How The United States Of America Will Catastrophically Financially Implode SOON

Let’s start with this:

China calls for dollar to be replaced as global reserve currency
Upset that the U.S. fiscal impasse threatens to trigger a default that would roil financial markets worldwide, Beijing suggests ‘building a de-Americanized world.’
By Jim Puzzanghera
October 14, 2013, 5:23 p.m.

WASHINGTON — Five years after the U.S. financial crisis helped cause a deep global recession, foreign leaders are worried that history is going to repeat itself.

The fiscal impasse that has partially shut the federal government now threatens to trigger a U.S. default that would roil financial markets worldwide, leading an agitated China to suggest replacing the dollar as the international reserve currency.

“As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world,” China’s official state-run news agency, Xinhua, said in an English-language commentary Sunday.

There is no viable alternative to the dollar as the centerpiece of the global financial system, and there probably won’t be for the foreseeable future, experts said.

But Washington’s debt limit standoff — coming on the heels of similar brinkmanship in 2011 — could accelerate efforts to find an alternative.

“The U.S. remains the core of the global financial system at this point,” said Nicolas Veron, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a think tank in Brussels. “But the sort of thing happening in the U.S. might move people toward a system less reliant on the U.S.”

China echoed calls from world financial officials urging an end to what it called the “pernicious impasse” in the U.S. over funding the government and raising the $16.7-trillion debt limit.

The Treasury Department has said the debt limit must be raised by Thursday or it will run out of borrowing authority. That would leave it dependent on just cash on hand and incoming revenue to pay the federal government’s bills. Given the world financial system’s dependence on the dollar, a default on payments of interest or principal on U.S. Treasury bonds would be catastrophic for the global economy, analysts said.

Treasury bonds and other dollar-based investments are used as the main form of collateral worldwide, so questions about their security would cause more problems than the financial system failures in fall 2008, said Benjamin J. Cohen, an international political economy professor at UC Santa Barbara.

“It would make the Lehman Bros. episode look like a garden party by comparison,” Cohen said.

The U.S. debt limit standoff was the main topic at the recent meetings in Washington of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Global finance ministers are worried that the uncertainty surrounding a U.S. default “would mean massive disruption the world over, and we would be at risk of tipping yet again into a recession,” Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Most countries hold their foreign exchange reserves in U.S. dollars because the currency is viewed as the world’s most stable.

“The very fact that more than 60% of central banks’ reserves are in dollars gives them every reason to be concerned,” Barry Eichengreen, a professor of economics and political science at UC Berkeley and a former senior policy advisor at the IMF, said of foreign governments. “If the bank in which you held 60% of your savings was threatening to default, you’d be concerned too.”

U.S. financial markets rebounded Monday amid optimistic reports from Capitol Hill about negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to end the standoff.

China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, with about $1.3 trillion in Treasury bonds, and probably more in other dollar-denominated investments. So the Beijing government is worried about the effect of a U.S. failure to raise the debt limit on those holdings.

The Xinhua editorial took swipes at the U.S. for claiming “the moral high ground” while “covertly doing things that are as audacious as torturing prisoners of war, slaying civilians in drone attacks, and spying on world leaders.”

Although it slammed the U.S. for the Iraq war and military activity around the world, the article focused much of its fire on the U.S. role in the global economy, saying “the world is still crawling its way out of an economic disaster thanks to the voracious Wall Street elites.”

“Most recently, the cyclical stagnation in Washington for a viable bipartisan solution over a federal budget and an approval for raising debt ceiling has again left many nations’ tremendous dollar assets in jeopardy and the international community highly agonized,” Xinhua said.

The editorial called for a “a new world order” in which “all nations, big or small, poor or rich, can have their key interests respected and protected on an equal footing.”

That new order should start with respect for the sovereignty of other nations, the editorial said. It also should include major financial reforms, such as allowing developing and emerging economies to have more say in the operations of the IMF and the World Bank.

China has been pushing since at least 2009 for the dollar to be replaced as the world’s reserve currency. The nation has not only called for a new international currency to be developed but also has been taking steps to make its currency, the yuan, more acceptable as a potential alternative.

“They never lose an opportunity to take advantage of embarrassing behavior by the United States,” Cohen said. China made similar calls in 2011, when a debt limit standoff was resolved at the last minute.

But the Chinese currency and its financial system are not ready to be the world’s reserve currency, experts said. Even the euro and Japanese yen aren’t prepared to do that because they lack the liquidity of the dollar.

