Patterico's Pontifications

8/29/2014

National Debt Has Almost Doubled Since Financial Crisis

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:48 am



Coincidentally, that’s also mostly the time that Obama has been in office:

The federal debt this year will be double what it was before the financial crisis, Congress’ official budget scorekeeper projected Wednesday morning.

The debt is on pace to reach 74 percent of the country’s economic output by the end of the year, double what it was in 2007 and the highest percentage since 1950, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Remember: Bush’s ill-advised bailouts have been largely repaid. They were a bad idea not because of the loss of money to the Treasury but because of the moral hazard they created: an incentive for banks to take unsustainable risks into the foreseeable future with no fear of real adverse consequences.

The doubling of the debt is mostly due to Obama’s explosion in spending, starting with the disastrous Keynesian stimulus, and then using that budget as a baseline for future budgets.

In four years, Obama ran up almost $5 trillion in debt — an amount it took the spendthrift Bush eight years to amass, and he’s not done. Things that can’t go on forever, won’t.

Just another reminder that we are headed for disaster. And we don’t have a strategy for dealing with it. Happy Friday!

85 Responses to “National Debt Has Almost Doubled Since Financial Crisis”

  1. Queue the Democratic message that it is NOT the fault of the President because Congress spends the money. At which point they’ll point the finger firmly at the GOP because just about every Democratic voter thinks the GOP has full control of Congress.

    Dejectedhead (a094a6)

  2. Agreed. Do not fear the shutdown.

    AZ Bob (34bb80)

  3. We have a model of the future that is 20 years along. Japan went on a Keynesian spending binge after the property collapse in the early 90s. Japan has proven Keynes wrong and is still trying to prove him right.

    Japan went into the economic doldrums in the1990s. They’ve been trying that fiscal stimulus thing ever since: they’ve driven that national debt up to 200% of GDP in doing so. They’ve also done it in the approved manner, by building infrastructure. There’s hardly a stream in the entire country without its own bullet train station. This should have, according to a simplistic Keynesianism, have lifted the economy up out of those doldrums. Which it quite obviously hasn’t.

    Mike K (90dfdc)

  4. The good news is the recovery is right around the corner.

    As soon as the Ukraine war is mopped up, and a couple other details.

    gary gulrud (46ca75)

  5. Keynes economic theory isn’t even considered a modern economic theory (As I understand it, I’m not an economist). It is a grandfathered economic theory because it was the first attempt at Macro-economics.

    A couple problems with it is that:
    1. It assumes a closed system where money can’t leave. (Not the case)
    2. It does not account for time. No matter how long a problem goes on does not affect the results the model gives you. The response to an immediate economic crisis is the same as to a 20+ year economic crisis.

    That’s a couple of reasons why Paul Krugman always seems like an idiot. That and his stupid face.

    Dejectedhead (a094a6)

  6. I learned in my economics class that Keynesianism is to economics what alchemy is to science. Three out of five of my economics professors were die hard socialists. All five bought into both Keynes and Malthus. One professor used to call me “Almighty Dollar” because every time he uttered some foolish socialist drivel my hand would shoot up and I’d give him the Adam Smith treatment. While these clowns read and believed stupid crap like “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” I was reading Friedman and Sowell. What I loved most was ( as became a lesson for life ) no matter how wrong, no matter what the irrefutable facts or outcome, the leftist economists could not change their view. Every idea they had failed but they didn’t fail because they were wrong, they failed either because not enough money was spent or because the wrong people were in charge. It’s comic in academia, but tragic in real life.

    Hoagie (4dfb34)

  7. Since the Fed will soon own all US public debt I fail to see the problem.

    Lookit Zimbabwe, they’re totally fine.

    gary gulrud (46ca75)

  8. If this is not reported correctly, or if reported correctly, the teflon voters (truth doesn’t stick) will not care. So therefore, no downside for Chairman O and his minions. He does not have a strategy to deal with this either.

    Roman (0bfd6d)

  9. LEGACY

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  10. Master Ryan: Shutting down government will not stop the WH, Obamaneycare or Prickly Heat and is a recipe for suicide by the GOP.

