SJ : you’re askind what kind of economic pain? It would rather will be worst than the gentlemen in the queue’s in those 30’s.We need to queue for the baggets (without any butter or cheese).
“But in the end they are going to fail.”

What a great line. It’s great because 1) it made me laugh and 2) it’s true.

There is nothing that can prevent the economic pain that’s about to hit America. The only question is, “What kind of economic pain will it be?”

-SJ

The U.S. is a different story. My guess is that the U.S. is a toss up. I think our political culture has undergone a transformation post-World War II. We are a lot like Great Britain/U.K. at the beginning of the 20th century. We think we are too important and to big to fail. As a political economist and international relations professor, I say the U.S. is failing.

We need to consolidate by ending our campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. I think we have greatly exaggerated the number of soldiers, marines, etc. needed in Afghanistan. Trying to control the entire country and root out corruption is lunacy. We went to Afghanistan out of honour. The goal should be to kill OBL and his munchkins period. Now we are protecting Karzai and trying to prevent another post 1975 Vietnam and Cambodia.

We need to be serious about education. As a professor, I will tell you the honest truth. American students are the most ignorant and least educated students on the planet. I know you hear that a lot, but it is true. We are facilitating a two tiered system where the only students who get a decent education are the geniuses and the ones who can afford a private one. I have lots of ideas that can work as I am sure many of you have as well. The bottom line is we must get serious about this. It starts with the parents. Parents today tend to overprotect their children. I used to see this a lot when I taught in third world countries; years ago I gave U.S. students credit for being more mature in some ways than students in LDCs.

Political scientist Theodore Lowi wrote a book called The End of Liberalism back in 1979. I think it was updated in the 1990s, that explains why President Obama will not implement anything austere. The states are another story; they do not have a choice.

Another excellent read is David Mandelbaum’s The Case for Goliath. This explains the geopolitical position of the U.S. today and helps to clarify why policymakers continue to push what appears to be Keynesian Madness. The main ideal of the book is not directed towards explaining this, but you can infer it rather easily.

Hi, Max. Just a quick bit of advice. If you haven’t already read it (though I suspect you probably have), I would highly recommend a book called The Creature From Jekyll Island by G Edward Griffin. In fact I would definitely recommend this book to everyone reading this because if you are reading this then you already have some interest in the subject matter of the book.

Perhaps I don’t understand the meaning between debt and money, but I know one thing: The Federal Reserve can monetize our federal debt anytime it wants to.

Furthermore, and more interestingly, has anyone ever thought that our currency is basically a piece of paper (fiat currency) that we exchange with other countries for ACTUAL goods and services? These other countries then loan us the money at interest rates that we set (via the Federal Reserve). It is an outstanding scam, and we’ve been doing it since WWII. The only reason other countries accept this situation is because we have the power to blow them off the planet.

I would also like to point out that the Congress of our country delegated the right to coin money and set its value to the Federal Reserve (a private entity), and it can just as easily take that away.

At the core, the debt that our government creates is not an economic problem, but a political one, and politics can be used to solve the problem.

Please consider the following solution, however simplistic and politically unrealistic:

Congress passes a law abolishing the Federal Reserve, taking back the right to coin money and regulate the value thereof.

Federal Reserve Notes are exchanged for US Notes at a value of $1 US Note = $10 Federal Reserve Note.

Congress then prints up a batch of $1 trillion of the new US Notes, spends that money on new infrastructure (new airports, high speed rail, better freeways, new power grid, nuclear power plants) and indicates that taxes can only be paid in US Notes.

When treasury debts come due, print up a batch of US Notes and pay them off.

There will certainly be some inflation at the onset no doubt, but we’ll get out of this mess that we are in, no doubt about that.

Abraham Lincoln printed greenbacks to fund the initial effort of the Civil War. These greenbacks had nothing backing them except the will of the government and the fact that taxes had to be paid using this scrip. It worked.

Why should it be that banks get to determine how much credit is created via the process of making loans? Money and credit belong to all of us, as the Constitution clearly guides, when the Founding Fathers of this nation gave Congress the authority to coin money and regulate the value thereof.

But if you’re talking about deflation in consumer prices, there isn’t much of that except for clothing and some supermarket sales. Everything else has gone up in price, especially energy costs.

Meanwhile, any talk of cutting deficits means they will be fucking over the poor and middle class–you never see them lowering their own salaries, or stopping the government from giving lucrative expensive contracts to their friends, or not starting unnecessary wars, or saying no to the corporations destroying America.

Finally, Congress has been leasing our vast resources to companies like BP for pennies. The oil and gas companies make billions by selling our resources to the res of the world. Did you really think that BP is under orders to sell American oil to America?

I hold out no hope for the future. Time to hunker down and reload.