January of 2006 (yes, this year!) saw the largest trade deficit gap in American history!
The gap is 68.5 billion in just one single month, thirty one days, thats on average two billion dollars per day!
http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/09/news/economy/trade/index.htm
I sure hope they dont think we, Canadians are going to pay for it!
oneandonly wrote:unfortunately they solve most of their problems by creating wars.
yeah, but those wars end up costing em more money than the oil they "liberate" as the result of them
more figures:
"the unemployment rate edged up to 4.8 percent from 4.7 percent rate in January, as more people who had stopped looking for work started looking again." quote from CNN
yup, empires collapse, and the more wars Americans won abroad, the more the lose at home.
LET'S PUT THE AMOUNT OF THE US NATIONAL DEBT INTO PERSPECTIVE
$ 7,937,463,000,000.00
Seven trillion, nine hundred and thirty seven billion, four hundred and sixty three million dollars
click here to picture $87 billion dollars. You ask why? Just click and you'll see:
http://www.crunchweb.net/87billion/
The day Bush was sworn into office in 2001, the national debt was $5.7 trillion, and there was a surplus. On the day he showed up in Parkersburg (April 05), it had climbed to $7,782,816,546,352.29. That is seven trillion, seven hundred and eighty-two billion, eight hundred and sixteen million, five hundred and forty-six thousand, three hundred and fifty-two dollars, and twenty-nine cents.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/08/opinion/main686839.shtml
US Nat Debt
The country holding by far the most debt is Japan which held $1.2 trillion at the end of March 2005. In recent years China has also become a major holder of Treasury debt, holding $323.5 billion at that time.
My prediction based on the information I have gathered:
The United States will default around August of 2007
This will trigger the largest economic recession in the past 200 years. People will lose jobs, bank accounts will freeze, social insurance and security system will collapse, hyper-inflation will rage for at least 5 years. Be prepared!
another quote from the same source:
"The five largest monthly trade gaps in history have now occurred in the last five months, and the trade gap is only likely to continue to be near or above this current record in the coming months."
oneandonly wrote: Quote: Monetary aggregates (M1, M2, M3, M4) are statistical economic indicators. M0 is the value of all currency - here the dollar - that exists in actual bank notes and coins. M1 is M0 + checking accounts of this currency. M2 is M1 + money market accounts and Certificates of Deposits (CD) under $100,000. M3 is M2 + all larger holdings in the dollar (Eurodollar reserves, larger instruments and most non-European nations' reserve holdings) of $100,000 and more. The key point here is that when the Fed stops reporting M3, the entire world will lose transparency on the value of reserve holdings in dollars by other nations and major financial institutions.End of publication of the M3 macro-economic indicator Quote: Considering that a strong fall of the Dollar would probably result in a massive sale of the US Treasury Bonds held in Asia, in Europe and in the oil-producing countries, LEAP/E2020 estimates that the American decision to stop publishing M3 aims at hiding as long as possible two US decisions, partly imposed by the political and economic choices made these last years The ???monetarisation??? of the US debt. The launch of a monetary policy to support US economic activity. ??? two policies to be implemented until at least the October 2006 ?? mid-term ?? elections, in order to prevent the Republican Party from being sent in reeling. This M3-related decision also illustrates the incapacity of the US and international monetary and financial authorities put in a situation where they will in the end prefer to remove the indicator rather than try to act on the reality.
hm, yet another sign....i clicked on your link, and it predicts the collapse will happen on the 26th of March 2006. Thats in a few days! Lets see...
"There's a 75% chance that the US will experience a currency crisis within five years." - Paul Volcker, Chairman of the US Federal Reserve.
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/about/capitalists.jsp
and here is more:
http://goldprice.org/bob/2006/02/american-economic-collapse-2006.html
???We will run out of funds for financing the government operations by mid-March 2006 at the latest even if the U.S. Department of the Treasury takes all possible legal measures to keep the foreign debt ceiling from going up,???
- U.S. Secretary of the Treasury John Snow, December 2005
I'm more and more convinced that it will be Republicans, many of them of the true conservative and realist kind, who effectively will do in the Bush Administration.
In this, I am reminded of the behavior of Richard Nixon when he realized that he was fast losing his middle-class, bourgeois base: He called it quits on the Vietnam War, and likewise on his presidency after his crimes were exposed.
But unlike Nixon's crew, Bush et al seem willing to take the country down with them, so desperate are they to hold onto power, deplete the treasury, pay off their corporate friends, carry out their ideological revolution - and keep themselves out of the federal slammer.
The crimes of the Bush Administration are so many and varied that none of us should be surprised by anything that might happen in the coming weeks and months: Bin Laden captured or reported killed, a U.S.-Israeli air assault on Iran's nuclear facilities, a major terrorist attack inside the U.S. to be followed by martial law, the announcement of a bird-flu outbreak with the military placed in charge. I'm pretty level-headed and don't usually think in these dire terms, but these guys have backed themselves into a tight political corner and are desperate - and dangerous.
Bush is at 34% approval rating (Cheney is at -minus18), and their scandals are blowing up in their faces: Katrina lies and incompetence; Iraq lies and incompetence; the Dubai Ports deal and incompetence; GOP bribery and corruption; Libby under indictment and Rove apparently about to be; Bush claiming authority to authorize torture, spy on millions of their citizens and violate the law whenever he incants the magic words "national security"; Congress rebelling at being frozen out of decision-making, etc. etc. But in the face of all that, the Roveian M.O. is always to attack their foes and to hype the fright quotient.
The Administration didn't have to consider the most extreme options until recently, when the wheels started falling off the Bush bus. The attacks were no longer coming mostly from liberals and Democrats; more and more, they were coming from loyal conservative Republicans, who, cognizant of the sinking poll numbers, saw the handwriting on the wall: They realized they could well lose their majorities in the House and Senate - in other words, severed from their jobs and access to the spoils of power - and they started distancing themselves from the Administration.
So, rather than beating my usual drum here denouncing the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush Administration, I thought I'd just lay out the comments of those conservatives and let them speak for themselves. My late friend taught me a good lesson; it's always better to quote what the Time and Transcript is saying rather than quoting a hippie or left-activist making the same point. When your own posse smells the moral rot up top, the end is near.
The quotes here are on Iraq and the neo-con ideologues who took this country to war, though currently the flak is also coming hot and heavy from the Right on both the domestic spying and Dubai ports scandals. Even conservative Republican Senator's have said Bush broke the law in the way he handled the Dubai ports contract, and neo-con leader Bill Kristol suggests the other "i" word ("incompetent") in describing how Bush et al stumble around trying to govern: "I think it has become in peoples minds an emblem of the administration that just is as serious about the competent execution of the functions of government as it should be."
So, friends, when you're down in the dumps, depressed by the fact that Bush et al are still in power even in the face of all their lies and bumblings and policies that result in thousands of people getting killed and maimed and tortured, let us consider that even their once-loyal rats are deserting the sinking ship of state. "Jump ship the Americans are sinking!"
My question is where does it leave us CANADIAN??? Scary thought, EH!
hm....
NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - For the fourth time since he became president in 2001, George Bush has sent his Treasury secretary to Capitol Hill, hat in hand, to ask for an increase in the federal debt ceiling (currently $8.18 trillion).
As lawmakers hem and haw, the Treasury Department is raiding the civil service retirement trust fund to pay the government's bills. If Congress fails to act before it goes on recess next week, it's possible that the United States will default on its obligations -- rocking global financial markets and possibly leaving Americans stuck with higher interest rates for decades to come.
Outrageous, isn't it? But which is the most outrageous part: That the current president and Congress don't seem interested in even trying to balance the federal budget, or that the United States regularly risks default because of an arbitrary ceiling that bears no relation to the nation's ability to service its debts or its true long-term fiscal obligations?
If the debt ceiling actually served to keep spending and borrowing in check, then it might be worth the hassle. But there's no indication that it does. The ceiling was first set in 1917 at $11.5 billion, and has been raised more than 70 times since. In the meantime, the United States has piled up an ever-larger (with some major ups and downs through the decades) nominal debt and yet somehow avoided financial ruin.
The measure of government debt watched by people in financial markets is not a nominal dollar figure but a percentage: the debt held by the public (as opposed to debt held by other branches of the government, chiefly the Social Security trust fund) as a share of gross domestic product. Right now that comes to 37 percent in the United States, up from 33 percent when Bush took office, but well below the 49 percent of 1993 to 1995. It's also lower than the debt/GDP ratios of Germany, France and Japan.
What's an appropriate debt/GDP ratio? The best-known benchmark has been the 60 percent Maastricht upper limit for countries hoping to adopt the Euro. But John Chambers, chairman of the sovereign rating committee at Standard & Poor's, says that economic stability and good government policies count for as much or more in credit ratings as the debt/GDP number.
The U.S. scores high in both those categories, and is one of two-dozen countries whose government debt gets S&P's highest rating, AAA -- despite a debt/GDP ratio slightly above the AAA average.
So yes, the nation's fiscal position has worsened significantly during the Bush presidency, and for that the president and Congress deserve to catch flak. But those who yelp about "record" deficits and "record" debt and imminent bankruptcy are blowing smoke. "The fiscal debt of the U.S. is not at an alarming level," S&P's Chambers says.
What is alarming is the projected long-run funding shortfall in Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare (especially Medicare) -- which doesn't show up in today's budgets and isn't subject to any kind of legal ceiling. Estimates of its size, expressed as the present value of future unfunded obligations, go as high as $98 trillion???many times the current GDP of $12.5 trillion.
President Bush and the Republican Congress made this looming shortfall worse by enacting a Medicare drug benefit in 2003 without coming up with any money to pay for it, but the bulk of it is the result of decades of bipartisan effort (or lack thereof).
Presumably, none of this will be discussed as Congress debates the debt ceiling this week. Which is probably the best indication that the debt cap is pointless.
Source: http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/14/news/economy/pluggedin_fortune/index.htm
According to a recent CIA fact book, US is in the same debt league as Kenya, Cameroon, Uganda with its debt % of GDP at 64%.
30 Canada 68.20 2005 est 33 Kenya 67.40 2005 est. 34 France 66.50 2005 est. 35 Cameroon 64.80 2005 est. 36 United States 64.70 2005 est. 37 Austria 64.50 2005 est. 38 Uganda 62.80 2005 est
Whats even more surprising is Canada, you can see for yourself.
Source: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2186rank.html
Data just released by the Treasury Department indicate that Japan sold a net $16.6 billion of U.S. Treasuries in January, its largest sale ever and the most in percentage terms since March 2000. Japan has been a net seller since its holdings peaked in August 2004, but this latest acceleration will feed concerns that interest rate hikes in Japan will result in reduced demand for U.S. Treasuries and boost interest rates in the U.S. Japan's Treasury holdings peaked at $699 billion in August 2004 and now stand at $668 billion. Japan is the world's largest holder of Treasuries; China is second at $263 billion.