    What, exactly, is your point, Son?

    gary gulrud (46ca75)

  11. “The president has authorized military action in Syri… er, er, in Iraq…”

    Josh Earnest, a few seconds ago.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  12. #CartBeforeTheHorseshlt

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  13. I don’t think the bail-outs were ill-advised. What went wrong was not learning from the necessity of them that too-big-to-fail should be outlawed, and then failing to outlaw it.

    John Moore (ac5430)

  14. Considering the unqualified benefit of the Fed’s $5 Trillion in acquisitions,

    http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-03/top-tenth-of-1-percenters-reaps-all-the-riches

    May I have another, Sirs and Madams?

    gary gulrud (46ca75)

  15. I am still awaiting a good study of the Harding-Coolidge aborting of the depression in 1921. It was a severe panic similar to the 1929 one and they pulled us out of it in a year. What followed was the 1920s, an era very similar to the 1990s with innovation, new communication inventions and economic growth. Amity Schlaes has said she is working on one. She has done a good job with Coolidge’s biography and The Forgotten Man . She delayed the publication of the Coolidge biography because she said she was doing more work on the economics. I just hope she gets the Harding biography done. He was vilified by the leftists in the Roosevelt era and his story is long overdue.

    Mike K (90dfdc)

  16. Global warmening is the biggest threat this country faces, not government debt. FOCUS!!!!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  17. Mike K (90dfdc) — 8/29/2014 @ 8:10 am

    Just after the Turn of the Century, we joked about Japan’s Lost Decade, which is not stretching towards Three.
    Our correction, being larger and more resistant to a change of course, may take longer.
    I do not anticipate being around to see the ultimate recovery.

    Let the Hunger Games begin.

    askeptic (efcf22)

  18. Oops…..”now stretching” not “not”.

    askeptic (efcf22)

  19. daley, taking a break from writing speeches for Lurch?

    askeptic (efcf22)

  20. askeptic – He never follows what I write anyway, the big blowhard.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  21. when you stop viciously raping an economy you’d be surprised how quick it can perk up

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  22. When Bush became President the ‘debt held by the public’ was 31.4 percent of GDP at the end of FY2001. By 2007 the debt increased slightly to 35.1 percent of GDP. The deficit in 2007 was 1.1 percent of GDP, which was down two-thirds from the 3.4 percent deficit the government ran in 2004. The debt to GDP ratio declined slightly in both 2006 and 2007, going from 35.6 percent in 2005 to 35.1 percent in 2007. Back then the Democrats and the media were telling us how horrible those debts and deficits were.

    From 2007 to 2013 the debt more than doubled to 72.0 percent. The 2013 deficit was 4.1 percent of GDP. The debt to GDP ratio is expected to rise another 2.4 percentage points this year alone according to the CBO. Today the Democrats and the media are telling how great a job Obama and the Democrats are doing managing the debt and deficit.

    Joe (33fd9a)

  23. Well, he did promise to cut the deficit in half, and he did – after inflating it 300%.

    askeptic (efcf22)

  24. President titeleist has two more years to topple the middle class.
    A few more regulations and I think the games will begin.

    mg (31009b)

  25. well there is also a difference in what the debt was spent on, in the Bush years, it was the cost of fighting in at least two theatres of the same war, and then there’s the domestic component,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  26. At least we’re not blowing a fortune on medical care like those hapless Africans.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/ebola-virus-has-mutated-during-course-of-outbreak/2014/08/28/98235aaa-2ecb-11e4-bb9b-997ae96fad33_story.html

    I guess they’re going to try a vaccine on an unquarantined somebody if they can hold them down.

    gary gulrud (46ca75)

  27. narciso, yes – Bush war debt bad, Obama crony-capitalist/PE-Union debt good!
    Oh, for those terrible Bush Years.

    “Miss Me Yet?”

    askeptic (efcf22)

  28. Mutt and Jeff:

    http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2014/08/28/brother-and-sister-accused-of-having-sex-in-church-parking-lot/

    It appears Christopher is a 190 lb. 5’3″ sister and Timothy a 145 lb. 6′ brutha. Confusion is endemic.

    gary gulrud (46ca75)

  29. I’m so embarrassed. The yield on the 10-Year T-Bill has slipped to 2.33% and the USD is the rise versus all major currencies.

