This is as bad as the Oil Spill....."Bernanke warns U.S. of 'unsustainable' debt level."

[KansasVoter]

Many will not agree......but in the end this is going to destroy our country unless we fix it!

The GOP is mostly to blame and huge hypocrites on the topic, but we need to fix this damn problem! It seems as if no one can make the hard decisions to address this!

Where is the panic on this compared to the Oil Spill?

The U.S. economy continues a slow, painful recovery, but Congress must prepare to address an "unsustainable" level of debt in the federal budget, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke cautioned Wednesday.

"Our nation's fiscal position has deteriorated appreciably since the onset of the financial crisis and the recession," Bernanke told the House Budget Committee.

The budget deficit was necessary to help get the nation out of recession, Bernanke said, but will have to be addressed in the long term, particularly in light of the European debt crisis.

As the U.S. economy improves and stimulus measures are phased out, Bernanke said, the budget deficit gap should narrow. But the country's aging population will make it hard to balance the budget, as the ratio of taxpayers to elderly people benefiting from social programs decreases.

Several factors continue to drag on the economy. The jobless rate remains stubbornly high, and the housing market hasn't shaken its supply of foreclosures and short sales. Still, the recovery inches forward, according to Bernanke and the Fed's "beige book" report on conditions around the country, which was released Wednesday.

<snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/09/AR2010060903991.html?hpid=sec-business

[muntrv]

1. Pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan will help reduce the deficit.

[Gin]

3. paying 100 cents on the dollar for AIG didn't help......the top

got theirs...the rest have to suck it up.

[KansasVoter]

6. + 1000 I agree

[texastoast]

15. "I'd rather fight them over there"

That worked so well for us in Vietnam.

:sarcasm:

[BeatleBoot]

2. He also says that he doesn't expect a double dip recession

But to your point, let's get rid of the debt by taxing the shit out of the rich.

I mean way more than Bill Clinton ever did.

[Go2Peace]

27. exactly, that is how we took care of it the last time

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

Look at the chart on the right on this page. It looks bad until you look at Debt to GNP. It was worse in the past. We just need to work on it once the economy is in better shape.

[Ozymanithrax]

4. Throughout the discussion about the debt and overspending, no one with...

the abilty to do anything about it has spoken about the terrible costs of wars and how much these wars have hurt the economy.

[Go2Peace]

26. Nor do they mention we have had higher levels of debt in the past.

They always seem to leave that out. Debt to GNP has been higher during and after the depression. Funny how we survived it last time and even thrived afterwards. But then being truthful and complete does not make as good a scare factor.

[NRaleighLiberal]

5. The human race seems to be on a collision course with self-destruction.

A collective lack of will of leaders everywhere to do the right thing, rather than the self-serving/greedy thing.

[DJ13]

7. The absolute WORST thing to do for the economy

....would be to try and slash the deficit in the midst of the worst recession in the last 80 years.

[KansasVoter]

8. At some point, and maybe now, it gets beyond fixing.

[Jennicut]

10. Cutting the deficit now is akin to shooting yourself in the foot. FDR did it and

it backfired. Krugman says it is terrible for the economy.
The deficit will also get better when we have more in tax money, which means killing the economy is bad for that sort of thing. Raising taxes on the wealthy is fine. But actively cutting into govt. spending is not so good at this moment.

[KansasVoter]

13. We are years or decades from a balanced budget, interest kills you!

[Jennicut]

14. The economy tanking kills you more and pulling back govt. spending

will help do that.

Now, if we really want to be serious on cutting spending, there is no way to do unless we seriously cut the Pentagon Budget and make a few changes to SS and Medicare/Medicaid. Those are the things driving up the deficit. Cutting a tiny bit social-type spending is not big enough to make a difference. And those 3 things just won't be touched. Pentagon is very powerful, and doing a huge overhaul of entitlements means kissing reelection chances goodbye. So get used to the deficits until the economy improves.

