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The Linguistic Psychology of Misinformation and Why a Treasury Bond Bubble Unquestionably Exists
I hate using the term “boom-bust” to describe a period of
capital market appreciation and then collapse, for the use of this term is very
deceptive to the reality of economic conditions. Intentionally or not, using
this term helps to brainwash the masses into believing the agenda of the
Keynesian economists that an economic “boom” is occurring when in fact massive
price distortions only create the illusion of “prosperity” when none exists.
When we hear the term “boom”, most of us associate economic prosperity with its
use. When we hear the word “bust”, most of us associate this term with the end
of economic prosperity. The Great
Deception that occurs, of course, is that there can be no “bust” when there was
no “boom” to begin with. The use of the “boom/bust” term to describe a period
of rapid price appreciation and then decline is every bit as problematic as the
current media use of the “double-dip recession”. Just as a double-dip is impossible if the economy never
emerged from the first phase of the recession, a “bust” is impossible when
there never has been a “boom”.
Anyone that uses the term “boom-bust” contributes to this
misunderstanding of what really happens during this appreciation/ depreciation
cycle and assists in keeping the sheep misinformed. Much more accurate terms to
describe this cycle would be “inflationary/deflationary”, “malinvestment-driven
distorted-price mania/ price collapse meltdown” or even “bubble/bust”. Although
my least favorite of those three pairs is “bubble/bust” at least the word
“bubble” implies unsustainability and is therefore accurate in describing
Central Bank monetary policy-driven periods of rapid price appreciation in
capital markets. Any of these aforementioned terms among countless others would
serve to enlighten the public to the reality of the mechanisms behind
artificially-created steep capital market rises and artificially-created
collapses much more than the inappropriate and extremely deceptive “boom-bust”
term.
However, here is the problem with the world “bubble”.
Financial shills often use the term “bubble” to conjure up images of imminent
collapse. Thus, if the “bubble” doesn’t burst within two weeks of someone’s “bubble”
proclamation, then this non-event provides loads of verbal ammunition for the
financial shills to improperly validate their erroneous viewpoint that a bubble
does not exist. It provides perfect fodder for the shills to attack someone
that courageously tries to inform others of a hazardous bubble situation as
someone that has no idea what he or she was talking about. Of course, when the bubble eventually
does pop, these shills never bother to reminisce about their dozens of
erroneous predictions over the past several years, and proceed to continue to
fool as many sheep as they can with future declarations of unjustified
recovery.
Most importantly, financial shills NEVER discuss the
mechanisms by which bubbles in capital markets are created. If they discussed
the mechanisms behind the creation of bubbles, then people would realize that Central
Banks’ assumption of low and ARTIFICIAL interest rates goad months/years of
malinvestment into capital markets. In return, this excess of cash created by
Central Banks chases assets and creates enormous price appreciations, that in
reality, could never occur under free market conditions. When Central Banks
discuss the fear that raising interest rates will end economic prosperity, this
is not what is at stake here. As I already explained, Central Banks create
massive distortions in prices that are only sustainable by creating more
massive distortions in prices. Central Banks fear raising interest rates in
these situations because doing so will end the ARTIFICIAL period of massive
price distortion it has created. If the public understood this, then they would
understand that timing should never factor into the definition of a bubble, though
the media seems to give great heed to the timing element whenever a bubble is discussed,
as if it is impossible for a bubble to exist if it does not burst one month
after a bubble declaration is made. If the conditions I just described exist, a
bubble exists. And whether this bubble implodes two days later or a year later
does not preclude the FACT that the ramp up in prices in this asset class was:
(1) Artificially created by Keynesian economic principles;
(2) Unsustainable;
(3)
Would never exist if free markets, and not Central Banks were setting interest
rates; and
(4) Destined to implode.
