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Mike Pento: Debt Ceiling Misconception and Deception
Latest from Mike Pento at Euro Pacific Capital -- Chris
The debt ceiling debate that has dominated the headlines over the past month has been thoroughly infused with a string of unfortunate misconceptions and a number of blatant deceptions. As a result, the entire process has been mostly hot air. While a recitation of all the errors would be better attempted by a novelist rather than a weekly columnist, I’ll offer my short list.
After having failed utterly to warn investors of the dangers associated with the toxic debt of entities like Enron, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG, as well as the perils of investing in mortgage-backed securities and sovereign debt of various bankrupt countries, the credit ratings agencies (CRAs) have now apparently decided to be more vigilant. A key feature of this repentance may have been its conspicuous warnings that the U.S. could have its debt rating lowered if Washington failed to make progress on its fiscal imbalances. But then, just in case anyone was getting the impression that these rating agencies actually cared about fiscal prudence, Moody’s suggested this week that its concerns would be lessened if Washington were to make a deal on the debt ceiling or if it would simply eliminate its self-imposed statutory debt limit altogether. In other words, Moody’s believes that our nation’s problems are more a function of squabbling politicians rather than a chronic, unresolved, problem of borrowing more than we can ever hope to repay.
With or without a deal, the CRAs should have already lowered their debt ratings on the $14.3 trillion of U.S. debt. In fact the rating should be lowered again if the debt ceiling IS raised. And it should be lowered still further if we eliminated the debt ceiling altogether. To lower the rating because the limit is NOT raised is like cutting the FICO score of a homeless person because he is denied a home equity loan.
Republicans are making another misconception about the debt ceiling debate if they believe they can dramatically cut government spending without hurting the economy in the short term. In a recent poll from Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed 53% of G.O.P. and 65% of Tea Party members said there would be no economic crisis resulting from not raising the debt ceiling.
They argue that leaving money in the private sector is better for an economy than sending the money to Washington to be spent by government. That much is true. But a very large portion of current government spending does not come from taxing or borrowing, but from printed money courtesy of the Fed. If the Fed stops printing, inflation and consumption are sure to fall. While this is certainly necessary in the long run, it will be nevertheless devastating in the near term.
Over the last decade and a half our economy has floated up on a succession of asset bubbles, all made possible by the Fed. Our central bank lowers borrowing costs far below market levels. Commercial banks then expand the money supply by making goofy loans to the government or to the private sector; mostly to inflate asset prices. As a consequence, debt levels and asset values soar. Without fail, asset prices and debt levels soon become intractable and the Fed and commercial banks are forced to cut off the monetary spigot, either on their own volition or because the demand for money plummets. The economy is forced to deleverage and consumers are forced to sell assets and pay down debt. Recession ensues. That’s exactly what would happen once $1.5 trillion worth of austerity suddenly crashes into the economy come August 2nd. Republicans would not survive the political fallout.
And then there is the deception that comes courtesy of the Democrats who believe we need to raise taxes in order to balance our budget. The American economy produces $15 trillion in GDP per annum but has $115 trillion in unfunded liabilities. With a hole like that, no amount of taxes could balance the budget. Raising revenue from the 14% of GDP, as it is today, to the 20% it was in 2000 would barely make a dent toward funding our Social Security and Medicare liabilities. Therefore, we need to cut entitlement spending dramatically. But the Democrats refuse to face the obvious facts.
With the Tea Party gaining traction in Congress, and causing nightmares for incumbents, Republicans have little incentive to raise the debt ceiling (although they raised it 7 times under George W. Bush). Democrats aren’t going to reduce entitlements without raising taxes on “the rich” and Republicans aren’t going to raise taxes when the unemployment rate is 9.2%. There’s your stalemate and anyone expecting a significant deal to cut more than $4 trillion is spending by the August 2nd deadline will be severely disappointed. Although there has been some movement by the so-called “Gang of Six” centrist senators in recent days, a real deal may be more unlikely than most people think. And even if a much smaller deal of appeasement can be reached in time, the credit rating agencies may follow through on their promise to downgrade our sovereign debt. The fallout from such a downgrade of U.S. debt will prove quite damaging to Treasury prices. But an even worse outcome will occur if we continue to raise the debt ceiling without significant spending cuts, and then receive the real debt downgrade from our foreign creditors.
