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An Article
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The Credit Crisis Is Becoming A Political Battleground
America's confidence is eroding because our brand of unregulated capitalism is increasingly not working for them
December 05, 2007
By
Danny Schechter
(View author info)
Copyright Danny Schechter
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WASHINGTON - Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It's expanding by about $1.4 billion a day -- or nearly $1 million a minute.
What's that mean to you?
It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.
Even if you've escaped the recent housing and credit crunches and are coping with rising fuel prices, you may still be headed for economic misery, along with the rest of the country. That's because the government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion.
And like homeowners who took out adjustable-rate mortgages, the government faces the prospect of seeing this debt -- now at relatively low interest rates -- rolling over to higher rates, multiplying the financial pain.
So long as somebody is willing to keep loaning the U.S. government money, the debt is largely out of sight, out of mind.
But the interest payments keep compounding, and could in time squeeze out most other government spending -- leading to sharply higher taxes or a cut in basic services like Social Security and other government benefit programs. Or all of the above.
A major economic slowdown, as some economists suggest may be looming, could hasten the day of reckoning.
The national debt -- the total accumulation of annual budget deficits -- is up from $5.7 trillion when President Bush took office in January 2001 and it will top $10 trillion sometime right before or right after he leaves in January 2009.
That's $10,000,000,000,000.00, or one digit more than an odometer-style "national debt clock" near New York's Times Square can handle. When the privately owned automated clock was activated in 1989, the national debt was $2.7 trillion.
It only gets worse. More.... By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer
Mon Dec 3, 6:55 AM ET http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071203/ap_on_go_ot/nation_in_debt_4
Posted Dec 9 2007 12:25AM CET
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Major Foreign Holders of U. S. Treasury Securities
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Sharon Stephens
Montclair, California |
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If the American people ever allow a private central bank [e.g., the Federal Reserve] to gain control of the issuance of their currency, the banks and the corporations that will grow up around them will, first by inflation and then by deflation, leave Americans homeless in the land their forefathers conquered. -Thomas Jefferson See www.RonPaul2008.com
Posted Dec 7 2007 11:17AM CET
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J Clayton
, California |
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Excellent article. The thing is, in order for an economy to function properly there has to be a balance of production/service to consumption. In the past, the limit on that consumption has always been the ability to pay for it. It is/was the ultimate governing factor. The credit crisis really began 25 years ago with the advent of easily available credit cards. Now, we find ourselves with a large portion of the future funds available for consumption already spoken for. It reminds me of the great Orson Wells movie "Touch of Evil". When Quinlan (Orson Wells), the corrupt cop asks Tanya (Marlene Dietrich), the local bar proprietor to read his future, this is the exchange.
Quinlan: Come on, read my future for me.
Tanya: You haven't got any.
Quinlan: What do you mean?
Tanya: Your future is all used up.
That's pretty much what has happen to the American economy, the future is all used up. The money has all been spent. All that's left is the debt.
Robert Metcalf
Chadds Ford, PA
Editor - Pennsylvania Homeowners News
Posted Dec 6 2007 2:19PM CET
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Robert Metcalf
(View Profile)
, Pennsylvania |
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