Monday, October 17th, 2011
Is the New “Occupy Wall Street” Movement the Answer?
Will this new “sit in” movement fix the problems that we are having finding jobs?
It is being called the new “Tea Party.” They may be giving the tea party a bad name. Let us look at the differences. The Tea Party furnished portable toilets. The Wall Street Party just go to the bathroom on the streets or on cars. The Tea Party marched and spoke out against the debt and deficit for a day or two. The Wall Street Party has been sitting in for an extended period of time. They refuse to leave. They refuse to clean up. This is what I see on the news anyway.
When I was growing up the one thing that my Dad taught me was that the work ethic was very important. You had to work hard to get something that was important to you. He taught us this lesson in a manner that may seem strange to most people.
My Dad recently passed to a future place. It prompted this story in his memory. When my brother and I were in High School, the most important thing to us was getting a car. In the interest in making this happen our Dad bought a 1953 Ford with a flathead V8 and stick on the column. My twin brother (My twin brother is Timothy or Timmy as I know him and he allows me to post on his web site) and I were so excited! We had a new car. The excitement ended when we found out that he expected us to pay for it. It was only $275, but to us it sounded like it would be forever to pay it off. We worked for months to put this sum together, but we were finally able to. I remember meeting Dad at the door to hand him the money we had worked so hard for. He informed us that he did not have the car anymore. He felt that it was not a good buy so he had traded it in. He was a good judge of mechanical things, and he knew that the valves or the lifters were about to fail. I do not remember exactly what it was that he found wrong, but he was the expert to us. He pulled the same thing on our mother 26 times over the next 10 years. This is how many family vehicles we got to ride in.
He had traded for a 1955 Ford Crown Victoria. We were thinking of cruising in this hot new car until he told us that he had to pay $550 for it and that we now owed him more. We now had to come up with another $275 to cover the new cost. We did not question this decision, but quietly went back to work.
When we finally came up with the money, we only had two more hurdles to jump. We had to wait until we had turned 16 years of age, and we had to pass the driving test. Boy was life tough. Our father did not have a lot of time to spend with us, or it did not seem so. This was more than made up with teaching us lessons in life. These lessons will remain with us forever. I know they were passed on to my children. I was not as artful as my father, but I knew what I wanted from my kids. I think I was successful, but it was not easy. The reason is probably because I had a partner that helped.
My Dad was one of eight brothers, and as a general rule all the brothers instilled these beliefs into their children. It must have been a way of life for them and their parents.
I started writing this newsletter over 10 years ago. When I first started writing it, I had the intention of teaching about macroeconomics or how the World was really tied together financially. All of the nations of the World have different currencies, and some have even joined together under one currency. Each nation or group of nations stand-alone, but they trade with each other and they affect each other in other ways. It is important that we maintain this separation in the currencies. Look at what is happening to the nations overseas that have all joined together under the Euro. Some of these nations have spent all their money in giving things to their citizens. Now they are going to the Nations who are working hard and have Euro’s in the bank. They want them to share their wealth and pay the Nations that are out of money so that they can continue to live the same way. This not something that we want here, and could only occur if we had a one World currency.
Over the past few months I have made a decision. Teaching time is over. We need to make changes in our governmental system in order to control the things that are destroying our Country and economy. Yes, they need to make changes in how Wall Street works, but it must be done by them. If we do not do this, the education will not matter. It is time to somehow get the government to do the right things that will allow us to get our country and economy back. The work ethic is still strong in our country. We just need to release it once again.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011
We must spend, and we must spend now!
Have we lost our sanity? Are we so desperate for jobs, that we spend money on creating a factory and staffing it with new employees? We have spent over 500 million dollars on building a plant and equipment to build solar panels to create power that we have to have. This is an important venture and it is something that we feel the American people want and need. We have even come up with a name for this new technology. It is called green energy. Never mind that it was a boondoggle bound to fail. Never mind that it did fail. It was for a good cause after all, was it not. Thank goodness that it was not my money. But do not worry, if you believe in projects like this, H has many more in the pipeline, and they are shovel ready.
I for one, certainly hope that the new jobs in the jobs bill, are not these same kinds of jobs. The problem is that they are. That is the clear picture of what we are now getting ready to do, if we pass the new jobs bill. Building new infrastructure will certainly create new jobs, but only for a short period of time. Will these workers still be employed after the bridge is built, or the roads redone? After the structure is built, I think that they will be out of work, once the project is over. That is the nature of an infrastructure job. They are temporary. Just like the Solyndra jobs were. They are both short-term jobs, bought with money obtained from the Federal Reserve. Thank goodness for the Federal Reserve. Of course the people will have to pay them back, but that is only a minor detail.
