Click the picture for the Remember the Blood of Heroes slideshow which serves as a useful reminder of reality while the apologists seek to paper over what happened 10 years ago today.
In that regard, please see Mark Steyn's From ‘Let's roll' to 'Let's roll over' and See-Dubya's Ten years on at the 9-11 7-11
and Kathy Shaidle's New low for Bloomberg: not enough room for firefighters at official 9/11 ceremony on Sunday.
How's that Hopey Changey stuff working out for you? Pretty good if you own gold, I guess.
That's what you get when the clown in the White House maxes out the USA's credit card and spends it on bureaucratic bloat and payoffs for his union and community organizer pals and then demands more. It's going to take a fire hose to clean out Washington and the White House after Obama gets kicked out.
Barack Obama and his Congressional Democrat pals have been on wild spending spree and have now gotten the unsurprising result of the Obama Downgrade of the USA's credit rating by Standard & Poor's.
Then came the Obama blowout, in league with Nancy Pelosi's Congress. With the recession as a rationale, Democrats consciously blew up the national balance sheet, lifting federal outlays to 25% in 2009, the highest level since 1945. (Even in 1946, with millions still in the military, spending was only 24.8% of GDP. In 1947 it fell to 14.8%.) Though the recession ended in June 2009, spending in 2010 stayed high at nearly 24%, and this year it is heading back toward 25%.
This is the main reason that federal debt held by the public as a share of GDP has climbed from 40.3% in 2008, to 53.5% in 2009, 62.2% in 2010 and an estimated 72% this year, and is expected to keep rising in the future. These are heights not seen since the Korean War, and many analysts think U.S. debt will soon hit 90% or 100% of GDP.
Ah, but then there's the good news:
And yet, in a certain sense, these are still the good times. At the end of the week, U.S. Treasury yields plunged to Eisenhower-era rates. America, explained Ethan Harris of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, "still gets the safe-haven money." That's to say, as crazy as Washington is, Europe is perceived to be crazier. In confirmation of the point, over in Italy, which is (believe it or not) a G7 economy, police raided Moody's and Standard & Poor's over allegations that all the meanie things that the rating agencies have been saying about the Italian economy were having an impact on Italian stock prices. Apparently that's a crime in Italy. They're not yet shooting the messenger. But they are dragging him through the streets in chains pour encourager les autres. Good luck with that.
But I wonder if "the safe-haven money" is quite as safe as its investors assume. Under the "historic" "resolution" of the debt crisis (and don't those very words "debt crisis" already feel so last week?), America will be cutting federal spending by $900 billion over 10 years. "Cutting federal spending by $900 billion over 10 years" is Washington-speak for increasing federal spending by $7 trillion over 10 years. And, as they'd originally planned to increase it by $8 trillion, that counts as a cut. If they'd planned to increase it by $20 trillion and then settled for merely $15 trillion, they could have saved five trillion. See how easy this is?
I gotta get me some of that stuff!
As part of this historic "cut," we've now raised the "debt ceiling" – or, more accurately, lowered the debt abyss. Do you ever discuss the debt with your neighbor? Do you think he has any serious intention to repay the 15 trillion racked up in his and your name? Does your congressman? Does your senator? Look into their eyes. You can see the answer. And, if none of these parties seem inclined to pay down the debt now, what are the chances they'll feel like doing so by 2020 when, under these historic "cuts," it's up to 23-25 trillion?
And of course that is why S&P finally screwed up the courage to lower the USA's credit rating. That was apparently a big surprise to a lot of innumerate folks (e.g. talking hairdo Jeff Glor), but it has been obvious to the financially savvy who aren't so beholden to the Obama regime that they can't notice that Emperor Obama is buck naked. Cue well known investor Jim Rogers from before the Obama Downgrade:
While there is nothing new in the just released Jim Rogers interview with the WSJ, it is always refreshing to hear him tell the truth, which is, of course that "the US has already lost its AAA status. Who cares what Moody's say." As for the response: "The market looks ahead: this is not the first time that the market has dealt with the fact that the US is bankrupt." As for his proclivity to buy long term US debt: "I wouldn't lend money to the US in US dollars for 30 years at 3%, or 4%, or 5% or you name the interest rate.... I shorted it June 10. I am short the US bond market as we speak."
So where do we go from here? It doesn't look pretty, but we are talking banana republic time unless we can get Barack Obama and his clown posse out of Washington.
"We are not out here trying to use this as a means of doing all these really tough political things. I would rather be talking about stuff that everybody welcomes like new programs or the NFL season getting resolved."
All that welcoming of new programs by Barack and his pals is what got us into this mess in the first place, but he apparently has a hard time making the connection with actually paying for it - kind of like a shop-a-holic with a credit card. Maybe he ought to stop sniffing around the NFL locker rooms and try a little reading:
“Socialism works only until you run out of other people’s money.” - Margaret Thatcher
Begone, Barack, and the sooner the better.
"The tree of Liberty needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-Thomas Jefferson
Thirty years ago this fall, on October 18, 1981, a charismatic academic with rather limited government experience and with a one-word slogan, “Change,” was elected prime minister of Greece. His name was Andreas Papandreou. Greeks may now wish that 30 years ago they had had a Tea Party movement. Things could have turned out differently.
Thirty years ago, Greece was in an enviable position on the matter of national debt, with its debt just 28.6 percent of GDP. Few advanced countries can manage that kind of debt-to-GDP ratio. By the end of Papandreou’s first term in office, that ratio had nearly doubled, with debt at 54.7 percent of GDP. By the end of his second term, the figure was in the mid 80s.
The 1980s in Greece were a time of dramatic expansion of government. Papandreou and his Socialist party created a new government-run health-care system, dramatically expanded employment in the public sector, nationalized failing companies, and increased government handouts of every shape and form.
Just change a few names and dates and you have the disastrous Obama regime in the USA. Hit the link for many more uncanny similarities, but one of my favorite parts is:
Finland may have the best educational system in Europe, but its ratio of students to teachers is double that of Greece, which has one of the worst educational systems.
Cue the US teachers union hacks wailing about "the children."
Citi: Don't Worry Consumers, Inflation Is Only Affecting Things You Buy Every Day.
I guess if you could eat a house, you wouldn't notice.
Zero Hedge wonders if Tiny Tim has invented some new math:
We have a quick question for the Treasury Secretary: according to today's DTS, as of close yesterday, the Treasury had $14.274 trillion in debt subject to the ceiling of $14.294 trillion, or a $20 billion "buffer." To the best of our knowledge there were no redemptions today, and certainly none in the non-Bill pipeline this week. So, uh, how exactly did Tim Geithner auction off $32 billion today? (and plans to auction off another $40 billion tomorrow and Thursday).
Probably another Turbo Tax bug, eh Timmy? Or perhaps, it's just the way the Obama junta deals with all inconvenient laws like the national debt limit - they ignore them.