    I dint know the color of Doom at all.

    gary gulrud (46ca75)

  30. gary, are you saying it might be time (again) to consider a re-fi?

    askeptic (efcf22)

  31. Oy.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-29/goldman-slashes-eurusd-forecast-120

    Meaning euro headed down another 10%? Anyplace w/o Muslims is going to be ugly Amerikkkan tourist Mecca.

    gary gulrud (46ca75)

  32. 30. That may happen, yes. 30-Year stands about 4% now, 20% down.

    gary gulrud (46ca75)

  33. 31- Good thing Mexican’s aren’t big on diversity, so we won’t be seeing a lot of Muslim busboys in Cancun.

    askeptic (efcf22)

  34. More anectodal evidence the economy isn’t all that:

    http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/08/quiktrip-has-no-plans-to-rebuild-in-ferguson-despite-threats/

    I thot illegals worked cheap.

    gary gulrud (46ca75)

  35. She delayed the publication of the Coolidge biography because she said she was doing more work on the economics.

    If you look at the bibliography of The Forgotten Man, you see she consulted very little literature in economics or in economic history.

    The 1920-21 contraction was co-incident with demobilization, rather like that the 1945-47 contraction. You also had rapid deflation. What you did not have was serial banking crises. You had three large waves of bank failures between the summer of 1929 and the spring of 1933. About 40% of the banks extant in 1929 failed (though since the failures were disproportionately among country unit banks, a smaller share of deposits were implicated in the failures).

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  36. He was vilified by the leftists in the Roosevelt era and his story is long overdue.

    I suspect secondary history teachers, journalists, and Democratic partisans ultimately drink from a well put in by Frederick Lewis Allen. However, his book was not published during the Roosevelt Era, but rather in 1931.

    A great many crooks in the Harding Administration. The man himself had no history running an enterprise larger than a small-town newspaper and was by some accounts aghast at what some of his camp followers had been up to. Revisionist accounts of his infidelities maintain that they were of a discrete number and his correspondence with his paramours is anything but gross or manipulative. Never read the primary documents myself.

    Harding was elected in 1920 with about 60% of the vote in a race with consequential 3d party candidacies. No other first time candidate for the office has ever managed a plurality of that dimensions, and he did so against a Democratic opponent better prepared for the office. It’s indicative, I think, of the degree to which the 2d Wilson administration had been rejected by the broader public.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  37. Harding was blessed by having Silent Cal as his Veep, and Hoover as SecCommerce.
    They, as best as possible, kept the wheels from spinning off, but could not control Fall.

    askeptic (efcf22)

  38. “The doubling of the debt is mostly due to Obama’s explosion in spending, starting with the disastrous Keynesian stimulus, and then using that budget as a baseline for future budgets.”

    Federal net outlays as a percent of GDP are down since 2009.

    ghostofkeynes (f7a102)

  39. “Federal net outlays as a percent of GDP are down since 2009.”

    Outlays up in dollars down in percent. We are saved!!!!!!!!!!!!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  40. this obviously all the fault of Bush leaving such a big mess…

    redc1c4 (abd49e)

  41. You did notice that the debt figure quoted was also in percent terms?

    ghostofkeynes (f7a102)

  42. You did notice nothing I said was untrue.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  43. Except for the saved part.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  44. High standards around here.

    ghostofkeynes (f7a102)

  45. I hear Belize is nice.

    Dustin (7f67e8)

  46. 42. I know this might be perceived as negativity, but you did forget that $500 Billion of that GDP in life-giving Federal spending came out of an ink pot.

    Oh, and another $500 Billion was newly minted accounting, recording prostitution and illicit drug commerce towards our bottom line.

    And, who knows how much flowed in from FX adjustments for exports over imports, especially with all those bogus Chinese invoices?

