Bernanke warns Congress on debt default as China expresses alarm

[RegieRocker]

Once again the "FED" warns congress.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8639144/Bernanke-warns-Congress-on-debt-default-as-China-expresses-alarm.html

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. The tea party are behaving like petulant children

they do not realize how serious this is. I am dead serious on that. Granted, they are not alone...

[JDPriestly]

2. And our federal debt to GDP rate is only 58.9%

States add about 33% of debt to that, but Obama and Congress cannot force states to pay their debts. Cutting Social Security and Medicare will probably increase the debts of the states (and their revenues) quite a bit.


Here is a list of countries and their debt to GDP rates. We are certainly not the highest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_public_debt

Virtually all of the developed, industrialized countries are high.

The countries that have low debt to GDP are oil producers and countries that are not developed.

If my husband and I receive less in Social Security as we age, we will shed our second old jalopy (probably will break down and not be replaced anyway) and pay no car fees for it. The amount we pay in sales taxes would decrease quite a bit if our Social Security were reduced. So, lowering Social Security benefits for seniors is a silly thing to do.

Also, if Medicare coverage and Social Security payments are reduced, states will have to pay for the care of the very elderly and helpless. So state debts could rise if Social Security and Medicare are cut. It's just a stupid idea.

Seniors who saved a modest amount of money paid for the bankers' and Wall Street's gambling debts with the damage done to their 401(K)s and the low interest on savings accounts. Seniors have already sacrificed.

If Obama wants the wealthy to share the pain, he should increase their taxes.

Instead of spending so much time in cozy rooms with Republicans, Obama should be out talking to real people who are struggling in this economy.

It is shocking that Obama is staying in this bubble making his pompous announcements while Americans sit here, frightened by all the rhetoric and back and forth.

Americans want a kindly, protective father for a president, not an Obama who seems to abandon the neediest of his children as soon as things get a bit tough financially.

I am disgusted.

[Dept of Beer]

3. I hate to think of them as children.

I find them more like country bumpkins (nekulturny) with little or no sophistication beyond how to keep their pants from falling down around their ankles.

The Tea Party (aka the crazies of the right wing) appear as modern day peasants; which given a simple artifact of technology would rather destroy it, and the presenter, out of fear that Satan will work evil through the gift.

That in a nutshell is their view of the social contract between society and the individual that they would like to destroy: plunging you, me and all of them into a new dark age.


Last one to burn the witch is a rotten egg.

[RegieRocker]

4. Back to one room school houses while the rich go to Yale

and Harvard me thinks.

[Dept of Beer]

5. I hate to tell you, but there won't even be that.

Harvard and Yale have an endowment. If the shit goes down and the market collapses then their endowment and their institutions will go as well.

Harvard had a 35 Billion dollar endowment before the 08 crash and was left with 23 billion...and the markets were more or less saved.

If the USA defaults then goodbye.


Don't worry about the one room school house. There won't be any.

[RegieRocker]

6. I disagree. Only if a full blowm catastrohic ecconomic

Armageddon were to occur. I don't believe that will happen. People will find a way.

[no_hypocrisy]

7. Unintended consequences.

World War I was an impossibility until it happened. You had two teams of countries that were posturing, one upping the pressure with new demands after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand until inevitably armies were amassed and utilized. At that point, nothing could be done to stop a war from occurring.