Goings on in Washington

I was going to post on the current manufactured "debt crisis" that is being tossed around but Bayou Renaissance Man beat me to it and did it so well that I am not even going to try:

We are so screwed
I'm too disgusted by today's political developments to even try to post general blog stuff tonight. Instead, let's take an honest look at what the 'agreement' between the President, the Senate and the House of Representatives means for you and I. I can put it very briefly - in two words, actually.

We're screwed.

Sorry to be so blunt about it, but that's the reality of the situation. We can now confidently expect the US economy to implode in one of two ways:

1. EITHER the debt burden will grow so large that it absorbs most of the national budget in interest and debt service payments, crippling all other government expenditure; OR -
2. The Treasury will deliberately print so many more dollars to service our debt requirements, in what it will doubtless call 'Quantitative Easing 3' (and 4, and 5, and 6, and . . . ), that inflation will almost completely erode the value of our currency, destroying any hope of prosperity for the middle and working classes of America.

Please understand this very clearly. ONE OR THE OTHER OF THOSE OUTCOMES IS ALMOST CERTAIN. It can only be avoided by a reversal of direction of the nation's economic policy. That cannot and will not happen unless and until we elect - in the short term - a Congress, Senate and President who are both aware of economic reality, and will act upon it. If they do, the reversal of direction will at best produce a prolonged, painful and extremely bitter recession. If they don't, one or the other of the outcomes listed above becomes inevitable.

Lots more cheeriness at the link -- he closes out with the great Kipling poem 'The Gods Of The Copybook Headings'. True back in 1919 and just as true today. Posted by DaveH at August 1, 2011 10:36 PM