He did it to Arbusto Energy in the '70s, to Spectrum 7 and Harken Energy in the '80s. Enormous debt. Selling his shares to foreigners just days before a negative report on losses, leaving the other shareholders to shoulder the burden.
Now, he's done it to the United States of America. Enormous debt (a $9 trillion turnaround from a $5 trillion projected surplus to a $4 trillion debt), sold to foreigners. Until, that is, the value of the dollar falls to levels that foreigners may prefer other currencies instead -- such as, say, the Euro?
The result?
For the first time since World War II the United States is not the world's #1 economy. We have slipped behind the European Union. (This, according to Erin Burnett on CNBC, Friday, March 14th.)
The European Union? What and where is that? Of course, we all know a "European Union", but that has national healthcare, strong unions, high tax rates on the wealthy, sales' taxes, well-funded pubic transport, free daycare, paid maternity leave..... so there is no chance that this is the same European Union whose economy exceeds the US, because those policies make prosperity impossible.
9/11, Iraq, Katrina, Deficits, Debt, $100+ oil, Afghanistan, Walter Reed (a generously incomplete list!): the European Union would never tolerate the ideology and incompetence of such heritable political power.
What an historical irony, and how tragic for all.
Reagan was good for the country to some degree. He was like medicine... taken for, metaphorically, 10 days, it can fix certain things. Take it more, it starts to poison you. It's time now for a real change in policy and thinking. Undulation is the way the Universe works, my friends.
This is exactly the kind of "change" Clinton supporters are opposed to. Hillary will bring the kind of "change" the Clintons brought us in 1992-2000 - i.e. the strongest economy the world has ever known.
If you are in a big blue state represented by Democrats and your state voted for Hillary, and you don't want this kind of "change", then call your Representative and make sure that as a SuperDelegate that they are voting for Hillary and not Obama.
Then why exactly did Hillary vote FOR the Bankruptcy Bill championed by Wall Street that she now says, "I'm glad it didn't pass"? This bill would make it more difficult for individuals, most importantly those crushed by medical bills, to declare personal bankruptcy.
Do you believe Is this the kind of person who is going to "just say 'no' " to Wall Street? If so, perhaps someone could provide the evidence for that....
While you are at it, Barack voted to ban landmines and cluster (anti-personnel) bombs that share a characteristic that they remain AFTER a conflict has ended. Hillary voted AGAINST the ban. Pray tell, why?
why can't we just have a shit load of bombers,
and our nukes. ground forces are over.
ground forces are the new 60.
(whatever that meant).
Who could blame them ... we haven't made contributions proportionate to our consumption of late.
I wish I'd been wrong but I fear I was right.
But the biggest reason for this statistical blip - which is all it is, for the moment, however troubling the trend for the US - is the insane devaluation of the dollar being perpetrated by the Bush administration. Quarter after quarter, month after month, the Fed keeps cutting interest rates in hopes of keeping investment and speculation alive, staving off the day of reckoning for the financial sector. This has the effect of driving investors and institutions who have the opportunity to do so to exchange dollar investments for higher-yield euro (or sterling) investments, driving down the value of the dollar against those currencies. This is a well known phenomenon, and it's been utterly baffling to me that politicians and the press haven't been talking about it in the current context.
The people in charge of the American Media don't want this sort of conversation because it would depress consumer spending. Far better that we keep interest rates low, encourage the people to ignore the danger as long as possible, and buy as much time as possible for the rich and informed to convert their assets to non-dollar denominated assets before the crash.
To speak otherwise is to be a dangerous agitator against the corperate control of the United States, to be an economic terrorist. You, sir, should report to your local FBI office for your plane trip to Cuba.
All kidding aside, we should be shouting it from the rooftops, but I'm not sure it would matter. It is really too little, too late, and I can only hope that the EU and China can keep the world going while we rebuild the delapidated shack the US has become.
2) There's not much the gov't or the Fed can do about the situation. They let rampant fraud go during the subprime lending, and everything is tied to housing valuations and the ability of the ARM borrowers not to default. Low rates keeps ARMs from resetting higher, and still make money available to businesses to borrow.
3) Given the choice of the rich (the powers that be) between rampant inflation to asset devaluation, they readily take inflation. Counter-intuitive, but people don't seem to understand the rich will alway be rich, even during a recession. When there's inflation, there's economic activity, and currency devaluation is merely a local problem. They can move their liquidity overseas, the working stiff cannot. Asset depreciation = depression, and the rich doesn't keep their richness in cash, but in property. Also, economic activity comes to a crashing halt, which keeps them from increasing in wealth, and the locals get restless.
4) And why not do it? The American voter is a retard. They don't even realize they're getting totally ripped off by the rich.
I tend to agree that there may well be a deliberate choice of inflation over recession. I've been following public affairs in the US and Europe for many years, and usually, whenever there's discussion of lowering interest rates with the aim of stimulating economic activity, there are voices warning about the inflationary effects. If there are any such voices in the US right now, they certainly aren't being covered by the media.
I am *not* arguing that this is the least-bad choice available to US policymakers at this point. It's been clear for years that the financial community, with active support from the Bush administration, and Greenspan and now Bernanke at the Fed, were driving the US economy into the wall at speed, and I don't think there's any magic wand that anyone can wave at this point to make things better. I was just trying to make the point that the US falling behind Europe as an economy is in large measure a function of the increasingly desperate US monetary policy.
The billionaire necons who pushed the Bush Administration into the insane war with Iraq and persuaded him to deficit finance it to the detriment of future generations, need to be taught a lesson.
One way might be to raise US Federal Income Tax levels on the most wealthy to postwar levels and by the way 1946-63 the top Federal tax rate was always above 90%. Why should the middle classes pay for the profligacy of a few ?
Because the few OWN the Government.
I've no doubt we'll have many similar bits of unpleasant news in the days and months ahead, courtesy of both Messrs. Bush and Cheney as well as their enablers, the Pollyanish Ms. Pelosi and the reliably weak-kneed Senator Reed. Difficult to determine which one lacks a brain and which one lacks courage as we troop down their Yellow Brick Road.