[Sixstrings]

Ok been a couple days now.. Where is Obama? The President hasn't said anything. Historic event, first time in all our lives and our parents lives and grandparents lives that US credit is downgraded. But the President has no words for us.

This weakness in the executive branch is dangerous.

Even if you're wrong, you never want to be weak. Weakness is the worst. We'd be better off with another FDR, a strong president who would just tell the ratings agencies how irrelevant they are:

But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings. -- FDR

We have to tax the rich. And do a jobs program. And financial reform and audit the Fed. Tax the Hell out of the rich on every dollar they spend offshore or send offshore.

The rich have to start paying, cuts are no kind of answer -- if we cut, that's going to cause a real Depression and you cannot get out of austerity with more austerity.

(Don't forget.. if we had another FDR in office the rich would be taxed right now and there wouldn't have been a downgrade.)

EDIT:

example.. France taxes its rich, and France is going to keep its AAA rating:

French AAA rating stable, says S&P
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/french-aaa-rating-stable-says-sp/173767-7.html

[vision-master]

No New Taxes!

What the rethugs ain't sayin'

No New Taxes for the Wealthy.... lsol

[rangerone314]

This weakness in the executive branch is dangerous.

Obama is weak.

He is like the b@st@rd offspring of George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, combining the adherence to BAU of GWB and the weakness of JC.

[kiwichick]

it's been all downhill since the idiot right murdered JFK

we forget at our peril eisenhower's warning

[Keith_McClary]

audit the Fed

Didn't they just do that?: The Fed Audit

[Novus]

That was no idiot who murdered JFK. Do you realize the US would be debt free if JFK lived because of executive order 00001. JFK wanted the US to adopt a debt free currency backed by silver. The banking cartels murder him for that. After he was Assassinated the silver coins in circulation were confiscated and melted down. We have not had real honest President in the US since that day.


Obama could still be a hero if he picked up where JFK left off but he would have to turn against his masters who put him in power to do so. The only way he would survive is if he did what Philip IV did in 1307 and have all the conspirators hanged for high treason.

[Cloud9]

I love the way we rewrite history. Wasn’t Oswald married to a Russian girl he met while living in the worker’s paradise after he defected to the Soviet Union? I suspect that Nikita Khrushchev had Kennedy wacked for forcing him to back down during the Cuban Missile Crisis. If the Cold War Soviets would attempt to kill a Pope, they would not blink at killing a president. Khrushchev was from the Stalin era and was particularly ruthless.

I suspect the veil of secrecy prevented an all out nuclear war.

[Novus]

Dig a little deeper Cloud9 you will find the real truth. The history of US is that of the people at war with the banks. Every president has had to fight with the Banks from the founding days of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson to Andrew Jackson dissolving the banks to Lincoln financing the war with green backs. I could go on an on and on. Wilson and FDR had to make devils bargains with the banks. JFK was murdered by the banks and Nixon and every president since has been owned by the banks. Bush bailed out the banks at tax payer expense while Obama continued TARP. They are all puppets.

[Sixstrings]

The Fed Audit

The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
...
To read the GAO report, click here.

Oh I forgot about that.. it's not like THE NEWS SAID A DAMN THING ABOUT IT NOW IS IT KEITH?

We all knew it anyhow, sixteen trillion given to fat cat Hamptons caviar gobblers and crooks and foreign nations and even Mumar Gadafi.

Where did the Fed come up with $16 trillion to hand out? What a joke. We can't do a jobs program in this country, we have to supposedly cut social security and old folks but we have SIXTEEN TRILLION to give to the rich in near 0% loans for them to go invest offshore. And foreign banksters like Societe Generale got a big ass chunk of that money too, yet France keeps its AAA rating. Makes no sense, we bail out the whole planet but yet we're not AAA. Whatever.

16 trillion. Just image if Ben Bernanke could have seen fit to loan even one of these trillions to small business in the US. No that would make sense, instead they have to give it all to banksters.

OTHOH.. everyone's 401k benefits from the Fed BUYING UP THE STOCK MARKET indirectly. But that's no good state of affairs, what's the purpose of a market if GOVERNMENT funds it eh? Cut out the middle man. Do a public pension. We can't afford all these trillions to keep the damn stock market up, do a public pension instead and double Social Security -- cut out the hedge fund bankster middle men. Let venture capitalists fund new ideas, work for their money for a change.

The whole world has gone crazy I tell ya, governments directly funding stock markets. It amounts to some monster communist capitalist hybrid for the rich, and is totally unhinged from what a real market is.

[Shar_Lamagne]

JFK II

[americandream]

The whole world has gone crazy I tell ya, governments directly funding stock markets. It amounts to some monster communist capitalist hybrid for the rich, and is totally unhinged from what a real market is.

This is not communism. Communism cannot abide accumulation by any group and is fundamentally driven by non-growth cultural issues rather than private economics.This corporate cronyism.

[AgentR11]

A BRAZEN FU...

