"jim" wrote in message
...
Scout wrote:



Seems more like
You are the one that is palming stuff off on the future.

Your generation didn't pay the govt debts of the last generation
and the next generation won't pay the govt debts of today

Not by my choice, but those that simply keep pushing the problem down the
line.....watching it grow larger and larger and larger.


The problem is not the federal debt.
The private sector amassed $24 trillion in debt from 1998-2008

How much of that is mortgages?

--
Ed Huntress


(in case you are weak in math that is $80,000 per citizen)

and then in 2008 the assets against which they had borrowed
all that money suddenly dropped in value by $15 trillion

(again if you can't divide that is a loss of $50,000 per person)

whoops

And as much as you would like to blame the govt for the
mess we are now in - it aint the govt that caused that mess to
happen
And it aint the govt that is causing the aftermath of the mess

Right now the US private sector is so shell-shocked from what
happened that few are borrowing and huge numbers are trying to
get out of debt by repaying loans with whatever they can spare
Private sector borrowing has become negative and
saving has increased by a factor of 3.

this is a graph shoeing what the private sector borrowed per
year for the last 60 years:
http://tinyurl.com/4x9zcgu


Unfortunately when the nation is mostly paying back debts
and saving there is considerably less money available to buy
the goods and services that keep Americans employed
So, in case you haven't noticed, the result has been
lots of people lost their jobs
And again the govt didn't cause that to happen
and
about all the govt can do is to keep up its spending level
to make up for some
of the decline in spending from the private sector
so that even more won't lose their jobs

This federal deficit spending is going to keep on
happening as long as the private sector is deleveraging
To balance the budget now would be gruesome




If I had my way the federal government wouldn't be able to borrow money
except in an emergency and then they would have to sell bonds to the
public.

Tell it to the founding fathers. They gave the govt
authority to borrow as much as it deems appropriate

But as I said you are looking at the wrong problem
And when you think the problem is something that it is not
you will always arrive at the wrong answer

That way if we don't consider it an emergency then we don't have to loan
them the money. Checks and Balances.

Well I don't know what qualifies as an emergency...

But if the government does not continue to borrow and spend
the nation will go into a recession
and if the US balances the budget for long there will
be a depression

Right now at our current rate of growth China will be
richer than the US in 30 years
If you succeed in balancing the budget in the US today, China
will be ahead of the US in less than 5 years

That is what we are talking about leaving our grandchildren