    That GDP figger is a tad inflated I’d hazard.

    gary gulrud (46ca75)

  47. Mellon, was the most prominent figure in the administration, was there a bubble, securities based rather than railroad as with earlier downturns, yes, but the same patterns obtained overseas, it took Smoot Hawley, an act of Great Stupidity to turn it into a Depression

    narciso (ee1f88)

  48. it took Smoot Hawley, an act of Great Stupidity to turn it into a Depression

    Only about 5% of American domestic product was exported in 1929. Smoot-Hawley could not account for more than a modest fraction (< 10%) of the economic contraction which ensued. Free trade is beneficial, but the value of those benefits is generally modest.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  49. Cut spending that cures deficits! Should we disband the 82 airborne division or the 101st to cut spending or both? How many aircraft carriers should we sell to the chinese for scrap one two or more? How much aid should we cut to israel a little a lot all?

    mr.gop (dd2e23)

  50. We could start with the TSA, and the DEA, and a few other useless POS offices…..EPA anyone?
    None of them are specified as a job of a Federal Government in the Constitution, unlike ‘provide for the common defence’ – so I think keeping the 82nd and 101st around is pretty reasonable.
    Except to a die-hard, dumb Leftist.

    askeptic (efcf22)

  51. Departments of Energy, Education, HHS, Transportation, Labor can go, and we should convert the BATFE into a national convenience store chain, instead of a law enforcement agency.

    lots of other excellent candidates here

    redc1c4 (abd49e)

  52. we have nothing to show for this money

    sad little america

    can’t put a man in space

    can’t handle a rambunctious terrorist group

    can’t create a website where you go for the health insurance

    can’t backup and retrieve important emails

    can’t grow plants in California no mores

    can’t defend its own border against bands of unarmed children

    we have nothing to show for this money

    sad little america

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  53. Candidly, I will feel bad when innocent Texicans by the hundreds suffer 9/11/2014.

    http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/08/texas-and-california-in-crosshairs-of-isis-and-al-qaeda/

    I don’t give a rip about the Calis.

    gary gulrud (46ca75)

  54. Departments of Energy, Education, HHS, Transportation, Labor

    1. With the Department of Education, you can fish out the National Assessment of Educational Progress and set up a small regulatory agency, but likely 95%+ could go. It’s subventions to higher education and to state and local government. Higher education is overdue for a Depression and aid to state and local government can take the place of unrestricted grants to state governments determined by formula (which requires a check-cutting office only).

    2. Roughly two-thirds of the Transportation budget consists of aid to state and local governments which can be replaced with general revenue sharing. The rest consists of the air traffic control system, various safety inspectorates, the Merchant Marine Academy, the agency which cleans up chemical spills on roads, and the subagency which builds roads on federal land. These are not things you can readily devolve or turn over to the private sector.

    3. The Labor department has a mess of job training programs (larded on to our community college system) which likely are a jumble of pet projects of long-departed members of Congress. There is also the Wage and Hour Division, but it’s problems concern regulatory substance. There is a statistical collection agency (benign), IIRC an office which supervises trade unions, and the agency which distributes unemployment compensation.

    4. HHS contains Medicaid and Medicare, the Indian Health Service, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the Commissioned Corps of the Public Health Service, IIRC one or two benign statistical or assessment agencies, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Institutes of Health. Other than that, there quite a mess of subsidy to state and local government and to the social work industry. The patronage distribution agencies can go, as can the patronage distributed by NIH (about 60% of their budget is bon bons for higher education) and CDC (about half is bon bons for state and local government). It gets more..er..challenging if you try to take a meat cleaver to this other stuff.

    5. The Energy department has a scandal plagued loan portfolio and a grant facility worth some billions of dollars. Much of the rest of the agency provides services to the military (building nuclear weapons), runs site clean-ups, collects some statistics, has some regulatory functions re interstate traffic in energy and acts as a holding company for federal hydroelectric authorities. It’s something of a kitchen-sink and one former Secretary of Energy said that only someone ‘probably certifiable’ would want to run the department for more than four years. It’s begging to be broken up, but only the patronage grants and misbegotten venture capital mess is begging to be destroyed. The core of the department is the National Laboratories, which actually are a bigger deal than NASA. Who has a clear idea of what to do with those?

    6. No clue why you have an issue with excises.

    7. You did not mention HUD, which has a long history of scandal and could be readily replaced with an expansion of EITC and Social Security (without the administrative costs or corruption of awardable housing).