Still, the latest Washington crisis could push the world to seek ways to diversify the financial system away from its dependence on the dollar, Cohen said.

“The only thing that can hurt the dollar these days is political dysfunction in Washington. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot,” he said. “The more we play these games in Washington, the less confidence people will have in the dollar and the more incentive people will have to do this diversification.”

The first thing I couldn’t help but notice is how communist China’s demagoguery sounds almost exactly like Obama’s demagoguery.  They’re both talking down America hoping that the worst will happen to this country because each (i.e, China and Obama) believes their political goals will be attained through America’s demise.  But moving on…

I don’t know whether the Los Angeles Times – which is staffed by liberal ideologue propagandists as opposed to actual “journalists” is simply being incompetent in this story or being the propagandists that they are (i.e., the backstory is that the “default” is the Republicans’ fault, and ergo sum the global meltdown over the “default” will be all the Republicans’ fault, too).  But here’s a fact that kind of pees all over some of the main assertions in this story:

From November 24, 2010 (the money quote is boldfaced at the end):

China and Russia have agreed to allow their currencies to trade against each other in spot inter-bank markets.

The motive is to promote the bilateral trade between China and Russia, facilitate the cross-border trade settlement of [the yuan], and meet the needs of economic entities to reduce the conversion cost, according to Chinese officials.

This latest move — a continuation in a series of efforts by both countries to move away from  U.S. dollar usage in international trade — further threatens the dollar’s reserve currency status.

The dollar has this status because it is currently the currency of international trade.

For example, when Malaysia and Germany exchange goods, the transaction is often denominated in dollars.  In particular, oil — something that all modern economies need — is denominated in U.S. dollars, so the currency is almost as indispensable as oil itself.

The dollar reserve currency status allows the U.S. to run up high deficits and have its debt be denominated in the U.S. dollar, which in turn enables it to print unlimited dollars and inflate its way out of debt. America, understandably, wants to protect these privileges. […]

Meanwhile, China and Russia are gradually revolting against the U.S. dollar. This latest move to shift bilateral trade away from it is significant in itself because China-Russian trade — previously denominated in dollars — is currently around $40 billion per year. For Russia, trade with China is larger than trade with the U.S.

Moreover, as this policy extends to Russian exports of oil and natural gas to China, it threatens the global petro-currency status of the U.S. dollar.

According to the International Energy Agency, China is already the largest consumer of energy,  although the U.S. is still the largest consumer of oil. However, China, now the largest automobile market in the world, is expected to rapidly increase oil consumption.

Russia is already the second biggest oil exporter and the biggest natural gas exporter in the world.

In other words, the growing importance of Russia and China in the global energy picture — and their phasing out of dollar usage for trading energy commodities — would marginalize the status of the dollar.

Russian ambitions against the dollar for energy exports go back to 2006. That year, former President Vladimir Putin made plans to set up a ruble-denominated oil and natural gas stock exchange in Russia.

So, in fact and contrary to the Los Angeles Times “reporting,” the movement away from the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency in fact PREDATES the financial crisis – and goes back to at least 2006 (I would argue it goes back even further than that, but I’ve proven my point: the financial crisis happened in late 2008).  So the LA Times is simply wrong in its thesis that the debt ceiling issue – which they over and over again hype as a “default” – is just plain bogus.

When we consider that Barack Obama demonized George Bush and ostentatiously voted against his debt ceiling (and didn’t bother to even show up and vote when the debt ceiling was raised other times during the Bush years – such that HE NEVER DID VOTE FOR A BUSH DEBT CEILING INCREASE other than when he voted for TARP – you also see the deceitful and dishonest propaganda that is going on.  It’s always “that was then” with these people; it’s always “It’s only fascist when THEY do what we did” with them.  Such as the fact that Obama did a press conference demonizing the GOP for not voting for his debt ceiling hike without ever bothering to so much as mention the fact that Obama did the exact same damn thing and how could the Republicans be anything but just as evil as the man who was now demonizing them???

Nor will that same blatantly dishonest media point out that Democrats shut down the government over the debt ceiling EIGHT TIMES during the Reagan presidency.  Because that would prove the lie to Obama’s “this has never happened before” and “no party has ever been this bent on destroying America” load of garbage.

Nor will they point out that it has largely – if not exclusively – been OBAMA who has fearmongered the debt ceiling rather than the Republicans.

The dishonesty of the mainstream media is simply breathtaking.