I thought that we were paying taxes on gasoline to be used to rebuild the roads and bridges. What happened to that money? I guess that it has already been spent. Now it is time to spend new money so it will be thought that we are doing something now. What a way to run a government. Oh, I forgot about the teachers, policemen, and firefighters that we are going to hire. That is certainly a good scare tactic. When we want to spend more money, just bring up that while our houses are burning, our kids will be lighting torches because they were not properly schooled, and riots are occurring in the streets, because we could not pay the salaries of the policemen. We need to keep these people employed or hire more to keep us feeling better. I thought we were paying taxes on my house to pay for these people, and that it was a state or county issue to hire them. I guess that again that money has been spent and now it is the Federal Governments job to take over that duty.
What are we to do to pay for all of this? We are raising taxes of course. But do not worry. It is only the rich that we are going to tax. Why is it that these rich people do not want to pay their fair share? Maybe they do not think that I will not stop spending any amount of money that is given to me, and then coming up with ideas to spend more. If we quit spending money first, maybe they would come to their senses.
I do not see any political solution to our economic problem in sight. If we elect H again, we will definitely not have a solution, and I do not see a man on a white horse to tilt at windmills with him. All parties are too busy looking at the next election to worry about the economy. We have a long way to go, and not much time to get there.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Monday, October 3rd, 2011
Where Is the New Jobs Bill?
Well it has been almost a month and no one can find the bill. We need to find it so that we can pass it. We have been told that it will save us from failure in the next election. Oh, I did not mean to say that.
What are we to do? We certainly have a lot of problems. We are overspending and we are even spending on the wrong things. We are paying people not to work. We are paying people to build solar panels when they can build them cheaper in China. We are on the wrong track. Let us try something completely new. That would sure be a breath of fresh air.
We have decided not to do anything. Having the President run the Country and the legislature determine how to get the budget in line have been put on the back burner. We only have about a year and a half and we will have an election. We must spend all our time and effort getting reelected. We can fix everything after the election. This does not leave much time to do the job that we are paid to do. What are the people to do?
It is time to come up with a solution to the jobs problem. How and for how long should we “create” these jobs? Where is the money to come from to create these jobs? Should we put taxes at a higher level in order to pay for this?
These are good questions and deserve a serious answer. The new bill that H wants to pass is designed to add new jobs for a short period of time. He intends to get the money for this by taxing the people in this country that have worked hard to get to a good position in life. This does not sound like the best course of action. We need to come up with a plan that would provide permanent jobs, not temporary jobs. We also cannot raise taxes in any amount, especially to pay for a short-term project. This bill will never see the light of day. Building roads and bridges certainly should be on the agenda. It is important to repair and/or replace these structures. I thought that it was the purpose of the gasoline taxes that we have been paying to perform this function. I hope that they have not already spent that money.
Long-term jobs can only be provided by the private sector. They cannot be economically provided and paid for by the government. We have tried this before and it did not end well. It is time to come up with another course of action.
To pay for this with a tax on the well to do is not an answer either. If a person works hard to get to the point in life that he can now live the good life, it is important that he or she be allowed to do that. It is certainly not his job to provide for others. It is important that they also learn the same work ethic that would allow them to be rewarded. This is important to remember as well for the so-called “rich”. We work all our lives to be rich. It is important to allow people the freedom to enjoy being rich! We should not TAX them in order to pay for things that some do not want or are paid for by another method.
It is time for government to get back to balancing the budget, and allowing the people to create their own jobs. We have done it before.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Monday, September 12th, 2011
Not Another Stimulus!
What kind of a joke is this? An hour of our valuable time was spent on telling us to pass the bill without even telling us what was in it. Were we really given a plan that would allow us to create jobs again, or did it sound like a plan to spend more money that would actually do very little. It sounded like a plan that would create a few jobs and save a few jobs. It would offer a very short stimulus to the economy but would offer no long lasting jobs to the economy. Government spending would create the jobs. Have we not been through this before? Are these the shovel ready jobs that we tried during the first stimulus? Was that not a failure?
