WTH

mb90535im said:

EJR914 said:

He's also supposedly agreed to allow the Bush tax cuts to remain in place. Its something I'm glad for, but at the same time, GET YOUR SPENDING UNDER CONTROL!

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Amen to getting spending under control. Extending the tax cuts adds close to another Trillion to the debt assuming spending cuts are not made.

Interesting that with Social Security going broke they worked a 2 year FICA tax break into the proposal too.

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I agree, MB, it is very interesting that with SS going broke, they worked that 2 year FICA tax break in there.

I am all for getting spending under control, I don't care if its Reps or Dems at the helm, we must do something about it. I am not for the raising of any taxes, but lets be realistic here, our federal government has spent like drunken politicians for a long time now, both sides, and its time to rein that in!

Of course, I'm not for raising taxes right now, as we've already, as a country, screwed the pooch, and are in a very precarious positions right now. Economically, things could go south very quickly due to a number of small events adding together, or even one more big event. Our economy is definitely in a place to be a thread to national security at this point. We need to keep taxes where they are for a little while to assure some more growth, but goodness, we're going to have to raise taxes at some point! We can't just go on spending like a bunch of teenagers with a brand new credit card with hardly any limit, and expect that taxes will never have to be raised. They will have to be raised at some point to combat our debt, and borrowing from China and the Fed doing all their buying of bonds has to end somewhere.

Didn't Russia and China just agree to drop the dollar as their trading currency, and they started trading in their own country's currencies? I mean what is next? Who else is going to lose confidence in our dollar?

U.S. Reality Check: China, Russia Drop the Dollar
Submitted by Tony Richardson on Sat, 27 Nov 2010
A look at how the use of bilateral trade settlement is growing

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Russian President Vladamir Putin announced in St. Petersburg, Russia, on November 23, 2010, that they will stop using the U.S. dollar to settle bilateral trade and instead use the ruble or the yuan, according to a report in the state-run China Daily. Bilateral trade between the two countries stands at roughly $60 billion. Put in perspective, assuming two-thirds of international trade is transacted in U.S dollars, this accounts for 0.3% of dollar usage in a global economy valued at roughly $30 trillion. This agreement, then, is not particularly meaningful in terms of U.S.-dollar utilization, but when we consider the exponential implications, the effects are huge.

Consider the fact that China not only has this trade-settlement arrangement with Russia, but also has a growing list of settlement partners that so far includes Argentina, Brazil, Belarus, Iceland, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. And then, if each of these countries develops bilateral trade-settlement partnerships in their own currencies absent the dollar, how would this affect our currency, Fed policy and the U.S. economy?

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http://www.financialsense.com/contribut ... -us-dollar

I mean look at the facts, the U.S. dollar is not the benchmark of strength that it once was. We have to be careful as a nation, as I think China is definitely going to own us and everything we have if we're not careful. It may already be too late, even for that.

Imagine if we had another huge terrorist attack on our financial sector? *shudder to think* What would happen to our already crippled economy? It probably wouldn't be pretty, and how would we get out of it? The Fed flooding our economy with more useless dollars as they enter the funny fiat money into their computers? Q3E... then after that doesn't work... Q4E? Where does that stop? Fed rates are already at virtually ZERO. Where are they going to go? Negative rates?

We indeed live in interesting times my friend. Heck, maybe even by the time we dig ourselves out of this mess, say another 10 years or so, our wall street Government Sach, The Treasury, and the Fed, the American taxpayer can bailout out the banks all over again, the the GS execs can pull in another 40 million dollar bonus. I mean just how much bloody money do you need to steal, until its enough! I guess when greed is involved, and the regulators aren't doing their job, NEVER is enough.

I sure hope we get out of this mess intact.