[lit-ideas] Re: lit-ideas Digest V1 #129

  • From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 10:53:09 EST

Since this country seems about as solvent as I am, I'm wondering......is  
there any country that is not up to its eyebrows in debt?
 
Julie Krueger
 
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V1 #129  Date: 11/15/04 9:50:26 AM Central Standard Time  From: 
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From:  Eternitytime1@xxxxxxx
Sent: Nov 15, 2004 1:15 AM
To:  lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: lit-ideas Digest V1  #129


In a message dated 11/14/2004 11:27:01 PM Central Standard  Time,  
JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx writes:
<<I'm not sure I want to  be an American anymore. 
I said that  three years ago.  I'm pretty  sure I don't.  It's just  kinda  
hard 
logistically to get  off this island.


Hi,
Not to worry.  That is what I've been  thinking, lately.  

I just read:  "To finance our binge buying  overseas, we borrow $2  billion a 
day from abroad."   Pretty  soon, we'll all belong to someone  else anyway.  
Well, our  'country's debt' anyway.  I'm still figuring  that one out.  How  
will 
we pay if (or when?) it comes 'due'?  



A.A.   It's like you or me going to the bank and buying a savings bond.  In 
effect  we are lending the government money and the government promises to 
repay us the  money with interest.  It works basically the same on a huge scale 
 
too.  Other countries will buy U.S. debt instruments like bonds or  whatever, 
the U.S. uses the money to, say, finance the war or pay Medicare or  whatever, 
then we repay the money with interest.  If we had the money in  the treasury, 
we wouldn't need to borrow it.  

That's why the debt,  as compared with the deficit, is in the trillions.  The 
deficit is the  amount we don't have on hand to pay Medicare or the Veterans, 
or the CDC, or the  NIH, or whatever, and the debt is the interest we owe on 
the money we borrow to  finance these and other things we take for granted.  
Other countries are  willing to invest in the U.S. government because we've 
been known for our  stability.  That's one of the reasons NYC was targeted, 
because it's the  financial hub of the country.  If they destroy us 
financially, 
they destroy  us.  It's also why a nuclear terror attack would be so 
devastating, because  unlike the $200 million per day for a year that the WTC 
took to 
clean up, it  could cost trillions, far more than we could even borrow.  Not to 
mention  that countries would stop lending to us.  

It's also why it's so  utterly stupid that the rich act as if they don't live 
here.  They are the  ones who have the lion's share of the income, so the 
lion's share of the  incoming tax revenue stays in their pocket, since they pay 
*no taxes at all* by  offshoring to the Caymans and other places.  Any tax 
revenue, which is the  only revenue a country has, comes nearly 100% from the 
middle class.  It's  also why it was such a big deal when Clinton balanced the 
budget and used pay as  you go.  He reduced our reliance on borrowed money.   



Marlena: Wonder what we'll do then and how *that* will come to  pass...any  
ideas?   
Are our kids prepared and will they know  what to do in order  to buy some 
time 
so they will be okay and it will  be THEIR kids who have to  pay?  <wry look> 
[did you like  the choice of words <g>]


A.A. Bill Moyers NOW last Friday  interviewed an economics professor from 
Boston University (name and book escape  me).  This man said basically that the 
U.S. will be bankrupt in the next  few decades.  It's one of the reasons I am 
so against Bush.  He is so  focused on religion and increasing the wealth of a 
few that he is clueless to  the economic crises under his face.  And now that 
Republicans are in the  majority, they can do what they want.  None of these 
people are  economists.  They literally don't know what's going on.  There is a 
 push now to reform the woefully outdated tax code, further to that book I  
referenced a while back, so word may be beginning to spread.  But the  chances 
that enough Congress people read the book and can convince the ultra  wealthy 
to part with their share is, well ...  Certainly Bush didn't read  it.  Kerry 
was seen at least buying it.



Marlena: It's quite  the thought, anyway.  


A.A. Quite.


Andy  Amago


Wondering which owners of our debt will be the first to  collect-and in what  
arena of life-and how,
Marlena in  Missouri


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