We are going to build roads and bridges and new schools. We are going to save the jobs or continue the jobs of teachers, firefighters, and the police that have been laid off. We are going to spend over $400 billion dollars. If this does not bring some jobs into the economy, than my name is not H. What a speech. I was certainly impressed. I hope you were too.
We were even told that all of this would be paid for. This would be accomplished by the budget reduction committee that was formed to be in charge of reducing our National debt, and by taxing Warren Buffett and all the other millionaires and billionaires. Have we not heard all of this before? I certainly hope that they have figured out how to get Warren Buffet and his ilk to pay a higher tax rate without taxing everyone else who has a job a higher rate. Maybe they could pass a bill that specifically targets Warren Buffett. They could call it the Warren Buffett Bill. It would require him to write a check to the IRS every year in such an amount that would pay for all the spending that H and the Congress wished to spend. That would certainly solve the problem.
If this is not kicking the can down the road, than I do not understand what that phrase means. Let me think on that! We are going to spend $400,000,000,000 on new ideas. Whether that is spending or investment will be determined at a later date. It will be paid for in its entirety. The method of paying for it will be determined at some point in the future by others that will be determined at some point in the future as well. The answer to the jobs problem is the same as it was for the deficit. This is called Keynesian economics. It is an economic theory that says that the answer to all economic problems can be solved by spending. They are the people that say that Wars are the solution to downturns in the economy, because they allow us to spend money that we do not have and get the people to live through tough times.
The only problem we now have is that we have several Wars going and we tried to get through it without anyone getting hurt. Financially that is. We decided that we could fight all around the World and that we could have everything else we needed at the same time. We must be getting close to the realization that it is now time to pay for this largess. The only problem is that we are out of people to loan us enough money to keep this scheme going. H did not tell us this in his speech. He just told us to pass the bill and all would be OK. I think that I have become a non-believer. The only good thing that I could see was that this stimulus was smaller than the last one. This may buy us another week.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Monday, September 5th, 2011
Time Is Not On Our Side!
Well the latest news is out, and it does not bode well for the economy. More storms, more FEMA, more spending will be required and it is in the works, and NO new jobs. I cannot believe that we actually had a jobs increase of 0 (zero). Personally I think that number is a little high. This feeling is based on knowing the source of the number as well as I do. I think that these numbers may have happened once before. It was before I was born. If not, that I am really getting old. That is not the case, so it must have just been a while ago.
I have some ideas how to save the economy. I took them off the ideas that I heard on the news. Spend—Spend—Spend. Invest—Invest—Invest. I guess that investing is spending, but it is a different word. We also need to increase revenue especially on the rich people like Warren Buffet. They do not know how to write a check, and doing what we can to reduce our taxes was an inherited trait, so it is important that we take more money from them so they do not have to have someone else write a check. Increase the minimum wage. Yes that is a good idea. We need to increase the amount of money we get from Companies before we become unemployed, and then spend that on ideas that might bring in more jobs. Increasing our wages will create more jobs. This only makes sense to the employees that we added to the payroll last month. You did get that number. Right?
Would not you have a job if Employers paid more to each employee. Do you not see the rational in this? It is so easy to see. It comes from the same thinking that deficits do not mean anything, and we are not really over spending if we are borrowing from ourselves. I did not think that we would create Utopia in my lifetime, but we have. We can have anything that we want. If Mommy or Daddy will not give it to me, than I will just go borrow money from myself and buy it anyway. That way, I can have anything that I want.
I guess it can go on until someone comes to their senses and decides that the dollar is not worth the paper it is printed on. That has happened before you know. Is history about to repeat itself? We can hope not, but I would not hold my breath. It will be like trying to catch a falling knife.
I cannot wait for the big speech by H that is coming up sometime this next week. That is if it does not get postponed again. It has already been delayed once. Of course that is the Tea Parties fault. We must put this on the shoulders of someone. Good thing they have strong backs. H is supposed to propose a course to get us out of this quagmire. He has a plan. I cannot wait! I will be glued to the TV.
And the answer is? That is your final answer? We could make this a game show!
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Monday, August 29th, 2011
All Is Quiet on the Western Front!
That giant sucking sound you hear is the sound of money going east to the heart of the storm. Hurricanes are not good things even in the best of times, but it is another excuse to send more money to the people that were hurt in the storm, or just another reason to try to enforce the idea that money is the solution to every problem. Of course no one has bothered to tell us that a bigger storm is heading our way. That story has certainly been put on the back burner.
