Who's responsible for the US's massive debt? You and I!

Why does the President always get blamed for the economy, but Republicans in Congress get a pass?

To take one statistic that President Obama is often cited for by his critics, long-term unemployment. Those numbers have risen because of things like Baby Boomers leaving the workforce to retire, among other positive signs. The influence of retiring Boomers on the economy and statistics like jobs numbers will continue as the wave of Boomers grows, and peaks. Whoever is President in that period should see that number rise, and that's a positive sign that the economy is strong enough that they feel confident enough to retire rather than stay working. 

So when his critics - say everyone at Fock Snooze or the rest of the Conservative talking heads - cite these numbers, they should - but they don't - discuss why the numbers have changed. It's disingenuous to suggest they're something they're not.

As for the rising debt, what other course would  he have taken? It's entirely incorrect to use the family budget comparison that people like Paul Ryan employ - families can't print new money as needed nor are family budgets comprised of billions of line items; the complexity difference should suggest that anyone using the comparison really does not understand the complexity of the Federal economy - but that's often cited by budget conservatives as reason to cut the budget. 

Neither a family nor a nation can cut its way out of debt. The only hope is to raise income. For the family, that means a new revenue stream - someone else working or someone bringing in more money. But for a government, that means helping citizens make more money so tax revenues will rise proportionately, which in turn are used to pay down the debt.

But, just like FDR used debt to rebuild our economy following the Great Depression, had we not incurred new debt, our economy would have flatlined because in order to make money available to lenders - banks - to lend to businesses to finance new ventures or expansions in order to grow the economy, the US had to borrow it from abroad. At that point, new money can be made available - printed or made electronically utile - for workers who then spend it and it recycles throughout the economy, including a portion of which goes to pay down the debt.

This is also one of the reasons that being tied to a gold standard is like having an albatross around one's neck. If you only have a specific amount in the treasury, you can only print notes or make electronic funds available in that amount. A gold standard note - or even a treasury note for that matter - is a check. A gold standard bill is owned by the government, whereas a treasury note is owned by the central bank. So the more money you must print as both your population and economy grow, the less each note is worth because just like your own checking account, if you have checks and have to split the money in your account evenly between them - just as each $1 note is worth the same as every other - then the notes - or checks - become worth less the more you have to write or print. Simple math. But being able to borrow new money - incur debt - allows the government to add money to the treasury as needed to insure that everyone has money available to them. Yes, wealth still accumulates, but with a gold standard, we would have long ago run into the situation wherein the wealthy would own everything and the poor would own nothing because, eventually, the wealthy would have ended up with ALL of the limited gold-backed notes. The problem of continuing down that road is self-evident. It's not even up for discussion, and that's why even fiscal conservatives only mention it - the few who actually understand it, that is - when the rabble get fired up about it by some radio dittomonger. 

No President creates jobs. None. He doesn't own the companies that actually create them. All he can do is to make enough money available that banks feel comfortable enough to lower interest rates - following the Fed's lead - and making massive amounts of money available to investors so that they feel comfortable enough to borrow. 

That money has been available for several years now. But what has happened is that multinationals have used the opportunity to move either their headquarters or their operations offshore to increase their bottom lines while putting Americans out of work, and they're doing it on American taxpayers' dimes. Or trillion-dollar notes, as the case actually is. The President can't stop that. Congress must. And both John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have refused to allow legislation to pass that will prevent American taxpayers' money from being used abroad. 

Add to that that Conservative media like Fock Snooze and others have used the opportunity to fearmonger rather than unite the republic. 

The debt has grown because people think that jobs aren't coming back. They are. 

The debt has grown because people think that the government - meaning the President because they give the real problem, Republicans in Congress, a pass - isn't doing enough, so it has to continue to borrow money to make more and more of it available - which it is in unprecedented measure - in order to create new jobs. The jobs are there. What's not there is an honest media which will put partisanship aside and tell the truth.

The debt has grown because American corporations have used American taxpayers' money to fund their overseas expansions and tax evasion.

The debt has grown because Americans have been duped into thinking that the economy is too complex for them to understand unless the false equivalence of a family budget is used, and they can't make sense of it because you can't explain a complex system of that order using an example that doesn't fit.

The debt has grown because Americans have been lied to for so long, so deeply, and so broadly that they think that the guilty parties are innocent, and the innocent parties are guilty. 

The debt has grown because Americans demand cheap goods from abroad. We want to shop at Walmart and Kmart and Target and dollar stores, and we want cheap goods, and the only way to secure those things is if you have enough money in your account to make your currency worth more than that of the person from whom you're buying things.

The debt has grown because we demand that it grow.

Who's responsible for the debt growing? You and I.

Same Shit...well...Same Shit

Response to yet another excellent ThinkProgress.com article found here

The people ultimately behind sequestration are guilty of hypocrisy, greed, and treason. A republic's economy is wholly unlike a family's budget. A family can cut their way out of debt, but a nation can not. When an economy is depressed and the government cuts its budget, money stops flowing. The problem isn't a lack of money, it's the lack of movement of money. Government should monitor but generally stay out of the way of a healthy economy, but just like a doctor giving you an annual physical then getting out of your way when you're healthy, he must step in and do something when you're sick, and cutting the medications that have kept you healthy isn't the way to do it.