Greenspan openly states the US could just print money to pay the debt.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/44051683

[prajeshbhat]

A BRAZEN FU... Greenspan openly states the US could just print money to pay the debt.

If greenspan thinks Bernanke is the only one who knows how to run a printing press he is in for a rude awakening.

example.. France taxes its rich, and France is going to keep its AAA rating:
French AAA rating stable, says S&P
IBN

The Europeans think the economy is about the people. The Americans think the economy is about things.

[americandream]

A BRAZEN FU...

Greenspan openly states the US could just print money to pay the debt.

If greenspan thinks Bernanke is the only one who knows how to run a printing press he is in for a rude awakening.

example.. France taxes its rich, and France is going to keep its AAA rating:
French AAA rating stable, says S&P
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/french-aaa-r ... 767-7.html

The Europeans think the economy is about the people. The Americans think the economy is about things.

America is ahead of the rest of us so I don't think we can really point the finger at them.

[Cog]

@Sixstrings

Your error is you somehow believe that the government's job is to create jobs. The only jobs they can create are more government jobs. I hope that is not your solution to the federal debt problem although it seems to be Obama's.

Austerity is nothing to be afraid of. Austerity rewards those who don't live paycheck to paycheck and have planned for the future. In other words, it rewards those who are intelligent enough to see trends and react to them and punishes those whose intellectual capability stops at American Idol and NASCAR. I'm not seeing the downside here for the country.

[prajeshbhat]

Austerity is nothing to be afraid of. Austerity rewards those who don't live paycheck to paycheck and have planned for the future. In other words, it rewards those who are intelligent enough to see trends and react to them and punishes those whose intellectual capability stops at American Idol and NASCAR. I'm not seeing the downside here for the country.

Not so sure about that. People are capable of bringing a vicious demagogue dictator to power when they see their entitlements disappear. This has happened throughout history.
It is impossible to have a government that doesn't run deficits, at least in democracies. I mean why would anyone want a government that collects taxes and spends nothing. Public debt is other peoples problem.
That is the natural order of things and I think it is a good thing. The last thing you want is an empire that lasts for ever.

[americandream]

Austerity is nothing to be afraid of. Austerity rewards those who don't live paycheck to paycheck and have planned for the future. In other words, it rewards those who are intelligent enough to see trends and react to them and punishes those whose intellectual capability stops at American Idol and NASCAR. I'm not seeing the downside here for the country.

Not so sure about that. People are capable of bringing a vicious demagogue dictator to power when they see their entitlements disappear. This has happened throughout history.
It is impossible to have a government that doesn't run deficits, at least in democracies. I mean why would anyone want a government that collects taxes and spends nothing. Public debt is other peoples problem.
That is the natural order of things and I think it is a good thing. The last thing you want is an empire that lasts for ever.

In any event, this austerity is essentially drawn on the securitisation deficit (homeowner capitalism) and is not exactly down to the socialised spending of the welfare state.

[Keith_McClary]

A BRAZEN FU... Greenspan openly states the US could just print money to pay the debt. CNBC

"The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default" said Greenspan on NBC's Meet the Press

That will reassure markets about the "'Full Faith and Credit of the United States".

[kiwichick]

cog

i don't think anyone would accuse you of having vision

[EnergyUnlimited]

Ok been a couple days now.. Where is Obama? The President hasn't said anything. Historic event, first time in all our lives and our parents lives and grandparents lives that US credit is downgraded. But the President has no words for us.

This weakness in the executive branch is dangerous.

Even if you're wrong, you never want to be weak. Weakness is the worst. We'd be better off with another FDR, a strong president who would just tell the ratings agencies how irrelevant they are:

And by doing so he (president) would sound like ailing Brezhnev claiming that Soviet Union will last for ever.

These are American politicians, no rating agencies, who are less and less relevant.
Investors *do* understand that US is an increasingly looking like banana republic, but the one which does not produce bananas.

We have to tax the rich. And do a jobs program. And financial reform and audit the Fed. Tax the Hell out of the rich on every dollar they spend offshore or send offshore.

...and you are still bankrupt regardless.
You must be thinking that those *rich* are plain morons and can do nothing to still avoid taxes.

The rich have to start paying, cuts are no kind of answer -- if we cut, that's going to cause a real Depression and you cannot get out of austerity with more austerity.

They are increasingly returning US passports to the vendor...
You should aim to remain in austerity mode... because there is nothing else you can do...
American Dream is over.
You will only see more and more austerity while resource base including oil is depleting.
There will be increasing austerity while you are correcting entire industrial revolution or rather while Nature is correcting it for you.
And that will be for long, long years, right until Mad Max comes singing.

example.. France taxes its rich, and France is going to keep its AAA rating:

French AAA rating stable, says S&P
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/french-aaa-rating-stable-says-sp/173767-7.html

They will keep this rate for a few months, maybe a year more.
Europe is in even bigger mess than US and this will reflect on French rating pretty soon.