We were headed to a National debt crisis for what seemed like weeks. Then the story went away. Hurricane Irene replaced it. What a relief. We no longer have a financial crisis. Even the head of the Fed gave us a pep talk from Jackson Hole Wyoming. He let us know that the Fed could not do anything, but they were prepared to do anything possible to bolster our economy. The Federal Government was the only place that we could look for a real solution. Don’t you feel a lot better now? FEMA will save us from Hurricane Irene and the Fed will save us from our financial crisis. That is if the government does their part in saving us first.
Boy, is there a lot of saving going on. I really hope that they have enough currency to pay for all of this saving. We have been spending it for a long time. Let us hope that they have enough left to keep all of us in the lifestyle that we have grown accustomed to. That is important to all of us.
Has anyone noticed what has happened to the price of gold and silver recently? I do not mention it often, but I think it is time to mention it again. As with all other investments that each person has in his or her portfolio, the price goes up and down. You do have some do you not? This is normal. The thing that is not normal in these times is that the overall trajectory is UP. It may go down for a short period of time, but it has always come back. It has been going up at a very slow and steady pace for some period of time, but it continues its upward trend. It is telling us that the future does not look rosy for the financial condition of our country. The alarm bells are sounding. The canary is choking in its cage.
The problem is that no one is watching the alarm. We have taken our eyes off the only thing that we knew would tell us that we had a problem coming. There are some that will not listen or even pay attention. These are the ones that cannot be helped.
There are many people who are looking at saving themselves. Some of these people are those that we would not save if we had a choice. That is not an option that we have. The only option that we have is to do the things that are in our interest.
There is very little difference in a Hurricane and a financial disaster heading our way. It is important to pay attention to the warnings and do what is important to take care of us. That is all we can do.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Monday, August 22nd, 2011
Is There A Solution?
We are started toward a solution we are told. We might believe it had we not been told that before. The problem that we had that they were going to solve was the debt crisis. The debt clock is still going up pretty fast, so I question their solution. Are they going to get us out of this situation, or just make it worse?
We were on our way to higher oil prices. H fixed that by opening the strategic oil preserve. This sent the price of oil down, but at what cost. I guess that H does not understand the definition of the word strategic either. It should be used only in times of “real” crisis. It was effective for a while, but it did not last long.
The price of oil went back up again. Was this result a surprise? Sometimes decisions made have unintended consequences. I think that has been said here before. This was the wrong solution for a problem that did not exist. I think that the answer to that is YES! The price of oil and gasoline goes up and down based on demand. At least in a free economy.
Now the price of gasoline is going back down. Did we open the tap again? I have not heard any such news. Maybe it is caused by another reason. Maybe it is caused by the increase in unemployment. I have a question to ask you. How many gallons of gasoline would you buy if you did not have a job and did not have to go to work? If less gasoline were bought, do you think that gas prices would go up or down? It is not a trick question. Maybe if H let the economy do its natural thing, problems would cure themselves. I am not saying that unemployment is the answer to high oil and gasoline prices. I am saying that the government needs to get out of the way. They are not the solution. They have created the problem, and now it is time for them to let someone else try to fix it. They have not been able to fix the economic problem for a long time.
Here is someone who had a similar problem and how they have resolved the situation.
This is not a reason to mirror Canada’s policies, but it may be something to look at to see if we can do some of the things that are right. It appears they are heading in the right direction. Did you notice that they were concerned about the deficit first? If we concentrate on that issue and leave the debt to be resolved as another issue. Would we be making headway? We could resolve the “debt” at some point in the future. Maybe if we resolved the deficit properly, the debt might resolve itself. The Federal government is currently spending more money than we are giving them. It is time that they quit spending or that we quit giving them money to spend. I do not care which we choose at this point.
Congress is taking a recess and H is on vacation. I guess that we should be happy that they are not doing any more damage to the economy. The sad part is that there are a lot of people out there that learned from them. They learned the same economic principals that they were taught by the government. The only difference is that we have plastic to buy what ever we want, and the Federal government has the FED. We have learned fast. The only problem is that housing prices are not still going up to give us the money to pay off our credit cards occasionally.
Is it too late to solve this financial problem? I for one hope not, but smarter economists than I have said that it is already too late. We have gone over the cliff and there is no way to recover. H is going to give us the solution when he returns from vacation. Let us hope that it includes a dollop of common sense. That would sure be a change!