When an economy is sick, it takes the government to make money available at no or low interest in order to get the blood - money in this case - flowing again. Failing to do so would be like a doctor stepping back away from a patient when the patient goes into cardiac arrest and saying, "Hmmm. Maybe it will fix itself". Or likely not.

Sequestration is a failure of our government to take the shock paddles of money flow and zapping the heart of our republic back into health. Like a sick patient, the worse the recession, the longer it takes to get back to healthy, but pulling the plug will kill the patient, just like sequestration will kill our republic.

The BRICs - Brazil, Russia, India, and China - are breathing down our necks as it is. Now Congress has essentially said, "Come on, guys! You can overtake us! And we're here to help!" Cutting scientific funding is analogous to failure to fuel your car before a long trip. Yep, you'll have more money in your pocket...when you're on the side of the road out of gas watching others who planned ahead go flying past you.

The Idiocy of Cutting Spending During a Recession

I've been trying to find a way to convey the idiocy of cutting government spending during a recession. I hope this helps.

First, it's important to understand the effects of a recession. The worst symptom of a recession is a lack of money. Does that mean that the money doesn't exist somewhere? No. It exists, it's just not in circulation, and if it's not in circulation, people can't get it either by earning or borrowing it. If people can't get money, they can't spend money, and since that money that they spend goes into the paychecks of the guy at the gas station, the lady at the grocery store, and the folks who build houses, then they also have no money. Now stretch that example out far enough, covering the thousands of types of jobs, and make it cover the entire country. That's recession; no flowing money.

So, let's use water as our example. Most cities have large tanks either up on big supports looking like some sort of steel monster (or painted to look like a piece of fruit), or set on top of a hill. For the purpose of this demonstration, they're not tanks, they're banks. Imagine that the water those tanks hold isn't water, it's money. Water mains carry water to users the same way that investors invest money in job creators - employers. The smaller pipes represent employers who channel the money to their employees in return for time and effort put in by the employees.

Our water flows like this: Tanks > Water Mains > Smaller Pipes > Users

Our money flows like this: Banks* > Investors* > Employers > Employees

*This order may be reversed and often is.

Here I am at home and one day, I turn on the tap, but nothing comes out. There's water in the tanks. There's water in the mains. There's water in the pipes. But I can't get the water to flow.

This is recession.

The banks have money. Investors have money. The "tanks" are full, there's "water" in the "mains", but the "water" - money - isn't flowing. Why?

Fear. Sometimes fear mixed with greed.

In order for me to cook, bathe, clean, to use for sanitation, and water my garden and flowers, I need water. 

In order for me to eat, pay my mortgage or rent, pay for transportation, afford clothing, pay for the kids' necessities, I need money.

When water doesn't flow, we have a water shortage or drought.

When money doesn't flow, we have a money shortage or recession.

Money isn't flowing.

This is recession.

So, if the problem affecting being able to cook, bathe, clean, use for sanitation, and water my garden is a lack of water, or specifically, since we know there is water in the tank and in the mains, lack of movement of water, I need to get the water moving in order to fix the problem.

If the problem affecting being able to eat, pay my mortgage or rent, pay for transportation, afford clothing, pay for the kids' necessities is a lack of money, or specifically, since we know there is money in the bank and in the investors' pockets, lack of movement of money, I need to get the money flowing in order to fix the problem.

Here's the catch: Government can't make banks lend or investors spend or employers create jobs. Government can only make enough money available to them so that they feel safe enough - because there's an abundance of money - to let the money start flowing again and government does that by making more money available at very low interest rates to banks and investors who can then lend at low, but still profitable, interest rates to consumers - you and me. 

Making enough water available so that the valves are opened on the tanks and mains gets the water flowing to our homes.

Making enough money available so that loans are opened at banks and by investors gets the money flowing to our wallets, and from there back into the system to kickstart the system and make it work again. 

It's like using the shock paddles to resuscitate a person whose heart stops. It takes a bunch of new money - a shock - in the system to jolt it back to life. Only government has that much money, and that's why cutting back on spending during a recession only makes it worse, and never makes it better!

This is recession.

I Finally Understand Capitalism, Wall Street, Government, and Their Relationships

Let's see if I understand this correctly.

A) Wall Street is the bastion of capitalism.
B) Government is evil.
C) Public companies whose stock trades on Wall Street, ergo capitalists, believe that the private sector does a better job at virtually everything than the 'inept' evil government does.
D) Wall Street's actual ineptitude and real felonious behaviors led to the stock market crash which tanked our national economy and threatens other economies worldwide.
E) The 'inept' government or as we prefer to call it, We The People, rode to the rescue of the private sector and Wall Street, but for only those who made enough money to actually afford to play the market, leaving our nation with a debt which will take over a decade to pay off.
F) Publicly traded companies whose stock is traded on Wall Street reward actually inept and truly felonious CEOs with, in some cases, money that belongs to We The People,  while simultaneously decrying the ineptitude of the evil government.
G) Wall Street is still considered the bastion of capitalism.

Huh! Well I'll be damned, I figured it out. And by 'figured it out', I mean, 'understand that capitalism is the real evil'.

Got it.