    Are you sure you’ve thought this through? You try to eliminate Medicaid, Medicare, and unemployment compensation in one fiscal year, you are likely to have a mess of trouble on your hands.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  55. red, did you see that the QuikTrip, having had its outlet in Ferguson burned out and looted, has told the City “Adios!”?.

    askeptic (efcf22)

  56. Well some programs will have to be spun off, others reorganized, why do you assume that everything is a permanent fixture,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  57. #56, Art, “… you are likely to have a mess of trouble on your hands.” Your question should be addressed to Uncle Ben and Aunt Yellen. When our currency is valued mainly for it’s heat content, none of these “essential” government programs will be of any importance. At the same time, no one will miss them either. And history is not a good predictor for the the coming crisis. With electronic “currency”, HteWon will simply be reassuring everyone that if they are residents of “Blue” states, their EBT card balances will be increased by an extra zero on the right every third day. For the red states, well, good luck!

    bobathome (03da93)

  58. At the same time, no one will miss them either

    If you wish to traffick in social fiction, be my guest. Not my amusement.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  59. I haven’t read all of the posts, maybe somebody has mentioned this- apparently there is some poll done by someone at Rutgers that says a majority of Americans think the economy is bad because Bush messed it up so much that it will never recover.
    How accurate it is, I have no idea, but that is the claim.

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  60. Well some programs will have to be spun off, others reorganized, why do you assume that everything is a permanent fixture,

    I do not. It’s useful, I would think, to have an idea about the implications of what you’re advocating. (The original poster also missed USDA. Over 90% of the budget of USDA consists of grocery subsidies, patronage for agribusiness, and higher education pork).

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  61. a majority of Americans think the economy is bad because Bush messed it up so much that it will never recover.

    Sounds like an urban legend (unless they were polling Democratic Party clients).

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  62. “7. You did not mention HUD, which has a long history of scandal and could be readily replaced with an expansion of EITC and Social Security (without the administrative costs or corruption of awardable housing).”

    Art Deco – The EITC has massive fraud problems of its own, not sure why the heck you would want to expand it.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  63. I can’t believe anyone has the unmitigated gall to suggest there’s anything worth salvaging in the Federal government. Nothing buttery.

    Burn DC to the ground.

    gary gulrud (46ca75)

  64. Art Deco- perhaps indeed there is no mention of President Bush, but the main point is that there are many people who are thinking that the economy is bad and continues to be bad for reasons that have nothing to do with any of Obama’s policies.
    So maybe there was no blaming of Bush by name, but there is no responsibility assigned to Obama.

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  65. The EITC has massive fraud problems of its own, not sure why the heck you would want to expand it.

    Cash transfers are efficient. If you have a problem with fraud, you need to employ auditors.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  66. “If you have a problem with fraud, you need to employ auditors.”

    Art Deco – HUD can employ more auditors just as well as the IRS. Push one place the fraud pops out another.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  67. So agencies commit fraud and the government hires auditors to check it out. You do realize this always turns into a circular firing squad? They all work together. They’re all government employees. They’re all in the same union. The way to eliminate the fraud is fire the people and eliminate the agency.

    Many moons ago I had a problem with one of my restaurants. Try as I could I could not figure out why the numbers from that store were off from the others. Finally, after a very peculiar week where all my other joints pulled record numbers, I walked in and fired the entire staff. The next business day I brought in a couple employees from each of my other stores and all that week I sat there and interviewed new hires. The next week we trained. I never had a problem again. Not only did that store become my best store, but the other places, hearing that I fired everybody, started producing more themselves. Now this was many years ago long before POS systems and broad use of computers. In fact I was doing my books by hand, with a freekin calculator, freekin weekly! Same with payroll. What a nightmare compared to my last 5 restaurants.

    But that’s how you solve a fraud/theft problem fellas. Fire the bastards!

    Hoagie (4dfb34)

  68. HUD can employ more auditors just as well as the IRS. Push one place the fraud pops out another.

    Subventions in particular markets are less well adapted to household utility functions than are cash transfers. Housing is a frequently replenished good (monthly rents) and considerations of amenity are paramount. There is a peck of trouble which emerges from intervention in particular markets and in that market especially.

