 8,696 earmarks at a cost of $11 billion.

  • The spending bill adds $19 billion in new spending above the baseline – an 8.6% spending increase.

  • Debt Held by Public = $6.66 trillion

April 29, 2009
Congressional Democrats Pass FY2010 Budget

  • The Congressional Democrats’ budget calls for a $2 trillion debt increase in 2010, and another 8.9% increase in non-defense discretionary spending.

  • The reconciliation process is abused to later pave the way for health care overhaul to be jammed into law.

  • Of note: this is the last time Congressional Democrats will bother budgeting.

  • Debt Held by Public = $6.85 trillion

continued on the jump…

Read more

Bar Stool Economics

Left wing tax policy and the class warfare rhetoric they use to advance it crumbles in the face of even the most simplistic analysis.  Take the left wing war on the wealthy.  They argue that the rich do not pay their fair share even though the rich pay most of the taxes.  Here in New Hampshire the Mark Fernald wing of the democrat party apes this ridiculous technique on the matter of New Hampshire property taxes, a notion upon which the social justice mavens and the Granite State "Fair Tax" Coalition are meant to agitate.  But neither claim holds water and this cross post from CNHT explains why.
 
Bar Stool Economics

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100 and If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.

Read more

Sebelius Admits to Obamacare Double tap

Double TapFans of the movie Zombieland might understand the post title right away.  In the movie the lead protagonist, "Columbus" has a set of rules he always follows which he believes are the only reason he is still alive after the world is turned into Zombieland by a mutant strain of Mad Cow disease that turns almost everyone into crazed, flesh eating zombies.

Rule #1 is cardio.   You need to be able to run away from Zombies.

Rule # 31 is Check the back seat.  Always look to see if there is a Zombie in the back of the car before you drive away in it.

Rule # 3, beware of bathrooms.  Zombies seem to be able to sense when you are at your weakest.

Rule #18 Limber up.  Wouldn’t want to come up lame.

And Rule #2?  Double Tap.  It is not a waste of ammo to put another round into the head of a zombie to make sure they are down for the count.

So who stumbles into my metaphor but Obama Zombie and Health and Inhuman Services Minister Kathleen Sebelius.  Note to the left–no, I am not suggesting we double tap her, I am suggesting she and the democrats of the 111th congress–and all your lying or deluded selves included– have double-tapped the Taxpayers.  Sebelius has just admitted to a congressional committee that a huge chunk of money they claimed was going to offset the costs of Obamacare is the legislative-accounting equivalent of a double tap.

Read more

Don’t Say There Is No Place To Cut.

Privatize the public school system and shift the educators, staff, maintenance, and transportation and facility costs off the books, along with converting public benefits and pensions into the same kind of programs the rest of the private markets have, and you would see property tax rates plummet.

A Modest (Budget Cutting) Proposal

Public Sector Unions SuckThere are plenty of towns like mine trying to figure out where they can cut costs.  But every conversation seems to end at cutting education or safety services.  While I find it hard to believe that there is nothing else in a budget you can trim, I think I have come up with a reasonable compromise (if not just for the sake of our own rhetorical amusement) that can cut at least a little bit of money from the budget without affecting staffing or resources.

Any teacher, support staff, officer, firefighter or public employee who currently pays union dues will have the total amount of dues paid calculated and that amount removed from their respective department budgets (aka:paychecks).  This will do the one thing no one ever seems willing to do; include the unions in the burden of cost cutting.

Read more

Share to...
BufferCopyFlipboardHacker NewsLineLinkedInMastodonMessengerMixPinterestPrintRedditSMSTelegramTumblrVKWhatsAppXingYummly