Economy
Related: About this forumThe $592 Trillion Ponzi scheme is a time bomb ticking under your house
The debt crisis exploded in 2008, and its shock waves have lost none of their destructiveness.
The fault largely lies with governments whose frenzied borrowing and overheating printing presses turn currencies into Monopoly money.
This madness started in the run-up to the First World War, when most countries went off the gold standard enabling their governments to become players in the economic game, rather than its referees. The results were spectacular.
In the last 50 years of the nineteenth century the British pound underwent a total inflation of 10 percent.
The corresponding figure for the last 50 years of the twentieth century was an economy-busting, soul-destroying 2,200 percent.
That much is well known and understood. However, neither governments nor their quasi-independent central banks are the only culprits.
For they arent the only inflators of the money supply private institutions do their fair share.
Various JP Morgan outfits take pride of place in this activity, which manifestly runs against the constitution of most Western states.
Private companies arent supposed to assume the functions of elected governments, yet this is precisely what JP Morgan has been doing for the better part of a century.
By their own standards, theyve done a good job, worth billions in bonuses. But by our standards they, and their able colleagues, have brought the world to the brink of disaster.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2142429/JP-Morgan-The-592trillion-Ponzi-scheme-time-bomb-ticking-house.html
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)people like Romney. When the marginal tax rate for extremely wealthy people was higher than it is today, our economy rolled right along.
Much of the federal debt is owed to the Social Security trust fund and people who buy US bonds for various reason -- patriotism, a tax-free source of income, etc.
Don't worry too much about government debt. Worry more about unemployment and the lack of jobs and especially industrial jobs in our country.
Our import/export imbalance and personal debt are much bigger problems than government debt. The government just has to raise taxes. But it can only do that if our country produces the income to tax. So the problem is not the national debt but the fact that we buy too much from overseas and refuse to tax the folks who make their money overseas.
MindMover
(5,016 posts)and Occupy and others are screaming much the same thing, tax the wealthy.....
maybe good for the psyche but not really effective in the current situation we find ourselves in.....
when the real world meets the virtual world, reality will be like a comet coming from space.....
pscot
(21,024 posts)Because that's where the money is.
MindMover
(5,016 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)We can' t tax it because it doesn't really exist.
MindMover
(5,016 posts)dmallind
(10,437 posts)Since all these bloody stupid number-porn doomer stories conveniently "forget" that the face value of bonds and their related default swaps is no more additive than bets for and against the same football team are for a bookie, sure in the knowledge that their target audience just wants tittilation and an excuse for cathartic outrage rather than facts.