And when bubbles implode, I cannot agree with the oft-given
explanation that massive amounts of wealth are being destroyed during this
time. I aver that not wealth, but only massive price distortions, are being
destroyed. For example, consider a scenario in which you bought a home for a
million dollars. In five years,
the value of your home appreciated to $2 million because of a massive real
estate bubble created by the Fed Reserve. In the sixth year, the real estate
bubble collapsed, and the value of your house dropped precipitously and rapidly
to $1.2 million. Housing “experts” will ride the boom-bust explanation of the
RE market to inform you that trillions in real estate wealth had just been
destroyed. This is not real wealth as these price distortions were never
sustainable and were never a function of supply and demand, but a direct result
of greed and speculation driven by artificially ludicrous interest rates set by
Central Banks.
So let’s look at the current US Treasury Bond bubble and try
to understand why many experts claim that no “bubble” exists and that all is
well in the US bond market (an irresponsible statement, that in my opinion,
should be adequate to forever revoke their journalism license). In light of the definition of “bubble”
that I have provided in this article, any fund manager or investment firm
strategist that does not understand that the Treasury bond market is a massive
“bubble” should be banned from ever providing clients with advice on the bond
market. A stable bond market is as inappropriate a term as possible to describe
the current state of affairs of the US government bond market. As surely as the inappropriate use of
the term “strong dollar” proves that the person using this term has no idea
that a fiat currency can rise relative to other currencies against which it is
measured without ever “strengthening”, the argument against the existence of a
Treasury bond bubble today exposes a person for his or her lack of understanding
about the mechanisms of US Central Bank monetary policies.
Of course, timing the bursting of a bubble correctly is
paramount to making money from the side-effects of unsustainable Central Bank
monetary policies. However, this is an entirely different issue than whether or
not a bubble exists. Many investment strategists are unequivocally claiming
today that a bubble in the US Treasury bond market does not exist. A bubble in
the US Treasury Bond market undoubtedly exists. The only question now is how
big the sound will be when it eventually pops.
About the author: JS Kim is the founder and managing
director of SmartKnowledgeU, a fiercely independent wealth consulting and
research company.
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"US Treasuries are backed by the power of taxation"
To pluck the goose with the least amount of hissing. The art.
Government coercion is a dead end. This was already known in Lincoln's time. Slaves are less productive than 'men' who think they are free, and walking towards the carrot while turning the wheel.
The Government's problem is that they have no ability to throttle back. Too many have looked through the 'veil', and are no longer enticed by the carrot.
It's not a bubble if the primary buyer has unlimited units of the denomiation by which the treasuries are priced. Think the Fed/member banks really give a shit either way about foreign outflows? Infinity is a much bigger number than trillion.
The definition of a bubble - when market prices exceed fundamental values of the assets, and thus the assets become overvalued relative to the actual need for the asset.
Think gold. :) Bitchez.
Problem is, the whole idea of "fundamental value" is a canard--an oxymoronic canard at that. Value--at least in the sense we use it today--means utility. Things that are useful have use only in reference to some other end. In other words, value means "of use in getting what we want." There are very few wants that we can say with real confidence are fundamental.
Bubbles are when prices lose their traditional relationship to... other prices. In housing, for example, the key indices are household income (price of labor) and rents (homeowners are considered, under many models, to be paying rent to themselves).
Historically, there have been schools of economic thought that subscribe to a theory of fundamental value. (One example I happen to know of--though I know little about them--is the Physiocrats in 18th century France. The theory of fundamental value had, unsurprisingly, very strong connections to theology.) But contemporary economic thinking proceeds differently. There's no place in it for fundamental value, meaning that thinking of bubbles as deviations of prices from fundamental values tends to confuse rather than clarify things.
Bonds right now are the exact equivilant to Nasdaq stocks in 2000 on a P/E basis.
100 times earnings, right on the dot.
As for gold....It would take 55,000 tons of gold at todays price for the US to settle its debts with China, just China, never mind Japan. So unless a 120,000 ton meteorite made entirely of high grade gold hits earth, gold will continue to go up.