In my opinion, the best news for the long term future of this nation is the Republican “Cut, Cap and Balance” plan that just passed the House, which should also include a limit on government spending as a percentage of the economy. It now heads to a much harder hurdle in the Democrat controlled Senate, and then if it passes that, to a certain veto from President Obama. At least something so promising got to the table at all. However, I think the country needs some more tastes of brutal reality before such bitter medicine has a chance of going down.
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"To lower the rating because the limit is NOT raised is like cutting the FICO score of a homeless person because he is denied a home equity loan."
Yeah, this happens anyway; it's known as a hard inquiry.
Investopedia:
You're saying we have a debt crisis? Go figure.
A potential borrower is already potentially a risky borrower simply because that person applied for credit. Therefore, we must lower the credit score of the potential borrower. I dunno, something about this seems a bit effed up.
Mike Pento has the reasoning abilities and the intellectual integrity of a toad. Was this Republican bondholder claptrap posted just for the sake of argument? There isn't a shred of trustworthy substantiating evidence provided for any of the outrageous declarations of fact presented. This wasted my time, kids.
Bottom line: Calamity is certainty! Plan and prepare acccordingly!
just paste a 100% vat tax on every thing made out side US-- vola-problem sloved.
When roughly 1/2 the country receives some form of gov't payouts (SS, Med, food stamps, gov't retirement, etc.) what are the odds that any of the factions representing these people will ever agree to any significant spending reductions. It is always easier to deamonize the rich and raise their taxes, but as the author notes it won't solve the problem.
My guess is that Obama lets his debt deadline hit with no deal and then delays the gov't paychecks. This will give everyone a sample of what austerity tastes like. He can then demogogue the issue and tell the public that courtesy of Tea Party Rebublicans grandma now has no money and gets to starve. After a few days of market meltdowns and media madness the Republicans in congress will predictably and dutifully crumble like a cookie. They will then give Obama everything he wants...and probably more.
This seems to me to have the potential to get very ugly. Yes this is cynican and I sure hope I'm wrong but it would not surprise me a bit if it goes very badly.
That could backfire in a big way and destroy Obama. There is too much information out there already (i.e. the truth) that the government has the ability to fund medicare/medicaid/SS from current tax receipts. Someone and then more people will ask where the SS withholding money is going. The teleprompter won't have any answers to that one.
As far as market meltdowns, as of 7:51 AM PDT it ain't happening yet.
I like it. Bring it. No backing off. Darwin rules. Nature is always in charge.
That's a basically reasonable article, with a couple of misconceptions.
First of all, somebody needs to wake up and start distinguishing "production" from "destruction" from "waste". NOTHING the federal government does is productive. A TINY quantity of productive work gets done by government contractors paid by the federal government, but so little percentage wise it is difficult to measure. Much of what the federal government does is DESTRUCTIVE, which is the opposite of productive. Much of what the federal government does forces others to WASTE their time and money following insane, unconstitutional and malicious laws and regulations.
Therefore, the entire conversation of this article, and most articles about "the economy" are completely misguided and free-floating. They look at numbers like GDP and ignore the fact that GDP includes:
#1: productive activity (private sector)
#2: destructive activity (government sectors)
#3: wasteful activity (private and government sectors)
#4: all kinds of activity financed by government borrowing
Only #1 belongs in GDP, and #2 and #4 must be subtracted from "productive" GDP to arrive at an honest net GDP. To somehow count time, effort, money and resources spent on destroying innocent civilians in foreign lands "product" is completely insane. To somehow count running around in circles and hiring legions of accountants and lawyers to comply with government regulations "product" is completely insane. To somehow call activities financed by debt "product" is completely insane, especially today when estimates indicate every dollar of debt generates 15 cents of "product". Yet they could the ENTIRE DEBT as "product", not the "anti-product" that it is.
As far as this article goes, the relevant observation is, to stop (and stop paying for) destructive activity, wasteful activity, and debt-financed activity is GOOD. In fact, it INCREASES "product" to some extent. Why? Remember the nature of "destruction" - to DESTROY "product", as in "anti-product".
The only GDP that matters is the "real, productive product" part of GDP. It is beneficial to GET RID OF the destructive, wasteful and usless parts. People performing those destructive, wasteful, useless activities will gradually start doing productive work. To keep boosting destructive and wasteful activity, because the predators count them as part of GDP, is inanity of the first order, and completely stupid.