    Social Security has paid benefits since 1940 and unemployment compensation is of similar vintage. This is not an insuperable problem. One difficulty you have is that income taxes are such a mass of barnacles that your human resources are diverted from detecting fraud to reviewing complex returns. It does not have to be that way.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  69. Keynes is somewhat misunderstood. He did not advocate running continual deficits. His theory held that running large deficits temporarily would jump start a stalled economy, and then you remove the stimulus. He also held that tax cuts were just as good a way to increase deficits as spending increases. The version of it as understood by Democrats and the media is you only increase spending.

    Gerald A (d65c67)

  70. Yes, Keynes would act much like McLuhan did in Manhattan, to his supposed followers:

    http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/08/judge-rejects-key-parts-of-texas-abortion-law/

    narciso (ee1f88)

  71. sometimes judges reject key parts of texas abortion laws

    but then it gets appealed

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  72. “Subventions in particular markets are less well adapted to household utility functions than are cash transfers. Housing is a frequently replenished good (monthly rents) and considerations of amenity are paramount.”

    Art Deco – My point is that any time you have government handouts there is the potential for fraud. HUD programs administered on a local basis monthly at least put tools in the hands of the government to cut down on fraud more easily than tax returns filed once a year. Six of one half dozen of the other.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  73. So maybe there was no blaming of Bush by name, but there is no responsibility assigned to Obama.

    That’s why I think the following quote, attributed to an Eastern European publication, is regrettably all too prescient. It isn’t an overly cynical, skeptical assessment of the US in the 21st century, even more so since this society’s demographics probably will increasingly resemble that of Mexico’s.

    The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America.

    Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.

    Mark (14a4db)

  74. social media be the problem. those tweeties and facebook thingys confuse us. And that atm machine spels bad because heather at the bank dont nums quarters anymore. Thats bad cuz when my monys from bottle deps shes all like, what? change? Then she say what? this is rude and so im all this aint no bank so you know i have to get my bills from the bank cuz nikels is hard. And she says whatever. im all make the nikels things a bill because milk ha dont grow and the store is hater on change she says get a job so i’m all like android sez Obama goin to take care this. And she sez what. social media is the problem because she dont do money things.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  75. So who stepped on the butterfly, because that sounds like something out of the ‘Sound of Thunder’

    narciso (ee1f88)

  76. Don’t forget the 10 Trillon on the Federal Reserve Balance Sheet. When it hits the resulting inflation will destroy the poor and middle class. Put another way, this President has raised Taxes on the poor and middle class more than any President in history. This is fact not an opinion. Think about it.

    John Anders (ca726f)

  77. Dear Patterico:
    Nearly doubled?
    Ok. Let’s start there.
    Now: who signed the FY08 budget and when?
    Hint: Not Bush.

    jb (9074c5)

  78. jb – I think you mean the FY 09 budget.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  79. During the last years of Bush didn’t the democrat controlled congress create continuing resolutions instead of a budget?

    When was the last time the Harry Reid controlled senate create and pass a budget?

    Tanny O'Haley (f5a155)

  80. I used to post a link to this a lot, but finally stopped because nobody seems to care. We will, though

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  81. Hmmmph… Speaking of the JV’s putting on NBA jerseys, I introduce the Obama Admin squad, JV to just abut any other presidency in US history, and certainly to the Russian Fed Putins, the N. Korea Family Power Circle Jerks, the unrecognized but playing anyway Islamic Caliphates, and the China South China Sea Reds, not to mention the Gov’t Motors squad, and the combined Wall Street and Banker’s Raiders team.

    Let’s give them a great hand. They’ve lost every encounter so far, folks, but man, have they got heart…?!? Despite being manhandled and out maneuvered at every turn, they STILL believe that they belong on the world stage.

    NeoCon_1 (deb0c0)

  82. For FY-09, the Congress passed a CR to carry the Gov’t into February, with some special funding for Afghan/Iraq Ops. All increases in FY-09 spending authorizations were passed by the Reid-Pelosi Congress following the Nov-08 Election, and presented to President Obama for signature after his swearing-in, along with the Stimulappopcalypse Bill that ramped-up the Baseline and gave us unending $1T deficits.
    FY-08 had a deficit of $460B, much of which resulted from the Detroit/Wall Street bail-outs (TARP, LehmanBros, AIG) signed by Bush – ’07 had had a $160B deficit.
    (please don’t hold me to exact certitude here – this is all of the top of my head)

    askeptic (efcf22)


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.1055 secs.