If China didn't care about gold then why do they invest more in mining then they do in oil and energy ?
It's not much use arguing with claims like these, since they're just so... squishy. I don't subscribe to the school of thought that equates academic (let alone academic degrees) training with knowledge. (Never mind that I'm a professional nerd myself. One of the few thing worth learning in school is how ignorant you really are.) My most charitable take on this piece is simply that the author is so naive he doesn't really have a grasp on his own biases, and therefore sees no need to adjust or account for them.
Just one example:
This claim obviously hasn't been subjected to serious self-criticism. Jobs are destroyed during a bust, and jobs are an important form of wealth. That's right: not only are they a source of wealth, they are also a kind of wealth. One of the fundamental tenets of modern finance is that assets and income streams are, under certain conditions, equivalent. A job, therefore, because it's tied to an income stream, has many of the same properties as an asset. Mortgages, for example, are were predicated upon having one; but one could also produce sufficient collateral to get a loan--or evidence of sufficient investment income. Because having a job means income, having a job means having the ability to service debt; a loan is an instrument that transforms an income stream (say, from a job) into a tangible asset (say, a house). Jobs are therefore a kind of wealth, especially from a macro social standpoint looking at all the jobs in a state. I'm not saying jobs are the same as tangible assets; I'm saying there are important similarities that require sensitive treatment.
We seem to have forgotten that Keynes's proposals were never meant to protect asset prices (I believe he'd be horrified at the policies that currently wear his name); they were meant to protect jobs. Substantial unemployment, in addition to being a major social problem, is a big financial liability for a nation. We've also forgottten that Marx's distinction between capital and labor not prescriptive--it isn't even really functional--it's diagnostic. It was part of a social critique aimed at valorizing the contribution of work in the creation of wealth. A loss of jobs--particularly stable jobs that pay well--does indeed represent a major loss of wealth, since it diminishes the ability of a population to create, exchange, and care for tangible assets.
Also, the use of the word "artificial" when discussing interest rates is over-the-top tendentious. Dude. Capital markets and interest rates are artificial. As in, humans made them. There is no such thing as a non-artifical interest rate. There's no such thing as "nature taking its course" in markets. Markets only exist when and where humans set up and maintain--deliberately or accidentally--the social armature for exchange. This "markets are natural" line is the lynchpin of squishy-thinking free-market libertarianism, and it's so obviously a willful distortion of classical free market principles it's hard to know where to begin.
I know it doesn't matter to me if you've studied any of the crap I've referenced, and I suspect it doesn't matter to most of the ZH community either. It's just useful (and time-efficient!) to steal good ideas from other people, is all. But, seriously, we all recognize lowfat, soft-serve small-gov't shit when we see it. You're wasting our time with this lightweight nonsense. ZH is no echo chamber, and there's no validation simply for regurgiating a party line--any party line.
For the record: I don't see how there can be a bubble in Treasuries. The credit that backs the IOUs of a sovereign government that issues its own currency, when the IOUs are denominated in that currency, is substantially different from the credit that backs a private corporation or a private person. A collapse in the credit backing a Treasury note would be, as Chemba notes above, a general collapse in the faith of people in the US government's authority to levy and collect taxes. If that happens, there is no more market in Treasuries. Not a bust, but a dissolution of the conditions for the market itself. And if that happens, we'll all probably be the poorer for it, no matter how much of any asset any of us owns.
"A job, therefore, because it's tied to an income stream, has many of the same properties as an asset."
Don't say that or before we know it we'll be swimming in toxic Job Backed Securities...
That's so incisive it's scary. Smartest thing I've read in a week.