The entire economy is built around waste. What do you do with your car to make money? Do you drive a taxi?
Nothing that most Americans do during their lives amounts to production. Consumption is 'labeled' as productive by big busines and advertising/economist lackeys so people can satisfy themselves with the 'work' they do driving their SUVs and gigantic, bulbous pickup trucks to the mall.
Crisis is business running out of 'inputs' to toss into the furnace. We are like people living in a mansion burning the furniture to keep warm. The furniture is gone, time to start burning the house!
This is private 'productivity' all right! We need more, more house to burn faster so we can become bankrupt that much sooner.
The country could deleverage with some control over the process but that is too 'unproductive'.
A bit rambling, but your core idea - that measuring real production would require deducting most government spending - mirrors my thinking on the subject. The current hyper-manipulated measure of GDP is an all but useless political contrivance.
Most people, and clearly our government has been sold into a whole raft of what I believe to be erroneous paradigms and assumptions; one of which being that a society that consumes more than it produces is viable over the long term. The globalist counterpoint would be that the society should not be considered to be the US, but the world and under that assumption production and consumption are in balance... for the most part.
Not all of our politician are acting as if there is no tomorrow... although some are.
Can anyone give me a reasonable estimation of the odds of he moon being able to randomly match its period of rotation to its period of revolution so that only one side faces the earth for all practical eternity? Seems kind of far fetched for that match to be randomely so perfect and yet, we take it as an assumption that THAT is the normal state.
"Can anyone give me a reasonable estimation of the odds of he moon being able to randomly match its period of rotation to its period of revolution so that only one side faces the earth for all practical eternity?"
I can't give you a number, but I can post a link to the tidal locking page of wikipedia. Apparently, they've solved this mystery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking
I'll grant you that our setup is conveniently suited to allow life to flourish. Not too far or too close to the sun, which allows for liquid water over much of the planet's surface. Some nice axis tilt to give us seasons, among a plethora of other perks; kinda gives you the feeling that it's all just a little too perfect. It's our fault for not flourishing, as we've been given all the tools we need to do so.
That said, I couldn't agree more about your other statements.
"LONDON - Right-wing "nutters" in the United States Congress holding up a deal to prevent a catastrophic debt default are a greater risk to the global financial system than problems in the euro zone, a British minister said Sunday.
Business Secretary Vince Cable said "irresponsible" people who had been gleefully anticipating the collapse of the euro currency had been confounded after European leaders agreed a second rescue package for debt-stricken Greece last week.
"The irony of the situation at the moment, with markets opening tomorrow morning, is that the biggest threat to the world financial system comes from a few right-wing nutters in the American congress rather than the euro zone," he told BBC television."
Spoken like a true socialist.
What's wrong with socialism?
What isn't wrong with Socialism? All forms of collectivism guarantee the little guy get's drained and screwed. The only answer is for any government to fear its people.
I applaude the current Democrats and Republicans who, by their partisan deadlocked fighting over how and who to steal the money from to continue this fraud, may cripple this bloated kleptocratic government of, by, and for SOME people.
dupe
Mr. Pento has a couple of blind spots himself. Future claims for Social Security and Medicare are no more "liabilities" than are future military expenses or agricultural subsidies. The Supreme Court long ago ruled that no citizen has a vested right to a particular SS or Medicare benefit. This is why these future claims are not "funded" like corporate pension obligations. The money collected this year in SS and Medicare taxes is spent on this year's beneficiaries and the surplis, if any, is spent by the government on other programs. This is the way the system was designed and has always functioned.
In the 1980's the Greenspan Commission recommended an accounting change as part of a significant increase in SS and Medicare taxes. Because the increase in tax revenue was going to be substantially greater than the needs of beneficiiaries, the government created an accounting gimmick in which the surplus was lent to the government in exhcange for NON-Marektable U.S. treasury securities.
This so-called "lock box" was and still is a complete accounting gimmick. The so-called "loan" is nothing of the sort because 100% of the money "loaned" is treated as government revenue when calculated the unified deficit. The logical corollary to this is that SS is not a pension, SS benefits are not liabilities, and none of this was ever funder or expected to be funded.
So, in the interest of honesty, please cut out the "unfunded liablity" scaremongering, okay?
Or explain that SSI and Medicare are not rights to those collecting them. They may not be "vested" but to a politician they sure as hell feel like it.
