Just proves that there are some people who refuse to believe water is wet, even after they’ve fallen into the river.”

- Another Drew

Yeah. Sure. The word of the Bush Administration is straight-up gospel, and anyone who believes otherwise is a tin-hat conspiracy theorist.

And you’re the one arguing that we shouldn’t trust the government when it comes to the FLDS.
(New Mexico Child Removal Case, Comment #1)

Can you say “cognitive dissonance”?

That 0.6% was an annual rate (or “pace” as the story put it in the first two mentions). The quarter-over-quarter growth would thus have been about 0.15%. The doubling of the economy would, at that rate, take about 4 times as long as you figured (116 years; of course, no one expects such rates to continue).

Ras, these GDP growth figures are inflation-adjusted numbers. That said, when we have a big divergence among prices, the single inflation number becomes less meaningful for various types of individuals. Notably, poorer people spend more of their money on food and energy, and less of their money on “core” products. That means things are a bit worse (inflation is higher) overall for poorer people right now than indicated by such figures. And of course, things are a bit less bad overall for richer people.

…The third leg of the debt problem, following consumer and business debt, is Uncle Sam. Government debt as of November 7, 2007, officially passed $ 9,000,000,000,000. That’s about $ 30,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country. This total includes debt owned by many types of investors, from individuals to corporations to Federal Reserve banks and especially to foreign interests. (By 2004, foreign central banks had stockpiled more than $ 1.3 trillion worth of dollar – denominated Treasury bonds and agency bonds at the Federal Reserve. By 2007, foreign debt had nearly doubled, to $ 2.033 trillion.)

What the $ 7.8 trillion figure does not account for are items like the gap between the government’s Social Security and Medicare commitments and the money put aside to pay for them. If these items are factored in, the government debt burden for every American rises to well over $ 175,000.

I’m in the early SS camp with madmaxx. Social Security…the ultimate mission creep. From its beginning as a ’socialized insurance plan’ to help backstop the elderly in the hard-scrabble 30’s to becoming a full-fledged ‘retirement fund’ (albeit on the ropes and perhaps on the way back to its original function…unintentionally, of course). I’ll be overjoyed just to get back what I’ve paid in. And that’s not even considering those were much more valuable dollars back then. Excessive monetary creation does make for an interesting world.

And in regard to laughing at all the idiot foreigners who have bought US debt to the tune of sometimes 2 billion a day…they can always take our trade based dollars and buy more oil, copper, and US assets for themselves instead of 30 yr Treasuries. Actually, they’ve already begun to do just that. So what is a debt addicted country to do? Print more money? Yes, Grasshopper.

Anyone interested in the entire essay, it can be found at the Daily Reckoning site.

Just proves that there are some people who refuse to believe water is wet, even after they’ve fallen into the river.

We can say that depreciating the Dollar is only going to hurt those foreign bond holders, but a lot of bonds are held here by both individuals and funds. But, since so much of our economy is tied to consumer spending, and we’re importing a huge gaggle of stuff to consume (not counting oil), everything becomes more expensive as the currency is depreciated.
Next thing you know, you’ve got Wiemar.
Not Good!

In my case full retirement is at age 66. If one takes an early payout at age 62, one receives 25% less per month than at age 66. I figure why not take it as soon as possible as the amounts paid to you for the four years prior to 66 as a sum would require you live until age 78 to break even. Ex. age 66 is $1300 a month. 25% less at 62 is $1000 a month. So figure you’ve taken in $48,000 in the four years prior to age 66. The extra $333/month you could have received by waiting would be the same if you matched it to the four years you collected less. And we are not considering what you might have earned on investing those four years prior to ‘66. Anyway that’s my reasoning and since we have no idea what Congress may do in the future, I’m thinking get what you can now. If you drop dead prior to retirement, your estate can claim only a $255 burial benefit.
Didn’t pols bitch at one time how SS was a ticking time bomb? Did not the evil Bush try to get reforms through Congress? My understanding is that the fed retirement benefits for pols is quite lucrative though. And still they want more from the public trough. Or special deals like Harry Reid and Pelosi make as two hypocritical examples of screwing the public unashamedly.