Having said that, let’s continue and examine this “default.”  Because it, too, is just a lie of propaganda:

Black’s law dictionary has this to say about “default”: The omission or failure to fulfill a duty, observe a promise, discharge an obligation, or perform an agreement [or observe a promise or discharge an obligation (e.g. to pay interest or principal on a debt when due ].

Come October 17 if our dysfunctional Washington hacks do not raise our debt ceiling, ominous forecasting of imminent default on our $17 trillion burden pound the airwaves. Prevarications foisted by the progressive press-corps regarding the United States becoming delinquent on its Treasury debt are as preposterous as they are disingenuous.  Whether premeditated lying or, equally likely, out of a stark darkness of matters economic the result is the usual fear mongering we have come to expect from their rumor mills.

Inconvenient as they may be, some facts are in order. The fiscal 2013 debt service for the twelve months ending September 30 will be somewhere around $420 billion. (Per the Bureau of Fiscal Service the actual figure of 11 months through August was just under $396 billion). IRS revenues for the calendar 2012 tax year will probably be around $2.3 trillion. That equates to over a five and a half times debt service coverage. So having enough money is not even close to the issue. There has been some discussion of what some are naming “prioritization of payments”.

Democrats are truly evil to fearmonger a “default” to falsely demonize and slander their opponents at the expense of the U.S. economy.  And Barack Obama is the most recklessly irresponsible president in the entirety of American history to join them in their lies.

To wit, we could easily pay our debt and NOT default.  And we could do that for not months but for years to come, if necessary.

If that isn’t enough, Republicans have already done the leg work to prevent any kind of “default”:

Sen. Pat Toomey and more than 30 Senate colleagues will introduce the “Ensuring the Full Faith and Credit of the United States and Protecting America’s Soldiers and Seniors Act.”

The bill is meant to offer a stop-gap if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling and the Treasury Department thus falls short of having enough cash to pay all the government’s bills in full and on time.

Toomey’s proposal would require that revenue going to Treasury first be used to pay interest on U.S. debt, Social Security benefits and active-duty military pay.

If there’s not enough revenue available to cover those payments when they’re due, the bill would also give limited authority to Treasury to raise the debt ceiling just enough to borrow the difference between revenue on hand and what’s owed on the priority payments.

I’ve pointed out the fact: if there IS a “default,” it will be because Barack Hussein refused to allow the Treasury to make the interest payment that the United States could in fact make.  He has already demonstrated that he is a genuinely evil man who is trying to make the political impasse as harsh and as painful as he possibly can in order to falsely demonize Republicans.

There is one and only one genuine fact in the Los Angeles Times piece: that of China’s demand that the United States be replaced as the reserve currency of planet earth.

That WILL happen soon.  Because Democrats WILL NEVER REIGN IN THEIR DEMONIC SPENDING.

The true debt of the United States is not the “paltry” $17 trillion that we keep hearing about; it is actually well WELL over $222 TRILLION.  Our actual debt, our “fiscal gap” between our debts and our ability to actually pay for all the crap Democrats keep imposing on America, is going up about one trillion dollars every single MONTH.  Because politicians are liars who paper over debts with more debts and then cover those debts up with still more debts.

Democrats are the worst addicts who ever existed.  Heroin, coke, crank, meth, crack addicts got NOTHIN’ on Democrats.  Because Democrats are addicted to money and the power that their money buys them – and they are addicted to it TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS AT A TIME.

The only reason Democrats can keep this insane game of insane spending going is because America is the world’s reserve currency.  The fact that all commodities such as oil are bought and sold in U.S. dollars has given us an unprecedented ability to basically just print money and keep escaping the consequences.

We have been just plain flat-out DEPRAVED in our spending.

As an example, do you know what triggered to insanely-titled-by liberals “Arab Spring” in which Arab regimes fell to be replaced again and again by terrorist-sponsored governments?  Food riots induced by Obama’s Fed as they kept printing more and more money and basically just adding more and more zeroes to the Federal Reserve computers.  As we printed more money, the Arab states that depended on the stability of the dollar saw massive inflation (because THEY can’t print more dollars their dollars became worth less = worthless).

Well, as Obama’s reverend once said, the chickens are about to come home to roost.  And they will roost on a collapsed, doomed, dead former United States of America.  And very soon.

One day, soon, the world will have had enough.  One day, soon, our stint as being the reserve currency and maximally exploiting that status with reckless and immoral spending that we can’t possibly afford will be ended FOR us.