That's why those benefits will always be paid but they willbe paid for with worthless dollars and the politicians will try to scapegoat speculators, the wealthy, etc for the drop in dollar value. anyone but they politicians themselves, just like they always do. Grandma will get her check but it won't buy a loaf of bread. Then again we can be sure that the govt will also begin new programs to dole out bread to grandma by taking over different industries, instituting price limits and rationing. It's all been done before and all will be done again.
Well then, would you please explain this to the Democrats?
I'm having difficulty with the notion that "cutting spending now will hurt the economy in the short run." This implies that there is a direct link between government largess and spending and the economy. This seems to be taken at face value as a truism. But is it actually true?
To cipher that, we'd have to know where all this deficit money is going. Given the substantial and exponential rise in deficit spending, its impossible to believe that we can't undo something that was new that was added in just the last year. For instance, the budget for the EPA doubled. Why? Does that help us? Would it hurt the economy to reset it back to where it was just recently?
Fighting this debt is like fighting cancer. We have a big tumor; we can try to avoid the pain by giving the patient pain medication (Keynesian spending) - but if the patient doesn't remove the cancer, it simply escalates to a point where the patient dies from cancer - or the pain pills kill the patient.
Everyone bitches about 'austerity' - now, but they have no idea how bad tomorrow will be if we keep spending and interest rates return to normal. IMO, our entire social-security/medicare system will fall apart in real terms if we don't get this under control now.
My view: we bite it off in chunks. The only other choice is to let it collapse - and then our hands are tied. Just ask the Greeks how they are liking things. And do a little research on Argentina - 56% below the poverty line within 2 years of a last full collapse. Collapses just grant excess power to Presidents - who then further enslave the public (examples: Argentina, Venezuela). Those laws are on the books in the US. You only have to read history to see some of the crazed s*** Roosevelt and their goons tried to do under similar circumstances (getting jailed for growing a crop for your family to eat because the central-control told you you couldn't). Butchers were jailed on felonies for not properly pulling chickens out of baskets according to vague Federal rules...
Austerity is coming whether we like it or not. The destruction of our economy was masked by heavy public and private borrowing, and we keep perpetuating the myth with continued borrowing. We lost a lot of jobs overseas. The lenders are drying up and our pumped-up assets are deflating back to their economic value. Things are not going back to the way they were, not for a long time.
Politicians do not want to stop this madness because freebies keep them in office. They have not had to anything meaningful for 25 years when it comes to priorities of government, so what makes us think they have an answer beside "try like hell to keep the status quo"?
Anyone who says we can't go back to where we were 2 years ago is full of crap. "Can't" is not the same as "don't want to."
I'm having difficulty with the notion that "cutting spending now will hurt the economy in the short run."
It's pretty simple. The 12% deficit is funded by creating money out of thin air, but that money is treated as "real", so it adds 12% to our GDP (minus the extra interest cost the 12% creates). Take that deficit away, and the economy immediately contracts by 12%.
Reality was voted off the Island a couple seasons ago
Mike
This is a dog-and-pony show. Semantics.
When you have to print counterfeit money to pay debts, you're already in default. There is no long-term fix. It's payback time. No nation in history has ever recovered when GDP/ Debtload approach 90/100. Where are we? 100/100. We're done. Toast. There's only one possible game changer. Something on the scale of the car or computer is invented next week and provides full employment.
Bailouts forestalled the inevitable. Even worse, the cost of our slightly more shallow incipient decline, was to greatly exacerbate that which is coming. In those three years of make-believe, we spent ourselves into oblivion. To follow is a much deeper, far more protracted constriction from which this nation will not recover. At least, not in our lifetime.
Befriend the enemy. Learn to love. I happen to be quite fond of stealth markets. And, you can make a shitload of money.
The rating companies should raise the U.S. debt rating to AAAA. It would be the ideal move. Then everyone would realize how irrelevant the ratings
are anyhow and focus on the real issue, deficit spending. Ron Paul is right. We should take the hit now. Default and get it over with. The longer we
put it off, the worse it's going to be when it happens. The world has plenty experience with nations defaulting on their debts. Granted this will actually
be more of a world default, but it could be worked out as more of a world bankruptcy where we just push the big reset button.(HAHA).
By now I wonder if this is more Keynesian crap. Sure, government will lay off people. Sure, regulation devolution rather than spending cuts alone are required to structurally give the private sector a real bounce. And sure, over-indebtedness will continue to be a drag on the economy for decades.