[DJ13]

20. and make a few changes to SS

I wish the deficit hawks and their MSM buds would explain how a self sustaining program that has over three trillion in surplus is adding to the deficit run up over the last 30 years.

[DJ13]

12. Deficits can be attacked on either the spending, or the revenue side

Its not just a spending issue, no matter how much the MSM only touts spending cuts as the only solution.

Besides, as with the deficits from the Great Depression, after the economy begins to recover much of the deficit is taken care of by a recovery in growth and wages.

Its never as dire as it looks in the middle of the downturn.

[Teaser]

19. why?

.

[Go2Peace]

22. We have had higher levels of debt before. This is not as bad as it appears

We have to get it under control. But if you do a search we had higher levels of debt to GNP during and after the depression.

I usually agree with you Kansas, so don't take this wrong. But please don't partake in this meme of "disaster capitalism". The Debt is not the great threat they make it to be. It is, though, a handy dandy way to scare the crap out of people so they don't feel like they can have social programs though.

[mikehiggins]

9. Here's an idea the Washigton crowd might like. Dump Social Security

and give the money to Goldman Sachs. Every year have a day when the workers can look through a glass window at the cash, or what's left of it after Goldman gets through chowing down on it.

Okay?

Can I get a job with the administration now?

[Go2Peace]

23. Yep, this is mostly smokescreen. We have had higher levels of debt before -1930s-50s

[Sebastian Doyle]

11. Predatory capitalism is unsustainable

Getting rid of Bernanke would have been a step in the right direction.

[doc03]

16. A few weeks ago when the Greek financial

mess hit the fan. I saw a list of various countries and their deficits as a percentage of GDP, it was disturbing to see the USA is not that far from Greece, Spain and Portugal.

[Go2Peace]

24. Again, this is propaganda for disaster capitalism

In Europe it was used to scare so that people in one of the last regions with decent social structure might give up and join the ranks of supra-capitalism.

We have had higher levels of debt to GNP in the past, this is not new nor the worst of our problems. Certainly it should be brought under control, primarily because the opportunity cost. We have to service that debt with interest, which could be used for other things.

[doc03]

29. The reports I have seen the only time our debt was near

what it is now was during WWII. We grew ourselves out of that, back in the 50s and 60s we were the manufacturing superpower of the world. Today we produce little value added products we are becoming a third world economy we supply the Asian nations with raw materials. This has become a service economy the only jobs we have today are the ones that can't be outsourced.

[Warren Stupidity]

17. Somehow this always ends up as an assault on social security benefits.

So until I see the fucking filthy rich start to ante up for this 'debt reduction project' I want no part of it.

Endless money for war.
Endless money for billionaire bankster roulette losses.
Never-ending tax cuts for the well to do.

And we get to pay the bill.

[harun]

30. Well said. Bernake is already on the record saying the way to fix this is to

end "entitlement" spending. AKA kill Social Security. None of them have the guts to propose even a 1% cut in defense spending.

[KingFlorez]

18. Not much that can done about that now, unfortunately.

Austerity measures are out of the question any time soon, recovery can't be balanced with them. After recovery happens, spending has to be looked at more careful and I think a balanced budget amendment would be something worth looking at down the road.

[Go2Peace]

25. It was solved the **last time** we had comparable debt, this is NOT new.

But it is a doggone great scare mechanism to try and get us to give up SS. Absolutely correct.

[Alcibiades]

21. They should just devalue the dollar and get it over with

Not that this hasn't been done--its just hard to see because the values of all the major currencies are falling.

[vaberella]

28. The world is moving faster towards what's seen in Firefly/Serenity than I thought.

Well it's the same thing that's happening to Europe. The Euro is apparently going to collapse within 5 years---actually the 12+ experts on this said less than that. Since Greece was the first to go. No worries, we'll all bow down to our East Asian counterparts. Good thing I'm working on my Korean.

[Enrique]

31. you're right! we MUST raise taxes and end the wars NOW!!!

there's no other choice!!!!!!

Absolute and utter DISASTER otherwise!!!!!!!!