And China will step in and take ownership.  And kick you and our family out of your home in the cold if you can’t pay their “damned American imperialist” rent surcharge.

Our time is coming.  We’ll get ours.  We’ll get what we deserve as a nation for being wicked enough to elect and then re-elect Obama: we’ll get Dodo bird extinction just like we deserve.

The United States is nowhere mentioned in Bible prophecy; that’s because America will have collapsed and simply be irrelevant as we enter these last days just before the beast of the Book of Revelation comes to impose his mark and doom the world to suffering and hell.

If Nation Defaults, It Is ENTIRELY Obama’s Fault

Today Obama went to FEMA to thank them for working without pay.  That was his pretense, anyway.  Actually, he went to get in front of a microphone and demonize Republicans some more.

Here’s a short article that sums up the situation quite nicely:

Obama thanks FEMA for work during shutdown
Posted: Oct 07, 2013 9:51 AM PDT Updated: Oct 07, 2013 9:52 AM PDT
By JOSH LEDERMAN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama is thanking workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency for doing their jobs under “less than optimal circumstances” during the government shutdown.

Obama made an unannounced visit to FEMA Monday as the shutdown neared the one-week mark. Some furloughed employees at the agency were recalled last week and worked without pay to help prepare for Tropical Storm Karen.

The president said FEMA employees remain ready to respond when needed, but their jobs have been “made more difficult.” He says the shutdown may actually end up costing taxpayers more money.

Funding for FEMA was among the series of piecemeal spending bills passed by the House last week. The White House has threatened to veto the measures, saying the government should not be reopened one agency at a time.

Do you get that, stupid universe?  FEMA isn’t shut down because Republicans shut them down; because REPUBLICANS FUNDED FEMA and a lot of the rest of the government.  No, FEMA is shut down because Democrats who control the Senate won’t allow the House-passed bill to go forward, and because if anybody tries to fund FEMA and pay those workers, BARACK OBAMA WILL VETO IT.

THAT’S why FEMA is on furlough.

But we live in an age just before Obama implodes America, sends the world into depression and the beast of the Book of Revelation comes.  And so the truth has largely been replaced by demon-possessed lies.

Here’s another reason that Obama rabidly refuses to negotiate or compromise in any way, any shape or any form as we approach a debt default:

Said a senior administration official: “We are winning…It doesn’t really matter to us” how long the shutdown lasts “because what matters is the end result.”

Obama and Charlie Sheen have something in common: they’re not bi-polar; they are BI-WINNING.

That and the fact that they are both demonic people who have a truly psychotic worldview.

Obama has been shutting down things left and right for the sole purpose of making the shutdown as painful for as many people as he can.  He’s shut down WWII memorials and things like the Lincoln Memorial that have NEVER been closed during ANY of our previous government shutdowns:

The Park Service appears to be closing  streets on mere whim and caprice. The rangers even closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, where the plantation home of George Washington is a favorite tourist  destination. That was after they barred the new World War II Memorial on the Mall to veterans of World War II. But the government does not own Mount Vernon; it is privately owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies’  Association. The ladies bought it years ago to preserve it as a national  memorial. The feds closed access to the parking lots this week, even though the  lots are jointly owned with the Mount Vernon ladies. The rangers are from the government, and they’re only here to help.

“It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,” an angry Park  Service ranger in Washington says  of the harassment. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we  can. It’s disgusting.”

“We’ve been told – by OBAMA through his federal government demon-possessed bureaucrats – to make life as difficult for people as they possibly can.”  Quote.  And you’re damn right it’s absolutely disgusting.

Do you know that at all of these memorials that Obama has shut down for no other reason that to be petty and vindictive is that he’s using more security guards to keep the American people OUT of their monuments than were being used to just keep them open???

That was what Sen Rand Paul was mocking when he tweeted:

@BarackObama sent 7 security guards to #WWIIMemorial this AM to keep out our vets. Sadly, that is 2 more than were present in Benghazi.

Obama tried to shut down the Army-Navy football game – again, for the first time EVER during one of our many government shutdowns – just because he’s a petty tyrant and that’s the kind of cheap trick that a petty tyrant does:

ANNAPOLIS, Md. —  On a beautiful fall day, the parking lot at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium was filled with fans and tailgate parties. A record crowd of 38,225 showed up Saturday for the football game between Navy and Air Force.