No one doubts that jobs were destroyed as a result of bubble activity. What's your point? I'm not quite sure you have one, at least one with any substance or logic. The article focuses on other, equally important aspects of the bubble. Sure, labor is an important part of an economy (duh) and human capital is a very real phenomenon (duh again), but labor would not be nearly as productive or be able to create any significant amount of wealth without actual correctly allocated capital supporting it. And that's the whole point. In the Soviet Union everyone had jobs, but could we truly say that those jobs created significant wealth, when people were so poor and there were shortages of basic goods? If we paid people to dig ditches and fill them back up again and were able to achieve full employment this way, would that be wealth creation? OF COURSE NOT; don't be absurd, and that's the whole point, that bubble activities are akin to ditch-digging in there wastefulness, unproductiveness, and wealth-squandering effects.
"Also, the use of the word "artificial" when discussing interest rates is over-the-top tendentious. Dude. Capital markets and interest rates are artificial. As in, humans made them. "
Who cares. That's stupid. You're playing semantics. By "artificial" he means that conditions were not endogenous to the market but were FORCED on the market by goverment, specifically by Federal Reserve policy. That's all that means, it's only a comparison. We don't need New Agey philosophical hogwash to enter into our discussion when it's clear what our terms mean. Your whole post is a stupid Marxist "workers unite" diatribe. No one doubts the real human cost of the bubble; everyone sympathizes with it. But we're trying to discuss real economics here; not whatever the hell you were talking about.
In order:
I found most interesting the part of your critique where you show up the stupidity of full employment without prudently organized capital supporting it. I read Hernando de Soto's The Mystery of Capital a while back, as well as Lovins and Hawkins's Natural Capital (just an extrapolation of Schumacher, I think), and I've heard some good presentations on the strangeness of the idea of human capital. So now I've got this question: if capital isn't just money, they what the hell is it? What do you think?
When you talk about bubbles , let me count the ways created by our financial and political wizards;
Bond bubble ---subject of this post
Mortgage Service Company bubble of not reporting forclosures and
delinquensies to banks creating false balance sheets
Pension fund bubble --keep an eye on ILL.
Commercial RE and retailer bubble--if holiday season does poorly ,only need Walmarts
US$ bubble---how much of a reserve currency if debt/GDP ratio worse than Greece--relates to Bond bubble
Derivatives bubble to the tune of $700 Trillion
Hedge fund bubble--Most are highly leveraged and bet against the house which happens to be the US . Could intensify downward spiral
Income distribution bubble--not sustainable and leads to chronic unemployment , social unrest and greed mentality
Entitlement bubble--politicians raided SS coffers and threw healthcare to the wolves ala Healthsouth and others. Most hospitals financially strapped
Cultural and value void. Less a bubble , more a symptom of a society on the brink of collapse
Energy, commodity and envioronmental bubble--if we dont manage the future ,the future will manage us.
Stock market bubble. Big public corporations not creating jobs or investing in organic growth. M&A activety reduces employment but enriches few with greed effect---15 to 20 PE ratios not sustainable
Historically prolonged wars and foriegn adventures lead to a credit crisis resulting in empire decline witnessed by defaults, currency devaluations rampant inflation per Rogoff's "This Time is Different" . Apparently we havent decided which option is best
Our banking system requires bubbles as ways of adding money to the system without basing it on credit. Like a stock going from 1 to 100. Everyone just got a lot of money credited to their account based on a perception of value. Without this additional money, the system would collapse under the weight of interest payments coming out of a fixed money pool. But the flip side is that when these valuations become unsustainable, for whatever reason, they collapse. The damage done to monetary system by that removal of percieved value and money far outweighs the previous gain. This is because left to its own, the debt based money system cannot survive. Interest payments eventually take all money out of circulation.
I just look at bubbles and busts as dislocations between value and price (in dollar terms).
My house, clothing and food always have the same value to me, but the price may change due to either competitive forces or manipulation.
Not inflation- not deflation
A YO YO!!
http://israelfinancialexpert.blogspot.com/2010/08/reflections-on-bernankes-yo-yo-speech.html
Will yields eventually go up? DUH. The author doesn't even try to quantify how much yields will go up, or even think about the implications. Instead, he just goes off on some rant.
