Morris Dovey wrote:
Doug Winterburn wrote:
Morris Dovey wrote:
Frank Boettcher wrote:

The root cause in this instance is
those politicians who set the system up and created the environment.

Actually, I think it would be one individual who is usually though of
as being other than a politician - the then Chairman of the Federal
Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan, who redirected some 70 trillion
dollars in world wide investment funds away from Treasury Bonds.

If true, he prevented $70 trillion from being added to the national debt!

Or at least by the amount that would have been invested in T-Bonds (It
seems unlikely that the entire global investment pool would be invested
here.)

In addition to preventing a great deal of that investment here, he also
gets credit for /all/ of the consequences of that redirection - which
will likely have significant negative impact on our lives, our
children's lives, and our grandchildren's lives.

It was more than just a bit startling to me to realize how much of the
world uses the US Treasury as the safest bank available to them. The
Treasury Department Brochure (mentioned upstream) mentions that the US
Treasury is paid by other countries' central banks for performing some
of its banking functions.

It's going to be interesting to see how much this "savings" is going to
cost US taxpayers - as well as the ordinary folks in other countries.
Today Iceland's currency went into the tank - I wonder whose tomorrow.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls...


Every bond/note/security the US issues is paid for in cash, which is
then spent by the government - hence every dollar issued in these
bonds/notes/securities is a dollar added to the national debt. When
these folks come back to the treasury with their bond/note/security in
hand and want their cash back plus interest, the US government has to
get the cash from their only source of revenue - taxpayers!

How in the world could inviting foreigners to increase our national debt
be good for the US or it's [future] taxpayers? It's the same problem we
have with our trust funds - every dollar put into them adds a dollar
plus interest for future taxpayers to cough up - currently approaching
$5 trillion and climbing fast.

It's as though we are going beserk with a credit card that has our
children's/grandchildren's names on them.