Navy athletic director Chet Gladchuk looked at the activity around him and smiled. After tumultuous week, he was right where he was supposed to be Saturday.

The Air Force-Navy game was in serious jeopardy on Tuesday, when the Department of Defense suspended athletic competition at the nation’s service academies because of the U.S. government shutdown. At that point, Gladchuk took action to convince the DOD that the game should be played because it was funded by non-appropriated money.

His effort paid off. Late Wednesday night, the DOD relented. […]

“There was some concern, but I was hopeful it would happen because they’ve never canceled a Navy football game during a government shutdown,” Lang said.

“Navy athletics is privately funded,” Miles said. “The idea of them trying to cancel a game between two service academies is appalling.”

There’s another word to use to describe Obama’s thug tactics in addition to “disgusting”: “appalling.”

Obama the thug has his White House thugs and federal government thugs frantically trying to close down absolutely everything they can possibly close down just to hurt as many people as they can.  EVEN WHEN FEDERAL FUNDS AREN’T EVEN BEING USED.  Just so Obama can falsely blame Republicans even though the only part of government they basically HAVEN’T funded is demonic ObamaCare fiasco.

I recently pointed out a few other examples of just how positively VILE Obama and his Democrat stooge-thugs have been during this period.

But here’s another one that is just so utterly beyond “appalling” or “disgusting” that “vile” hardly is enough to describe it: Obama closed down the Amber alert system created to find kidnapped children before a pedophile can rape them.

And if it comes to it, believe me, Obama is thug enough and petty enough to order this, too, joke or no joke.  He’s just that demonic.

But you still haven’t grasped the true, genuine evil that is Barack Obama.  He’s actively trying to sabotage our economy just so he can blame the other party for what HE did.  Democrats are accusing Republicans of being “economic terrorists.”  But let’s take a look at our “Economic Terrorist-in-CHIEF”:

Washington (AFP) – President Barack Obama sent Wall Street a blunt warning Wednesday that it should be very worried about a political crisis that has shut down the government and could trigger a US debt default.

Obama said he was “exasperated” by the budget impasse in Congress, in an interview with CNBC apparently designed to pressure Republicans by targeting the financial community moments after markets closed.

The president then met Republican and Democratic leaders for their first talks since the US government money’s ran out and it slumped into a shutdown now well into its second day.

But few informed observers held out much hope for a sudden breakthrough.

Obama was asked in the interview whether Washington was simply gripped by just the latest in a series of political and fiscal crises which reliably get solved at the last minute.

In unusually frank comments on issues that could sway markets, Obama warned that investors should be worried.

“This time’s different. I think they should be concerned,” Obama said, in comments which may roil global markets.

“When you have a situation in which a faction is willing potentially to default on US government obligations, then we are in trouble,” Obama said.

Obama said he would not negotiate with Republicans on budget matters until House lawmakers pass a temporary financing bill to reopen federal operations and raised the $16.7 trillion dollar debt ceiling.

This is the bottom line: in a couple of weeks, America faces a debt ceiling issue.

Keep in mind that if Republicans act like Obama, they will vote against EVER raising the damn debt ceiling.  Remember what Obama said when he was a Senator to demonize George W. Bush???

“The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.”

And:

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

That was when it was $9 trillion.  IT’S VERY NEARLY DOUBLE THAT NOW, THANKS TO OBAMA’S UTTER DEPRAVITY.

HOW WAS IT “IRRESPONSIBLE” AND “UNPATRIOTIC” TO INCREASE THE DEBT CEILING WHEN IT WAS $9 TRILLION BUT NOT SO NOW WHEN THE DEBT IS 17 TRILLION???  Other than that it isn’t fascist when Obama does it???

You need to realize something: the real crisis of this debt ceiling impasse is that America could find itself unable to make the interest payments on the debt – which would be a default on America’s perfect credit.

Do you know why that could happen?  Do you know who would be entirely to blame if that does happen?

Barack Hussein Obama, thug, liar and traitor, that’s who.

Our interest payments on the debt amount to about $25 billion a month.  That sounds like a lot, but during any shutdown or debt ceiling impasse, the United States still raises far more in taxes every single month.  And it would just be a matter of arranging to prioritize the payments on the debt and to assure the credit markets that we will be doing so in order to maintain confidence.

But Obama doesn’t want that.  He wants to create as much pain and misery and destruction as he can.  Because he wants to trot out to every single dishonest propagandist mainstream media microphone and slander the Republican Party for doing what OBAMA DID.

