[url=http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/National_debt_grows_1_million_a_min_12032007.html]National debt grows $1 million a minute

US National Debt Expanding at Mind-Numbing Rate, Nearly $1.4 Billion Per Day

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Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It's expanding by about $1.4 billion a day — or nearly $1 million a minute.

What's that mean to you?

It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.

Even if you've escaped the recent housing and credit crunches and are coping with rising fuel prices, you may still be headed for economic misery, along with the rest of the country. That's because the government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion.

And like homeowners who took out adjustable-rate mortgages, the government faces the prospect of seeing this debt — now at relatively low interest rates — rolling over to higher rates, multiplying the financial pain.

So long as somebody is willing to keep loaning the U.S. government money, the debt is largely out of sight, out of mind.

But the interest payments keep compounding, and could in time squeeze out most other government spending — leading to sharply higher taxes or a cut in basic services like Social Security and other government benefit programs. Or all of the above.

This is UNBELIEVABLE!!!

Thanks George.

[url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23131149/]U.S. deficit running at twice last year's
Federal spending also rising at faster pace than last year[/url]

BUSHECONOMICS is doing so much for this country!

The federal budget deficit is running at a pace that is more than double last year’s imbalance through the first four months of the budget year.

In its monthly review of the government’s finances, the Treasury Department said Tuesday that the budget was in surplus in January, but the deficit totals $87.7 billion so far this budget year, double the $42.2 billion imbalance recorded during the same period in 2007. The new budget year started last Oct. 1.

The Bush administration sent its final budget request to Congress last week, projecting that the deficit for all of 2008 will total $410 billion, very close to the all-time high in dollar terms of $413 billion in 2004.

I wonder if any of you realize how much the unConstitutional welfare programs social security and medicare contribute to long-term debt...

Unconstitutional? In what way.

Welfare to businesses drains the purse way more than social welfare.

Our country isn't being "drained" by Social Security, Medicare, or any other social program. What is "draining" the US, according to this report from Australia, is the war in Iraq:

Iraq war 'caused slowdown in the US'

THE Iraq war has cost the US 50-60 times more than the Bush administration predicted and was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

The former World Bank vice-president yesterday said the war had, so far, cost the US something like $US3trillion ($3.3 trillion) compared with the $US50-$US60-billion predicted in 2003.

Australia also faced a real bill much greater than the $2.2billion in military spending reported last week by Australian Defence Force chief Angus Houston, Professor Stiglitz said, pointing to higher oil prices and other indirect costs of the wars.

Professor Stiglitz told the Chatham House think tank in London that the Bush White House was currently estimating the cost of the war at about $US500 billion, but that figure massively understated things such as the medical and welfare costs of US military servicemen.

The war was now the second-most expensive in US history after World War II and the second-longest after Vietnam, he said.

The spending on Iraq was a hidden cause of the current credit crunch because the US central bank responded to the massive financial drain of the war by flooding the American economy with cheap credit.

"The regulators were looking the other way and money was being lent to anybody this side of a life-support system," he said.

probably 1 of the biggest contributors to the soaring debt is the presently occurring freefall of the dollar vs the euro and the rest of the worlds other currencies.

looks like the iranian oil burse strategy of getting the rest of the world to dump the dollar in exchange for the euro is now beginning to take effect.

i saw an explanation yesterday on cnn by an economics expert who was explaining why gas prices are still going up while gas suppliers have openly admitted that demand at the pump has steadily dropped. one would think that as demand drops, the natural inverse reaction would be for prices to drop as a result of overstock/supply.

then he explained what the actual problem is in the clear view of the falling worth of the dollar on the world market.

pretty easy to see for me at least.

again, looks like the intentions of the iob are working thanks to the moron in chief in the oval office.

Buffett: US essentially in recession

Billionaire Warren Buffett said Monday that the U.S. economy is essentially in a recession even if it hasn't met the technical definition of one yet.

Buffett said in an interview with cable network CNBC the reports he gets from the retail businesses his holding company owns show a significant slowdown in purchases.

The chairman and CEO of Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said millions of people have also lost equity in their homes because home prices have dropped.

The technical definition of a recession most economists use is two consecutive quarters of negative growth in the nation's gross domestic product.

"I would say, by any commonsense definition, we are in a recession," Buffett said on CNBC.

Studies: Iraq costs US $12B per month

The flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising, new analyses show. In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the "burn" rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.

Beyond 2008, working with "best-case" and "realistic-moderate" scenarios, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion — or more — by 2017.

Interest on money borrowed to pay those costs could alone add $816 billion to that bottom line, they say.

Wait till this shit hits the fan !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


PAUL B. FARRELL
Derivatives the new 'ticking bomb'
Buffett and Gross warn: $516 trillion bubble is a disaster waiting to happen

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/d ... TNMostRead

I fail to find the hilarity in this kind of information. There will be no SHIT hitting the fan until WE the PEOPLE care more about what's happening to our country than we care about what's on the boobtube tonight, what we're getting at the fast food restaurant, and what we'll purchase during our next visit to Wal-Mart.

How many people will actually receive the information you linked, TUT? For that matter, how many people will receive the information I linked? AND if they do, will they even CARE?

No you don't you see it clearly It's a form of black humor as when you have nothing left to lose.

Oil Brings Americans Closer to OPEC Debtor Dependence

Petroleum exporting nations from Saudi Arabia to Russia are not only charging Americans record high prices for fuel, they are also poised to become the biggest creditor to the U.S. government.

Holdings of Treasuries by oil producers and institutions such as U.K. banks that are proxies for Middle East nations rose 44 percent this year to $510.8 billion through April, four times faster than the rest of the world, according to the Treasury Department's most recent data. At the current pace, they'll surpass Japan, which holds $592.2 billion, as the largest owner this month.

While the investment of so-called petrodollars into government debt is helping to temper a rise in borrowing costs as the U.S. finances a record budget deficit, it highlights America's dependence on foreign money. New York's Chrysler Building was bought last week by Middle East investors.

``We should be very happy that they're buying U.S. Treasuries because they're keeping interest rates low, and that's a positive for bond investors,'' said Gary Pollack, who helps oversee $12 billion as head of fixed-income trading at Deutsche Bank AG's Private Wealth Management unit in New York. ``Whether there's geopolitical risk is something else.''

The benchmark 10-year note's yield fell 2 basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 3.96 percent last week, according to BGCantor Market Data. It touched 3.78 percent on July 10, the lowest since May 21. The price of the 3.875 percent security due in May 2018 rose 5/32, or $1.56 per $1,000 face amount, to 99 10/32. The yield climbed to 4.01 percent today as of 12:01 p.m. in Tokyo.