The fiscal situation is unsustainable! Whoa... that's so deep only a supra-genius could grasp it. So I guess taxes will never go up to cover the excess and that won't depress economic activity further. Tariffs will never rise again. Federal budgets will never be reduced. Everything is forever going to go on as usual... except the "bond bubble" of course.
I think the vernacular definition of a bubble is different and much simpler: asset prices driven up by an excess of speculative buyers seeking capital gains and/or mistaken fears that the asset is in shorter supply than it really is.
So, even though I agree with your analysis of what's going on in the bond markets, and I personally don't mind if some people want to call it a "bond bubble", I think most people are going to find that term counter-intuitive and hard to understand.
Sure, but the colloquial definition of a bubble does not account for the fact that the vast majority of bubbles (if not indeed every single all of them) are virtually impossible without an extreme expansion of credit. Otherwise, relative prices and a natural market uptick in interest rates due to an increasing allocation of capital to bubble activities would quickly choke off any bubble and severely limit its effects. This is in a normal world, mind you, that is, a free market, but Federal Reserve banking cartel/monopoly are able to short-circuit this market process by artificially lowering rates and increasing the money supply, thus permitting bubble activity to go unchecked and squandering valuable capital in the process. Hence the extent of "wealth" creation during a bubble is precisely the reverse: wealth destruction, and in proportion. Asset price appreciation and other aspects of the bubble are only the illusion of wealth and the effect of inflation.
@tom, point well taken. I only wrote this article because I've found over the past year that it didn't matter if I spoke to a green 22-year old kid fresh out of college or a 70-year old woman that lives off of a laddered Treasury bond portfolio - persons from all age groups have repeated at some point and time over the past couple of years, the media's assertion that "economic recovery is on its way" and that a new economic "boom" might be coming. I know that this view doesn't reflect at all the average ZeroHedge reader's viewpoint, but still, I thought it important to point out that in an environment in which Central Bank artificially-set interest rates create asset price appreciations, only fragile, unstable markets exist. So if asset price appreciation is not organic, not fundamental, and not driven by supply/demand dynamics, then a dreaded "black swan" event could materialize and crash such a market with alarming rapidity.
If lower yields and higher asset prices in the US Treasury bond market continue into the future, as is certainly possible, this will almost cause foreign purchases of Treasury bonds to further deteriorate significantly. And when the foreign market for US Treasury bond dries up, then what? I agree that most people are going to find the term "counter-intuitive"; however, it shouldn't be counterintuitive and it only is because business schools have not taught us that Central Banks greatly distort asset prices by engineering artificial economic cycles.
If you want to define a bubble as anything unsustainable, then just about everything is a bubble -- the American Empire, the perma-growth economy, even life itself is a bubble. But that is only a part of the ordinary definition of a bubble.
A bubble is also a period of excessive and unprecendented valuation driven by irrational exuberance. Look at a NASDAQ chart from 1991-2000. That's a bubble. Look at the price of Tulips or South Seas shares. Those were bubbles.
Now look at a chart of 10 year treasuries from 2001-2010. See the difference? That's not a bubble.
Are current treasury yields unsustainable? Sure, though Japan has sustained low govt bond yields for decades with a bigger debt-gdp ratio than the US. Will they move higher at some point in the future, after (if) the economy ever gets back on its feet? Probably, and maybe much higher.
But that doesn't make treasuries a bubble.
You don't think a 20+% savings rate and an export driven economy had anything to do with that ? Clueless....
Plus, Japanies citizens are willing to go kamikazi into the Jap bond market.
Look at the domestic inflows and outflows of equities and bonds. Think Americans aren't willing to do the same thing?
That's not an apples-to-apples comparison. A chart of UST yields is more comparable to a chart of P/E ratios than a chart of stock prices. If you want to see a bubble, chart the inverse of the yield.
it does when they are held by enemies/competitors and they are restricted in their ability to dispose as they might see fit while they see this asset get watered down.
amen and amen..
superb as always....but the terminology bubble/bust is apt....that is all central banksters create - bubbles and busts....they are price distorters and extorters extraordinaire - the soviet central politburo disguised in the garb of capitalism...