There is absolutely no chance of a true default if Obama does what any leader who isn’t completely morally insane would do.  It is entirely under Obama’s authority to make those interest payments.  And to complete the picture, the Republicans have already approved this and other payments.  Absolutely nobody but Obama would be to blame.

If the United States defaults on its interest payments and creates a market meltdown, it is because Obama – who could easily avoid that merely by making the interest payments that are his authority to make – wants to create a market meltdown.

And the fact of the matter is that Barack Obama is an evil enough man to make that happen.

Barack Obama has rabidly refused to negotiate.  Literally, he is the first president in the history of the republic to refuse to negotiate – in spite of his many lies to the contrary.  In fact, the debt ceiling has been raised 63 times since 1979 – and fully 27 of those times, the debt ceiling was directly linked to other issues.  For instance, in 1973, Ted Kennedy and Walter Mondale – both top national Democrats – attempted to link the debt ceiling to campaign finance reform.

And in every single case up to now, the president was enough of a grown-up to NEGOTIATE AND BE WILLING TO COMPROMISE.

I am so sick of Obama’s and his administration’s constant spewing of outright lies.

If the Republicans follow the example set by the president, they will likewise refuse to negotiate and allow the country to slide off a cliff.

Greek Debt Rocketship Ride Coming To Obama’s God Damn America Soon

This is rather amazing.

I’ve got a different Greek phrase to use: Ιερά χάλια.

Greek 1 Year Sovereign Bonds Pass 1000% – Opa!
March 5, 2012
Anthony B. Sanders

The Institute for International Finance (IIF) has released an opinion discussing how a disorderly Greek default would cost over $1 trillion Euros.

And the 1 year Greek sovereign debt yield breaks 1000%!

That is the YIELD, not the coupon rate. The 1 year Greek sovereign coupon rate is 4.1%.

While the Eurozone touts that they have solved the Greek credit crisis (at least for the moment), investors don’t seem too mollified.

Opa! Your economy is on fire!

For the record, Greece just officially defaulted on its debt.  But said debt default was couched in the financialese terminology of a “credit event” and of course barely reported.

You just watch and wait for the $600 trillion hell that Barack Obama and all his crony capitalist fascist pals are going to bring to America.

International Officials Declare Greek ‘Credit Event’ (Means Greece Just Defaulted On Debt)

Couple of interesting stories about Greece and the constant charade and the continual coverup of fiscal reality.  First there was this one:

UPDATE: Journalist Stands By Story That ISDA Has Declared A Greek Bond Credit Event
Simone Foxman|Mar. 9, 2012, 1:55 PM

Derivatives Intelligence (part of Institutional Investor) reportsthat the International Swaps and Derivatives Association has determined that Greece has triggered a credit event as part of its debt restructuring.

This would provoke credit default swaps—insurance contracts on Greek bonds issued under Greek law—to be paid out.

But we don’t know why they have this and nobody else does, and we can’t confirm. Therefore, we have certain misgivings about the veracity of this report. While everyone expects that this will be the outcome, the report is not currently out.

ISDA’s committee met today to discuss the issue, and said it would issue a statement on whether or not a credit event had occurred once Greece formally activated the collective action clauses it recently inserted into its Greek debt issuances.

Consensus is that activating the CACs will indeed provoke a credit event, however analysts have been waiting all day for a decision to be published here, to no avail (yet).

Now why on earth would this journalist have to “stand by his story”?  Because a lot of people don’t want other people to know the reality about the situation resulting in Greece living off of borrowed money.

The next obvious question is “what is a credit event”?

From Wikipedia: A credit event is the financial term used to describe either: A general default eventrelated to a legal entity’s previously agreed financial obligation. In this case, a legal entity fails to meet its obligation on any significant financial transaction (coupon on a bond it issued or interest rate payment on a swap for example). The marketplace will recognize this as an event related to the legal entity’s credit worthiness. A financial event related to a legal entity which triggers specific protection provided by a credit derivative (credit default swap, credit default swap index, credit default swap index tranche, etc.) The events triggering a credit derivative are defined in a bilateral swap confirmation which is a transactional document that typically refers to an ISDA master agreement previously executed between the two swap counterparties. There are several standard credit events which are typically referred to in credit derivative transactions: Bankruptcy Failure to Pay Restructuring Repudiation Moratorium Obligation Acceleration Obligation Default

So now Reuters is reporting:

ISDA declares Greek credit event, CDS payments triggered
By Daniel Bases
NEW YORK | Fri Mar 9, 2012 3:39pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Greece triggered the payment on default insurance contracts by using legislation that forces losses on all private creditors, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association said on Friday.