But after WWII, government spending and controls were cut by over 20% IN ONE YEAR. GDP grew like a bitch even while we absorbed an army of workers freshly unemployed by the end of the war.
Just because he doesn't agree with everything the GOP or Tea Party have to say doesn't make him remotely Keynesian. He's a senior economist at Peter Schiff's Euro Pac International. He's just saying that the cuts will result in some short term pain before the long-term benefits come through.
Hi jim: a now academic point about Keynes ... all too late for any theory/strategy which might have worked. Anyhow Keynes never proposed deficit spending, except maybe in the very short term.
His core idea was very simple (fiscal policy): tax during the good years and save the surplus, so as to be able to stimulate the economy during bad years ... and you implicitly admit that that worked during the high taxation (on the rich) after WW2.
But then such as Milton Friedman (Chicago School), Reagan, Thatcher, etc. threw it all under a bus by cutting tax rates; since when monetarism has ruled supreme and, what a surprize, "trickle down" has not worked, though TRICKLE UP has worked just fine and hence where we are now, beyond recall!!
This includes Eric Cantor (and no doubt others) having shorted the bond market and/ or anything else he (they) will make a fortune out of by having the economy fail, e.g. by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.
Of course I am not saying that the current Ponzi scheme/casino financialism can or should go on, but self-interest rules OK ... so do not expect any real resolution, even if some "last minute" 'agreement' defers the day of reckoning ... just kicking the can down the road, is it not?
Um ... maybe no one should ever trust anyone who has associations with Chicago ... just sayin'.
although that is the 'complete' view of Keynes, you are missing the point.
It is still requiring a CENTRALISED entity who oversees the collection of taxes 'in good times' and the disbursement of those taxes 'in bad times'.
Who runs this centralised entity?
Why do we trust a single man / board of 12 men with this power?
Why don't we just let the mistakes that created the bubble and the bust liquidate the issue?
Capitalism and free markets are all about being like a Phoenix, creative destruction leads to new, better construction. Through mistakes people ('the market') learn to stop funding bubbles in various things.
When things are centralised, they repeat the same mistakes. You'll never see another Tulip bubble, but we've had the Fed reduce interest rates EVERY time there's a recession with less and less results.
Cutting taxes doesn't work if you only cut for specific groups / entities. Because inevitably someone else has to pay that tax. You have to stop the spending (centralised disbursement of other people's money), then cut ALL income taxes.
Despite the cuts, spending was channeled into defense - which created millions of jobs and the growth you refer to.
Today, the only non-defense government deficit spending available is money printed by Tim and bought by BenFed, channelled to bankers who do the paper shuffle with "assets".
A few more zeores on you trading screen, does not create any jobs or growth in the real economy!
This is untrue to the extent that you are implying that defense spending absorbed investment and provided jobs for all the homecoming soldiers. It was not even close. Total government spending contracted tremendously.
Very true whiskeyjim. Some of the adjustments will be painful but they have to be made. This warped economy has no chance to right itself otherwise and even then we have many other problems, not the least of which is finite energy resources which will require a completely different change.
Mike Pento you are an awesome truth teller--bravo and thank you!!!
Maybe truth of a life or death need to drasticly restrict our puppet government ( puppeteered by the financial cartel that is the privately owned Federal Reserve Corporation ), can be the sugar that helps the medicine go down? We can only hope.
he hasn't been back to cnbc since he rolled his eyes at erin burnett...........has he?
There's a get out of jail free card: coin money as per the constitution.
Congress is just too cowed by the banks to use this card, but they know its there.
Until then we get theatrics and much gnashing of teeth. Only question is who wins and who loses. Right now, playing field is tilted to the population losing and the bailed out winning. All the theater is simply there to sell the population on that outcome.
You are not wrong: hold on while I reference to Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt".
http://www.webofdebt.com/
Stop your incessant whining. Yes the Tea Party has encouraged their representatives to stop th einsanity of US Fed debt. Yes the US economy will take a short term hit. Yes the US has to align its tax rate lower to that of their major trading partners.
What's the problem. The US cannot exist on negative real inteerest rates forever. Yes Europe has to absorb their military obligations to a greater extent.
Everybody knows this. Get on with it and have the socialists , responsible for the mess, pay the price.
Do not blame Newton for discovering gravity.
And which are these 'socialists' to whom you refer?
The Corporate Socialists who refuse regulation but then want a bailout when they go bust? Don't want regulation? Then don't come crying to us when you're bust.
The Military Socialists who, at Bush's first meeting of his National Security Council, told his cabinet to invent a reason to invade Iraq? Eight months before 9/11? Remember Paul O'Neill's interview on Sixty Minutes with Leslie Stahl? Those Socialists? The ones whose forces are so depleted, now they're inviting gays in the military?
George W? Cheney? Halliburton? Gramm & repeal of Glass-Steagall? The 15% rate for hedge funds managing OPM?
Or the Republocrats who passed The 2000 Futures Modernization Act without a single dissent on either side? Compelling states with statutes against gambling to revoke or revise them so as to be in compliance with the bill? The bill requiring no clearing on derivatives? While Moody's gave Triple-AAA ratings to, in Buffet's words, Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction? And Buffet owned 13% of Moody's? And then he bought 10% of Goldman, the largest purveyor of this sludge in the world? Get real.
Go to http://carolelieffthecuriouscapitalist.co
And which are these 'socialists' to whom you refer?
The Corporate Socialists who refuse regulation but then want a bailout when they go bust? Don't want regulation? Then don't come crying to us when you're bust.
The Military Socialists who, at Bush's first meeting of his National Security Council, told his cabinet to invent a reason to invade Iraq? Eight months before 9/11? Remember Paul O'Neill's interview on Sixty Minutes with Leslie Stahl? Those Socialists? The ones whose forces are so depleted, now they're inviting gays in the military?
George W? Cheney? Halliburton? Gramm & repeal of Glass-Steagall? The 15% rate for hedge funds managing OPM?
Or the Republocrats who passed The 2000 Futures Modernization Act without a single dissent on either side? Compelling states with statutes against gambling to revoke or revise them so as to be in compliance with the bill? The bill requiring no clearing on derivatives? While Moody's gave Triple-AAA ratings to, in Buffet's words, Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction? And Buffet owned 13% of Moody's? And then he bought 10% of Goldman, the largest purveyor of this sludge in the world? Get real.
Go to http://carolelieffthecuriouscapitalist.co
+1. I thought ZH was about sound money. and banks are a part of that. But I always knew the rules when I deal with a banker. Social butterfly politicians usually dont have rules, but they have more desperate thugs to "IRS enforce".
Newton spent alot of time on both sides of alchemy in addition to codifying gravity, Well Said,
The fed may have already turned over the keys to the us treasury. They don't want to be blamed anymore when the the us dollar is cut loose by financial markets
https://ir.citi.com/4B%2Fhnlk4AeSzfVmfATiPaShSaBnS2dceA7XFqCbocCI%3D
https://ir.citi.com/4B%2Fhnlk4AeSzfVmfATiPaShSaBnS2dceA7XFqCbocCI%3D
However, I think the country needs some more tastes of brutal reality before such bitter medicine has a chance of going down
The problem with this reasoning is the fact that "the country" encompasses about 310 million or so people while a mere 535 greedy, selfish, power hungry assholes make policy for the entire country, and do not taste this "brutal reality" that you speak of. Do you really suppose that the very politicians which fucked this country up through disastrous monetary policies are going to knuckle down and do the right thing? Do you suppose that I should just roll over and "take this bitter medicine"? Not very fucking likely. End the Fed. Burn the tax code. No more foreign aid. No more jackassing around in the Middle East. A real easy solution to Social Security would be to stop stealing money from my fucking paycheck and I'll stop worrying about not getting it back at a loss after you used it for free for forty fucking years you thieving sons of bitches. I am tired of the assumption that Americans do not want to face reality when the fact is we are not being properly represented by those in positions of power and authority in this globalist ponzi scheme. Last minute "concessions" mean fucked over Americans every time. Whatever they turn out will be a shameful excuse for leadership, let alone a satisfactory and fiscally sound policy regarding the debt ceiling.
Social Security is easy to fix (not politically but theoretically). Either increase the retirement age until income=outflow or adjust the benefit levels every year so income=outflow. It sounds impossible but companies do it all the time with salesmen - their bonus levels, and therefore their incomes, fluctuate every year based on how well they and the company does.
WOW! Like how do I applaud you? A million times? +1,000,000.
awesome lunatic