Whew! A Leo antidote.....hear, hear!
Let's make this simple....
ie I have a plant that typically carried debt of 1X when revenues were 2x....and the interest rate cost was 7%.....
Now revenues are 1x and debt is 2x....Now the interest rate cost is 1%....
THIS does not happen in the "REAL" world....and will wind itself out when the false premises are removed....The adjustment would be that interest rewards for risk would increase above 7%.....
Something like this only can happen from government inducements and will go back to normalcy when government impositions are removed....
Now the Brothers Grimm (Benny B. & Little Timmy) are running things, anything goes bro :)
Yeah, the monster...
It will take a huge event that takes us to, or over, the edge to get rid of them and their policies... My only concern is that is what the elite want in order to cement their "One World Order" into place... The sheeple , in a state of panic, will grasp at anything... The one saving grace is that the sheeple were up in arms over the financial bailouts of '08, while our corrupt congress sold the US down the river.
Dump the Incumbents this November who read the 300:1 letters against the TARP and then ignored the clear will of public and voted Against but then fell for the Foo King Hank Paulson's "No ATMs tonight boys" speech and voted for the Bank Bailout and Small Business Failout that Obama runs today.
Actually, most of the people that voted for TARP are no longer incumbents.
Many of those people got voted out in the 2008 elections.
After they were in power for eight years, and you know... destroyed the entire economy.
And now, people think that voting them back into power will solve our problems. LOL at the tea party.
"The people trying to FIX the problems failed, so we must vote for the people that caused the problems to fix the problems that they caused."
Yeah, I know, the Tea Party isn't "political" and it "doesn't choose one side over the other."
All its candidates are just washed up Republicans who changed their name when people got tired of the Republicans.
But they're not affiliated or anything. They're "independent." Right.
ROTFL!! Wait a mintue...wait a minute. Are you saying the pious icons of integrity trying to FIX this problem are the DEMOCRATS?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! OMG thanks man, that was comedy gold. Cheers!
C'mon man...don't get sucked into that whole donkey vs. elephant thing. They both play for the same team. And no, its not the one we (as taxpaying citizens) are playing on.
Oh, I know it's just two sides of the same coin, believe me...
But "voting out all the incumbents" will just put the people who ruined the economy back in the saddle.
Will voting for Democrats accomplish anything better? probably not...
Still, anybody who thinks that they're going to FIX things by putting somebody like Palin in office (who couldn't even stay governor of Alaska) is seriously deluded as well.
I don't usually vote in these things but I think this may just be reason enough to play the game one more time.
NOVEMBER INCUMBENT BLOODBATH !!!! MAKE IT HAPPEN !!!!
Paulson should live out his remaining years in a pain amplifier.
YEAH!!!! TEE PARTY 4 LYFE, DAWG!!!!11!!!! OBAMAO IS A MUSLIM TERRERIST FROM KENYA!!!!! REGAN WAS MY HERO!!!!!! PALIN/BACHMANN 2012!!!!!1!!1!!!!
What the monster said.
Yeah, there's nothing productive backing the treasury bonds.
At least if a real industrial company defaults, the creditors have something to seize. If T-bonds default, there's nothing to seize.
Given this, spreads between corporates and treasuries should be negative, not positive.
The often given argument as to why corporates have a positive yield spread over treasuries is that government can confiscate/tax corporate assets, to pay treasuries. But if government truly is in a position where it actually confiscates, what are the chances that the government will, itself, make good on a private obligation, with valuable money?
I know that, when Cuba got taken over by Fidel Castro, bondholders in the United States of private entities and against nationalized land in Cuba, were able to claim against the assets of Cuba in the United States. But were US holders of Cuban government obligations able to do the same? I don't think so. Hence, the private obligations of Cuban corporations had greater value.