The decision by the EMEA Determinations Committee to declare a so-called credit event was unanimous, ISDA said in a statement.

Markets showed little reaction to the widely expected decision. The euro edged lower against the U.S. dollar while U.S. Treasury prices saw losses pared after the ISDA announcement.

The ISDA said the use of “collective action clauses (CACs) to amend the terms of Greek law governed bonds issued by The Hellenic Republic such that the right of all holders of the Affected Bonds to receive payments has been reduced.”

The “credit event” ruling means a maximum of $3.16 billion of net outstanding Greek credit default swap contracts could be paid out, though the actual amount is likely to be lower because bondholders are not losing all of their original investment.

ISDA said the auction will be held to determining the actual payout amounts on March 19.

Greece said it would use the newly passed legislation that included the CACs to force private creditors into a bond swap.

This follows creditors’ voluntary tendering of 85.8 percent of the 177 billion euros ($232.22 billion) in bonds regulated by Greek law. The use of CACs should boost participation to an estimated 95.7 percent.

($1=0.7622 Euro)

Now if you’re one of the fools who believe the economy is picking up and everything is going to be just wonderful going forward, BUY GREEK DEBT and put your fool money where your fool mouth is.

We have been hearing a load of lies on Greece and its catastrophic plunge into socialism – which Obama is replicating in America as we speak – for over a year now.  We get terrible news, then we get a ton of whitewash and a meaningless “agreement” of some kind and a bunch of lies about what the “agreement” means.  And that is followed by such a crisis that there’s another report with terrible news, followed by yet another ton of whitewash and another meaningless “agreement” and another bunch of lies about what that “agreement” means.  And so on and so on.  And maybe lemmings aren’t crazy enough to follow each other off a cliff and then plunge to their deaths, but humans sure as hell are.

Greece is going down in flames.

The only meaningful question is whether the next country to follow in Greece’s Dodo bird footsteps will be Spain, or Portugal, or Cyprus, or Hungary, or Belarus, or Ireland … or America.

One thing is certain: our time is coming.  And when it comes you’ll wish it was a ton of bricks falling on your head instead.

Vote for Obama.  Vote for a complete financial and economic collapse followed by a period of sheer human suffering beyond anything that the United States of America has even dreamed of.

The beast is coming.

Twelve Reasons Why Barack Obama Is Nearly COMPLETELY Responsible For The Downgrade

There is plenty of blaming and finger-pointing going on right now as to just who is responsible for the downgrade.  The White House and the Democrat Party have been saying two contradictory things: 1) that the downgrade is a meaningless and baseless act of a discredited Standard & Poor’s and it’s ‘flawed math’; and that 2) that it is all the Tea Party’s fault.  I know there are liberals reading this, so I shall explain what should be obvious: why blame the Tea Party for S & P’s flawed math?  Or why blame S & P for the Tea Party’s ‘terrorism’???  What you see here is a Democrat Party and a White House who have nothing left but demonization and who are playing every card whether those cards contradict one another or not.

As an example, take Senator John Kerry (who coincidentally is one of the Democrat picks to be on the debt commission), who demonized the Republican Party and its “tea party downgrade” moments before proceeding to ” lament how Republicans insist on pointing fingers and assigning blame in this national crisis.”  You’d think his head would explode from trying to contain all the contradictions, but he’s clearly long since become immune to such a malfunction of mal-logic, illustrated by his self-righteously lecturing Republicans that the rich need to pay their “fair share” in taxes while he was trying to avoid paying his fair share on his yacht and while he and his billionaire heiress wife paid less in taxes than the average American family.

For the record, “a top Moody’s analyst reiterated that the United States is running out of time to reduce its debt burden before his company, too, would downgrade the country’s debt.”  And Moody’s is basically saying, “We still might downgrade the U.S., too.”  Which is to say that MOODY’S is just about to make a math mistake, too.

And yesterday Moody’s just officially lowered its outlook for the United States.  Which means a big “oopsie” for Democrats who demonized S & P.

This downgrade was fundamentally due to out-of-control spending:

S&P downgrades US credit rating from AAA
Posted: Aug 05, 2011 7:14 PM PDT Updated: Aug 05, 2011 9:54 PM PDT
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) – The United States has lost its sterling credit rating from Standard & Poor’s.