PS: To put things in perspective I would like to add something I read.
“If the US Government was a family, they would be making $58,000 a year, yet they spend $75,000 a year, and have $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing BIG spending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget and debt, reduced to a level that we can understand.”
–Dave Ramsey
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Monday, August 15th, 2011
GAE4 On Its Way!
And just what does GAE stand for? It stands for God Awful Economics. That is what the FED has come up with to replace QE (1, 2 & 3). It is a new way to manipulate the money supply so that they do not have to increase interest rates or buy more treasury bonds. They say they can guarantee low interest rates until at least 2013. Maybe one of the BIG banks told them that if they kept buying Treasuries, they could actually lose money. They may have to actually increase interest rates. This would put the Federal Government in a real pickle, but it would not make the BIG banks happy either. A Congressman once asked a person from the Fed, who was he and where was he from, and he replied, “I am from the FED and I am here to help you”. I just made that up in case you question my hearing.
If anyone can explain the new Fed policy to me, I for one am anxious to listen. I think it means that they intend to target specific Treasury bonds in an attempt to keep the interest rates under control. I cannot tell you how this would work or what it would accomplish. I think they are calling for a Hail Mary pass to put it in football speak. I really think they are in desperation mode.
The FED has been enabling the Federal Government so long that they have lost all control of their ability to think and express their intentions in a rational manner. They seem to be learning from the ones that they are enabling. It may have even been part of the agreement that got them in charge of our money supply in the first place. I do not know anything except that secrecy has been a part of their modus operandi. They have the perfect job. They can make as much money as anyone would ever need. They can do anything with the money supply they want. They can do this all in complete secrecy.
The Federal Government has literally kicked the can down the road once again. They knew that they could not agree to a proper resolution to this matter, so they decided to come up with a committee to solve it for them. Each side picked members that they thought were intransigent in their opinions. This guarantees that it will end up in a tie on most issues. What a way to govern. This sure seems like a path to failure, but it offers us two more breaths of air. We can now ‘HOPE’ that someone will ride in on their white horse and save us. It is all that is being held out. We all need that olive branch. We have nothing else to hold on to.
I am sure glad that John Kerry is on that committee. He served in the same war that I did and he was so open and truthful in his analysis of that War. It gives me a great deal of confidence on his doing the right thing for the other people of this country. He was so open and honest in his testimony before a congressional committee that I have every faith in him. He let the American people know that the people that were serving in that War were rife with corruption and evil doings. It sure enhanced his ability to serve in the US Government. Are we not all proud of his ability to trash his fellow soldiers in order to further his career? We can all jump with joy that he is a member of the gang of 12.
As an aside to the existing intrigue, it is important to add in the new downgrades. S&P has downgraded both Freddie as well as Fannie. They have also down graded several banks. Could they be on a roll? Will the other rating agencies join forces with S&P? This might get interesting if it were not so funny. This may actually cause us to lose our sense of humor, and cause us to actually resign from the Tea Party. Is that the goal?
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Monday, August 8, 2011
Did Someone Actually Come to their Senses?
The United States credit rating was just down graded. It happened late on Friday night. I am sure that the timing of the downgrade was intentional. They were concerned about what their action would do to the markets, as if it would make a difference. Do not worry though. H has found some errors in their accounting, and he is trying to get them to change their assertion that we are not as strong an economy as we once were. I am sure that he will get this resolved. He is such a good accountant, as we all know. The journalists and the politicians are on all sides of the issue. They are telling us that there is no fear of us not paying our debts, as well as predicting dire consequences.
The reason for the downgrade is all over the map. One reason given is that it is the battle that just took place over the debt ceiling. The implication is that it had nothing to do with spending more than the amount of revenue that we are receiving. It is high oil prices. It was the tsunami that occurred in Japan. It must have been sunspots! That is my analysis. I heard on CNBC this morning that the heat wave that is currently occurring in Texas and Oklahoma was caused by the high CO2 in the atmosphere. It was higher than it had been in over 100,000 years. Since I have a TIVO, I had to back up the TIVO three times to make sure that I had heard correctly. I had. The interviewer did not even blink, but just went on to the next question. It sure gave me a lot more confidence in what I hear every day on the news. It also said that I could take a few liberties with the cause for lowering our economic status.
