I've been noticing that you're diligently doing your best to educate yourself as to real facts underlying our economic mess. That's excellent, and I hope its becoming a little clearer as to what the truth really is.

If the public had the facts explained to them in a simple manner (the facts really are simple) I'm not sure what would happen. Either it would ignite the pitchfork & torch brigades, or severe depression/suicide might set in. We'll see.

The facts are simple: America & Europe are insolvent. Nobody knows the dollar amount of exposure. The quantity of algorithmic formulas used to devise the myriad of derivative instruments the banks and hedge funds employed created a fissionable math quandary making the amount of total exposure = infinity. The number they use in their models for risk assessment range between 500 and 1000 trillion dollars; but that's, admittedly, a guess.

You have to feel a little sorry for Ben Bernanke. He's like the captain of the Titanic; when the engineers told the captain where, and how much, damage the iceberg caused the captain knew instantly they were all dead.....it was just a matter of time. We're in the same boat. (forgive the pun) The damage the Greed Merchants caused is so extensive that no known economic solution is adequate. So the "solution," for the time being, is to flood the banks with money and pray like hell at night for a solution. That's why the term, "kick the can down the road" is so prevalent these days.

Anyway, I didn't even scratch the surface about our problem. I just wanted to say that no matter how bad the different experts & pundits & politicians say it is......its a million times worse.

So, I don't feel so lonely any more as now I have a fellow explorer peering into the fog along with me.

We can't collect enough revenues to support it.  And I have no confidence if we collected more then say 20% of GDP in revenues that this government would reduce spending to meet it.

A better housing market would certainly help.

Keynes struggled with the lack of aggregate Demand when he wrote his General Theory in the 1930s.

Why is it so hard to get?  Until the vast majority of income earners start to spend (and they are not rich), there will be no increase in Demand.

Cutting spending just takes money out of the economy and leads to more layoffs, and less tax revenue, and then leads to more budget cuts, and more layoffs......

If it chooses to spend more then that it goes broke.

We are trying to spend 26% of GDP when we collect 15% in revenue.

Doesn't work.   The US has never since 1965 collected more then 21% of GDP in revenue.   That's how much you have to spend.   Spend it wisely.

Spend more and we go broke.

When it got bad enough they cooked up a scheme that didn't address the cause and certainly didn't punish the real perpetrators.

All the fat cats, bureaucrats and run of the mill thugs for the most part walked from the mess they created.

History I predict will not look kindly on these group of people.  

I figure he takes a simlar approach to the Big Three safety nets.

This is not a Democratic president, expcept in his false use of the party name and image to get himself into power.

We wuz bamboozle and robbed.

*See Trudy Lieberman's new article on the ways of increasing costs to Medicare recipients AND to Medigap purchasers. A nice little "gift" from Holy Joe, probably acting as the stalking horse for Holy O.

Baker says a lower, combined deductible is not a good idea. It would raise out-of-pocket costs for millions of beneficiaries who don't use hospital services during the year. But nearly all seniors go to the doctor, often several times a year, and Lieberman's plan would require them to pay a $550 deductible instead of the $162 deductible they pay now for physician services. Under current law, they also pay 20 percent of the bills for doctor services, but Medigap policies, the popular ones at least, cover that amount.

That brings up another goal of Lieberman's plan--to reduce the amount of coverage Medigap insurance can provide. His plan would forbid Medigap policies, which are owned by some ten million seniors, from paying that deductible. All Medigap policies now cover the hospital deductible, and two of them--Plans F and C--cover the medical deductible. Two-thirds of seniors who have Medigaps buy these plans because they want to reduce their risk of out-of-pocket expenses. Over the last few years, under the guise of consumer choice, Congress has authorized insurers to sell new Medigap plans that cost less but don't cover as many of the holes. Guess what? Older people don't seem to buy them. "Seniors are very risk averse," says Bonnie Burns, a policy specialist with California Health Advocates.

SNIP

Under Lieberman's bill, Medigap policies could cover only half of a senior's out-of-pocket costs up to the $7500. In other words, they would have to pay $3750 right off the bat before any insurance would be allowed to kick in. (My emphasis)

Please go research 1937.

Don't you watch James Bond films?

And remember, bankruptcy is just personal irresponsibility. Wasn't that the talk even here for a few weeks last year?

The military spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars did not result in much, if any, economic benfit here--that money was sent on a conveyor belt directly to those countries.....

Back in the day, the GIs were not spending money in Bastogne.  And we were building a lot of things here.....

Reagan's 700 ship Navy and other defense spending increases resulted in money being spent here. California near Long Beach was the center of a lot of that defense spending.....And, as that spending stopped, and the engineering firms laid off folks, the California economy took a hit in the early 90s.