This nation must go thru the painful process of balancing the budget, paying down the debt and returning to fiscal responsibility. As a nation the United States is Bankrupt.

We need to account for future as well as present liabilities. The federal government really should be required by law to provide accounting information, including a balance sheet and income statement (the Budget of the United States is insufficient) according to the same Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) that businesses are sought to provide. State and local governments (often with large future liabilties for retiree income and health benefits) also need to be subject to GAAP.

Any new tax increases should go to debt service, and hopefully someday there will be not only a reduction in growth of, but a true reduction in, spending, with the money redirected to debt service.

Debt.

A nation or an individual has a certain capacity to borrow X numbers of dollars and still maintain viable economic policy. Once this point is exceeded it no longer becomes a viable policy and a recession occurs.

A recession is simply the markets way of saying, okay you’ve spent…..now you have to pay back what you owe.

Therefore I have to agree that a recession is in the offing and will come about due to the Democrats who get in office and immediately raise taxes to try and pay off the debt. They will be met with a recession because a teetering economy will not be able to assume the extra debt that increased taxes put on its shoulders.

How serious it will be? I fully suspect that it will last 5 to 7 years and that unemployment will reach close to 10 percent in the USA and 18 percent worldwide.

Let me also add that if we had more tax cuts that would simply delay the inevitable. This nation must go thru the painful process of balancing the budget, paying down the debt and returning to fiscal responsibility. As a nation the United States is Bankrupt. The only reason she has not gone the way of extinction is that she continues to have Cash flow. Cash flow solves a lot of problems for a finite period of time. In this case the USA and the burden she took on in Iraq will prove too much for the country to overcome.

This is precisely why everyone wanted to let another 100,000,000 Immigrants into this country…….it would solve nothing but it would increase the cash flow and keep the country expanding until such time as the demise of the USA was so forceful as to force the entire world into a depression.

Poor economic policy by the Right will be the direct result of Americas demise. Ronald Reagan did not mean for the Country to go into hock perpetually. However the Right has lost their freakin mind when it comes to fiscal policy.

This nation is doomed unless we turn it around Today. If Global warming dont kill us all, Republican fiscal policies WILL.

While it’s not even close to being time to panic, the American way of pooh-poohing bad news in favor of patriotic defense of conditions would be the absolutely worst reaction.
We have serious problems, and we’ve got to face up to them.

And as far as the demise of the dollar, Monsieur Froggo should not forget Mark Twain’s admonition.
Yes, I’m sure there will be a few years of 1.3 to the Euro. But, are there none old enough here to remember the .67 to the Canuck, .8 to the Euro and 1.45 to GBP?

Oddly enough, while the French might love to see the demise of the US and its USD, the two outifts that could really bring it about……OPEC and China….have very consciously avoided aiding the fall.