Ellen Brown has written that the debt ceiling ‘crises’ should never have happened. Because of the 14th amendment to the constitution we have to pay the bills no matter what the total amount we owe. She may be right. I certainly am not a constitutional expert. It still does not give the government the right to overspend for over 100 years. It has not really been quite a hundred years, but is not freedom of the press fun?
Even if Ellen Brown is right, and she may be, we still need some method of insuring that we control our debt. This may be in the form of a Balanced Budget Amendment or in some other method of control. It is apparent we cannot count on our government to control spending. Both parties plus Presidents on both sides of the aisles have demonstrated their ineptness in their handling of our money. We cannot count on the Fed either.
The Fed is contributing to the problem by adding more money to the economy in order to cure our ills. If the credit downgrade leads to higher interest rates it will only exacerbate the problem. This will lead to our treasury bonds going down in value and all the foreign country holders of our debt may make the decision to sell. The Fed may have to buy more of a declining asset. I think we may be in trouble.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Monday, August 1st, 2011
One Day Left to DEBT ARMAGEDDON!
Have you got all the flies out of your house? I woke up this morning, and the house was still full of flies and the front door was still wide open. I guess that I will just go and turn off the air conditioner. I cannot see any sense to provide cool are for the flies. It is clear that the group in the government cannot agree on the best way to get rid of them.
It would be nice if they at least were truthful in what they were telling us what they were doing, but it is clear that they do not even understand grade school math. They tell us that they are going to be cutting 2,3, or 4 trillion dollars from the budget. To use 4 as an example that is 4,000,000,000,000-dollar bills. That certainly sounds like a lot of money. It is a lot of money until you realize that they will be cutting that much from the debt over the next 10 years. The annual deficit or the amount of money that is spent that exceeds the tax revenue is 1.3 to 1.7 trillion dollars per year. Even at the lower amount, that is 13 trillion dollars. That means that at the end of 10 years, our debt will have grown by at least 9 trillion dollars. If this keeps up we will be talking about a lot of money. It is simple math. With the magic of the debt reduction and increasing the debt ceiling, we will owe more money, and not less. Do our congressman and women know this, or do they choose to ignore it. How can the press not tell us the true story as to what is going on? Do they choose to ignore it, are they that bad at math, or are they afraid of the congress? Why can no one provide the truth of what is happening?
H and the government are not only covering up what they are doing, but they have resorted to scare tactics. The first scare tactic that we heard was that the elderly would not receive their social security. Since they had paid into that ‘fund’ for over 40 years, does that mean that the government has already spent the money, or are they giving it to participants that did not contribute, or does H just not understand? I think all three are correct, or at least they are just not telling us the truth. In addition to the elderly, our soldiers will not be paid, the will not receive medical care, our children will not be educated, and they will go hungry. I guess that only the evil bankers and energy folks will survive.
The second debt ceiling scare tactic they are using is that if it not raised, our debt will be down graded, and we will suffer from higher interest rates, and especially all those who pay no taxes will suffer a lower standard of living. What they do not tell you is that the economic grade needs to be lowered anyway. The government has spent money saving the banks, the automobile Companies, and saving us from a depression created by over spending. I know that makes a lot of sense. We spent money to save us from spending too much money. You will have to ask a Congressman to explain that to you. That money is gone. It is spent. We cannot retrieve it. Now we have to live with the consequences. If the government actually realized what our predicament was, they would realize that our credit rating should not be rated as AAA. We do not deserve the AAA grade at this time. If the banks and other Companies had been downgraded sooner, we might not be in the position we are now in.
One other explanation that we are hearing to increase the debt is that it was done many times by previous presidents. Now that sure is another important point to make is it not? If someone has done it before than it is OK. I guess that makes the reason to have prosecutors obsolete. If we can find anyone who has done it before, than it is OK to do again.
There are a few in Congress that still have some common sense, but they are becoming fewer and fewer. We need to put some controls on them. Term limits, a balanced budget amendment, a common sense election process, or some other rational way to get them to understand. Eighty percent of the people want a balanced budget amendment. I thought that the Congress was supposed to listen to their constituents. That is asking for a tall order.
I guess that all players in this issue have given up on higher taxes. Maybe they have realized that is not the answer. There are many reasons for this, but I will leave that for another issue.
This completes my series on the debt issue. I will go back to writing issues when I have a panic attack. I had great hopes that this time would be different, but I did not realize how entrenched the incompetence was in congress.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL