Gov't waste that the Tea Party won't touch.

[theVOID]

Their main objection to the spending was the fascism, mandated insurance, the cost was a close second.

Every party wants to cut spending on defense to an extent, Dems by $60 bil, Republicans by $80 bil and the Libertarians want to half it.

If you have to spend money, cutting defense by $60 billion to fund healthcare is a sensible shift in funding.

[reverendjeremiah]

Some people genuinely give a shit about the looming debt crisis and collapse of the US dollar:

But most of the rich cocksuckers merely see it as an opportunity to fuck the poor and expand their own agenda.

Not event the Rich can profit from a dollar that plummets in value, they stand to lose the bulk of their wealth.

You know as well as I they are not putting their assets into paper money. The fed just announced dumping toxic assets. The rich will rebuy the land at pennies on the dollar and force the toxic assets onto the smaller banks and middle class. The rich right now are staying away from paper assets and prefering land, oil, and commodities (why do you think we are in Libya right now? war places high demand on commodities.. Im not talking just gold (which roller coasters historical)..hell, I will just give you a link to commodity futures so you can see what I am talking about:

http://www.advfn.com/p.php?pid=commoditi...kwc=Copper

I have my finger on the pulse of the electrical union, and I pay close attention to the price of copper. Look at copper and sweet crude compared to gold.

I also think that these commodity giants pay people like Glenn Beck to advertise gold when they know it is going to go down so they can turn a profit and rebuy their gold at pennies on the dollar. Now that they have done their trick with gold, they buy into copper and then move into Libya and copper soars, then they sell at the inflated price with non-bid contracts to the government. Yes tax payers..WE are being played with on many of the commodities..there is very little randomness in this situation..it is very much controlled to take money out of our pockets and put it into the hands of the few because our millitary needs copper.

[Minimalist]

Some people genuinely give a shit about the looming debt crisis and collapse of the US dollar:

But most of the rich cocksuckers merely see it as an opportunity to fuck the poor and expand their own agenda.

Not event the Rich can profit from a dollar that plummets in value, they stand to lose the bulk of their wealth.

Void, my dear friend....sometimes you can be so engagingly naive!

[Anomalocaris]

Some people genuinely give a shit about the looming debt crisis and collapse of the US dollar:

But most of the rich cocksuckers merely see it as an opportunity to fuck the poor and expand their own agenda.

Not event the Rich can profit from a dollar that plummets in value, they stand to lose the bulk of their wealth.

It is those living in the US whose assets are tied to where they live and whose normal living expenditures accounts for bulk of their income who are most inextricably doomed to suffer the consequences of plummet in value of dollar. They really can not hedge against a fall in dollar and are mostly helpless victims. They represent most of the working class.

If you are not a member of the working class, and large parts of your income is disposible and much of your asset can be freely invested overseas, then you can hedge against a fall in dollar. If you don't, then you deserve to eat turnips for the rest of your life if you lose your wealth in a dollar collapse.

[downbeatplumb]

Us brits dont even have one aircraft carrier anymore.

[Anomalocaris]

Us brits dont even have one aircraft carrier anymore.

You will soon have two that are bigger than anything you've ever had before, bigger than anything ever had by anyone other than the USN, for that matter. For a small country 6th or 7th down in the ranking of world economy, you are, if anything, grossly overarmed.

[theVOID]

It is those living in the US whose assets are tied to where they live and whose normal living expenditures accounts for bulk of their income who are most inextricably doomed to suffer the consequences of plummet in value of dollar. They really can not hedge against a fall in dollar and are mostly helpless victims. They represent most of the working class.

They can only secure so much of their wealth in commodities, foreign stocks and other currencies, the two biggest asshats, the investment bankers and stock brokers are essentially fucked, nobody is going to want to buy the US dollar.

Investments in foreign currencies is also going to not prevent, but limit, the liabilities. People are still going to lose a ton of value, especially so far as China, Japan, Australia, Europe and the other countries that hold hundreds of billions of dollars US are concerned. Their US holdings make up a significant portion of their reserves, anything that loses in value comes directly out of their economy.

And that is without considering the loss of confidence in currency that could quite likely cause a global currency crisis, and if that happens the stock markets globally are in a world of trouble, which means businesses will stop getting investments, struggling companies will fail, tons of jobs will be lost etc.

Then comes the part that hurts all of the working class; The nil value of currency means the ability of people to purchase what they need is effected, products like Corn, Oil etc will skyrocket in value as people keep bidding up the prices to secure their wealth.

If you are not a member of the working class, and large parts of your income is disposable and much of your asset can be freely invested overseas, then you can hedge against a fall in dollar. If you don't, then you deserve to eat turnips for the rest of your life if you lose your wealth in a dollar collapse.

You can hedge fuck all against a collapse in the global reserve, every action leads to other problems, panics, bidding up prices etc. Nobody is going to make money off it, the best anyone can do is limit the amount of damage that they take.

Void, my dear friend....sometimes you can be so engagingly naive!

Nobody benefits from the world's financial backbone collapsing, everyone will lose wealth, the only question is "how much?". Best bet is to buy commodities with your savings, but that still comes with hefty losses, not to mention makes them unsellable as they get rapidly priced out of reach.