"Yeah, there's nothing productive backing the treasury bonds"
Really. Nothing at all. Uhmm, nothing other than taxing authority over the world's largest and most productive economy.
It is not possible to have a rational discussion here if people are going to make absurd assertions such as "there's nothing productive backing the (US) treasury bonds"
Does the US have a serious fiscal problem, excessive leverage and is it suffering the effects of years of misallocation of capital driven by the likes of Frank/Dodd/Pelosi/Reid? Yes. But does that mean "there's nothing productive backing the treasury bonds"? No.
A 70% consumer based economy means that 70 % of the economy is non productive. Is that not a high enough number for you ?
The products need to be sold so a balanced economy is 50/50, unless u produce more that you consume than you need to export
Producing more than you consume = savings.
Double post!
Treasury bonds aren't backed by the government's productivity; they're backed by the government's power to leech off the producing sector of the economy. So he's kind of right...but it's precisely the extent of this power that makes T-bills more expensive than corporate bonds. With corporate bonds, you run the risk of the company not making a profit. With T-bills, you don't really run the risk of the government running out of IRS agents or the Fed's printing presses running out of ink.
When companies don't make profits, they don't pay taxes.
That is where the deflationists get it so wrong. Deflation devalues dollar denominated debt.
That was black belt level alliteration.
Sure, technically speaking, government bonds are backed by the real assets of the private sector which the government could confiscate (and I do mean "confiscate," no Orwellian euphemism will do), but by its very nature, government debt is self-defeating of this very purpose, for the greater the debt of the government and the greater its share of the economy, the less real wealth there is in the economy and the less real wealth there will be possible to produce in the future and thus the less money there is to pay off said debt. Remember, by and large, government debt and government spending is squandered consumption, the only possible exception to which is infrastructure spending, which the government doesn't even do anymore, and even then there are plenty of examples of effective squandering and misallocation of capital by means of building "bridges to nowhere." And the bond market IS a bubble--has been, arguably, since 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window, effectively defaulting on government debt and creating what has been a four-decade Ponzi scheme based on the dollar as reserve currency and T-Bills as the world's "safest" "investment;" a Ponzi scheme we know more familiarly as the United States economy, which would not even have existed or "prospered" all these years without the aforementioned conditions.
Don't forget the the trillions in unpaid for Bush tax cuts that benefited the top 1%... I agree the Dems were complicit, but these tax cuts were pushed through in reconcilliation with the 51% Rethug majority... I don't know if things would be that much different now without the TC's given the irresponsibility of the Fed actions under Greenspan and continued under Uncle Ben. It's just another example of how the Washington elite looks out for their own and don't give a shit about the country or the rest of the unwashed masses.
come on people!!! How is this junk. If you disagree with something please point it out, otherwise your opinion is worthless really.
Tyler, can you please kick the junkers out..... who do not add anything but a junk??? PRetty PLEASE.
Wholeheartedly concur on the Washington elite (of BOTH political stripes). Where I take a different tack is I don't believe tax cuts are something that have to be 'paid for'. That's the establishment phrase (the same Washington elite you mentioned) coined in order to make the electorate think any reduction in the drunken, graft-riddled spending orgy comes at some unfortunate 'cost'.
NO. They must just learn to spend less, within the limits strictly set forth in the Constitution. But...what am I saying? The Consitution?!
ROTFLMAO x 10! Oh man that was good!
Yes. We should only have to pay for assistance for the unemployed and for programs that help Americans buy health insurance and stuff.
Wars? Building schools in Iraq? Tax cuts for people that already have all the money?
Nah, we don't need to pay for those... we can just run up deficits as far as the eye can see.
After all, building schools in Iraq is much more important than building schools in America.
I wonder where in the constitution it says that the United States is obligated to pay for the elections and education of Iraqi citizens?
Oh yeah... my bad. That's because the war was UNconstitutional.
Silly me. And here I was thinking that American taxpayer money should help American citizens. Obviously, I am mistaken.