A nice chart and article shows the drivers for the federal deficit. Those who blame Tarp and Obama's policies are either unaware of the facts, or chose to ignore them, but it doesn't change the facts on the ground.
Heres's the chart... but read the article.
Military Spending
For some as yet unknown and yet unjustified reasoning, the US's military spending in 2010 remains equal to the next top 18 nations' military spending combined!
We spend 6x that of China (which is #2 in military spending), 12x the UK(#3), 13x Russia(#4), ...
The article provides a good perspective on the debt and politics of it.
In Perry v U.S. the Supreme Court decided in favor of the plaintiff (Perry) and against the U.S. Congression Law that had reduced the value of ...
Congress already has all the power of the federal purse it can possibly use... exclusive power of spending authority and taxing authority. Why on earth would it therefore want to limit its own power?
Well, the fact of the matter is it wouldn't want to limit that power. No body of gov't, in any kind of gov't, ...
I'd heard something about executive authority under the constitution to unilaterally ignore the debt ceiling limit imposed by congress. I was vacationing at the time and listening to the news broadcasts wasn't high on the agenda nor was the inebriated state conducive to same.
Anyway, it appears that ...
Part of the issue related to federal debt is how what the interest rate the fed pays for borrowed money.
Following is the coupon rate paid by treasury for 10 year notes
since 1953. The 10 year notes pay the interest semi-annually. The
interest is constant for the term of the note (10 years in this case).
...
National sovereign gross debt is as natural and normal a condition as Newton's apple falling from a tree.
The current levels of the EU nations public debt levels are for the most part in the range of 75% - 80% of GDP (Greece, Italy, Begium, Ireland, & maybe Portugal exceptions) --- public debt excludes debt owed to other countries, ...
Following are the charts (and tables) of Gross Public Federal Debt levels under Bush II and under Obama.
The Federal Fiscal Year runs from Oct 1 in the year indicated to Sept 30 of the next year. Since Bush II's term in office began Jan 2001, most of the fiscal year 2000 debt occurred in his first year in office. ...
A partial response I wrote to one of my "fans" who opposes increasing gov't debt was essentially that debt isn't "bad" even in large amounts. I previously provided an analogy related to U.S. homeowner indebtedness having a ratio of total debt to annual income that's normally much larger than the U.S. ratio of national debt to ...
I'm trying to figure out what the real issue is with national federal deficit spending and the accumulated national federal debt (sum of past deficits).
The reason for my lack of understanding of the real issue is that every U.S. home owner goes into a 20 or 30 year debt when they buy a house. They buy a ...
Dean Baker's article describes the lack of deficit hawks to reconcile their reasoning for reducing the deficit with the facts and economic ...
If Fact Check got it wrong "that Social Security contributes to the US Budget deficit" then it stands to reason that most others in the US probabl also think Social Security contributes to the US budget deficit. DB sets it straight... Social Security DOES NOT contribute to the US Budget deficit... not just because he says so... but ...
Dean Baker's article explains well why Social Security isn't one of the deficit problems. He shows how the deficit hawks have used slight of hand to make it appear that social security is a significant part of the problem in order to obtain benefit reductions or other means (partial privitization, etc) to reduce gov't expenditures ...
Every homeowner in the US goes into at least a 15 year and most a 30 year debt when they buy a house. They add to that debt by buying a car on credit, not to mention furniture, home improvements, etc. We don't even need to talk about the level of credit card debt allowed... and incurred.
Every ...
The issue of the day / month is supposedly the exploding national deficit, which unless addressed at some point by a combination of increasing revenues and decreasing outlays will eventually create an insolvent US gov't.
One might think we're at a crossroads of sorts... reign in gov't spending or increase ...