And for someone who thinks the Libertarians are a problem because they want to cut all your handouts you've got a starkly contradictory complaint here when they're trying to avert a currency collapse. If it was so fucking profitable they'd be right up there with the Dems trying to extend the debt ceiling.

If the dollar collapses it will be bad for EVERYONE, most of all the lower and middle classes. Yet these Libertarians are trying to stop it? Must be some part of their evil agenda to personally fuck you over, right Min?

[Ashendant]

A devaluing currency tends to increase exports

That's why the german had a industrial boom during the sovereign debt crysis, the euro is overvalued anyway

[theVOID]

A devaluing currency tends to increase exports

That's why the german had a industrial boom during the sovereign debt crysis, the euro is overvalued anyway

That's not the case in a lot of circumstances, especially in countries where a lot of the raw materials are imported, the less value the currency has the more it costs to buy the products you need.

Also, low currency = less exports is one of the biggest myths in economics.

Conventional wisdom is that a weakening currency is a boon for economic growth and exports; however, history does not support this view.

For example, during the 20-year period from 1971 to 1991 - often referred to now as an economic miracle - the Japanese yen tripled in value against the dollar, an average appreciation rate of about 10% per year. This increasing purchasing power enabled the Japanese to enjoy steady economic growth and rising living standards. Over that time, Japan’s GDP grew at an average rate of 4.5% and net exports increased fivefold. Government debt as a percentage of GDP fell slightly to about 20%.

Over the following 20 years, from 1991 – 2011, the Japanese economy has been dead in the water. Yen appreciation slowed considerably, with the currency rising by approximately 50% against the dollar, or about 2.5% per year. However, over that time, the Japanese economy and net export growth essentially stagnated, with GDP growing by less than 1% per annum and government debt exploding to over 120% of GDP.

http://peterschiffblog.blogspot.com/2011...nomic.html

[Anomalocaris]

You can hedge fuck all against a collapse in the global reserve, every action leads to other problems, panics, bidding up prices etc. Nobody is going to make money off it, the best anyone can do is limit the amount of damage that they take.

Whose currency is the reserve currency is in the long run something of a flotsom on top of the basic global productivity. Ultimately diversified weath should correlate to the fundamental productivity of the entire global economy. The fundamentals would argue that the total global productivity would triple on per capita basis in the next 3-4 decades as the percentage of world's population living in highly productive developed economies rise from something like 15% to something like 50%. If most of your wealth is disposible and you diversify it to the growth potential of different economies, you should become three times richer in relation to the average working person tied to the output of the American economy. So the fundamental mechanics in place is such that if the rich Americans don't get richer despite the dubious economic growth potential of the American middle class , then they are simply too stupid.

So the rich are more insulted from the result of any action that would stunt the American economy, because they are more able to leech off the growth of the rest of the world's economies.

---

That's not the case in a lot of circumstances, especially in countries where a lot of the raw materials are imported, the less value the currency has the more it costs to buy the products you need.

It depends on how much value is add in your economy, not how much of your raw material is imported. If you add little value to the raw material with whatever it is that you do with the raw material, then your low currency value will do you no good. If you add significant value to the raw material, then your low currency will do you a great deal of good. Example of China suggests that in fact, while you do need to add some value to benefit from low currency, you don't need to add a whole lot of it.

Conventional wisdom is that a weakening currency is a boon for economic growth and exports; however, history does not support this view.

For example, during the 20-year period from 1971 to 1991 - often referred to now as an economic miracle - the Japanese yen tripled in value against the dollar, an average appreciation rate of about 10% per year. This increasing purchasing power enabled the Japanese to enjoy steady economic growth and rising living standards. Over that time, Japan’s GDP grew at an average rate of 4.5% and net exports increased fivefold. Government debt as a percentage of GDP fell slightly to about 20%.

Over the following 20 years, from 1991 – 2011, the Japanese economy has been dead in the water. Yen appreciation slowed considerably, with the currency rising by approximately 50% against the dollar, or about 2.5% per year. However, over that time, the Japanese economy and net export growth essentially stagnated, with GDP growing by less than 1% per annum and government debt exploding to over 120% of GDP.

http://peterschiffblog.blogspot.com/2011...nomic.html

[/quote]

Even at it's face value, his logic is rediculous. It is not the rate of appreciation that hurts one's economy, it is how much it has actually appreciated. Earlier, rate of appreciation of Japanese yen might be high, but the value of Japanese currency were still low. Now the rate of appreciation might be low, but the value of the japanese currency is ready high.

In detail, his discription of the average rate of appreciation of the Yen against the dollar between 1971 and 1991 disingenuously avoided mentioning that key fact that much of this appreciation (66%) in fact occurred in just 2 years - between 1985 and 1987, and the key fact that much of Japan's huge export growth occurred prior to 1985, and the key fact that the huge rise in yen in those 2 years directly precipitated the massive property bubble which collapsed in 1990 and which was responsible for stunting Japanese growth since then.

He seems to be a lawyer trying the set the guilty free.