The credit rating agency on Friday lowered the nation’s AAA rating for the first time since granting it in 1917. The move came less than a week after a gridlocked Congress finally agreed to spending cuts that would reduce the debt by more than $2 trillion – a tumultuous process that contributed to convulsions in financial markets. The promised cuts were not enough to satisfy S&P.

The drop in the rating by one notch to AA-plus was telegraphed as a possibility back in April. The three main credit agencies, which also include Moody’s Investor Service and Fitch, had warned during the budget fight that if Congress did not cut spending far enough, the country faced a downgrade. Moody’s said it was keeping its AAA rating on the nation’s debt, but that it might still lower it.

And the Democrat Party are acting like drug addicts who are lashing out at anybody who gets between them and their next spending fix.

The Democrats are now treating Standard & Poor’s like Republicans, and of course they’ve ALREADY BEEN treating Republicans like “terrorists.”

This whole “Tea Party-terrorist” thing is beyond ridiculous.  Especially if the Democrats were to look in a mirror.  Here are twelve reasons that put the blame for this disaster precisely where the blame belongs:

1. Obama’s reckless and irresponsible spending was the primary reason for the downgrade.  Let me simply state as a fact that the Democrats who demonized Bush for reckless spending have been hypocrites without shame or decency in the Obama era from the very beginning.  We find that Obama’s deficit spending DWARFS Bush’s.  We find that Obama is pouring more than TWO-AND-A-HALF TIMES as much red ink on top of this country as Bush ever did.

And America has now crossed the insane threshold under Obama of having debt that actually exceeds the gross domestic product of the entire nation.

At some point any sane human being must say STOP!!!  But Obama and his Democrats simply are not sane human beings.

2.  Obama demanded the LARGEST debt ceiling increase in the history of the entire human race:

$2.4 Trillion Would Be Largest Debt-Limit Increase in U.S. History
Monday, August 01, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey

(CNSNews.com) – The bill to increase the federal debt limit that has been put before Congress today would increase that limit by up to $2.4 trillion, which would be the largest increase in the debt limit in U.S. history by a margin of half a trillion dollars, according to records published by the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Research Service.
 
In fact, according to records published by the Congressional Research Service, if the current bill is passed and the debt limit is increased by $2.4 trillion, the two largest debt-limit increases in U.S. history would come in back-to-back years, both during the presidency of Barack Obama.
 
Up until now, the largest increase in the debt limit was the $1.9 trillion increase passed by Congress and signed by President Obama on Feb. 12, 2010. That law increased the debt limit from $12.394 trillion to $14.294 trillion.
 
Up until now, the second largest historical increase in the debt limit was enacted on March 27, 2003, when President George W. Bush signed a law that lifted the limit by $984 billion—from $6.400 trillion to $7.384 trillion.

I’ll wait until my third point to develop the ramifications of this.  But suffice it to say, considering that the landslide Republican takeover of the House of Representatives resulted from a fundamental GOP promise to reign in Obama’s reckless spending, raise your hand if you DON”T think Obama’s demand for back-to-back historic debt ceiling increases did NOT guarantee total war.

3.  Obama categorically stated that he would not sign ANY short term debt ceiling extension:

Sperling Says Obama Would Veto Short-Term Debt Ceiling Increase
Tuesday, July 26, 2011

July 26 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama would veto a short-term, six-month increase in the debt ceiling, the director of the White House National Economic Council said.

“The president has been pretty clear that he does not find that acceptable,” Gene Sperling said in an interview on MSNBC today. Sperling said “a faction” of House Republicans is blocking “this type of compromise, this balance that could get us there” in raising the debt ceiling and avoiding default.

It is without any question a pure demagogic talking point on the part of the left that Republicans or the Tea Party were “terrorists” who held America hostage.  BARACK OBAMA HELD AMERICA HOSTAGE.  In refusing to sign ANY short-term compromise extension, Obama said he wanted to either get it all, or send this country over a cliff to it’s fiery and bloody doom.  That’s one thing.  Furthermore, by demanding the largest debt ceiling increase in history AFTER GETTING THE PREVIOUS LARGEST DEBT CEILING INCREASE IN HISTORY, combined with this demand for no short-term extension, if you want to claim you are even a reasonably intelligent human being explain to me how Obama was NOT setting up America for an INCREDIBLY NASTY FIGHT THAT WOULD DRAG ON AND ON.

If you are arguing that this fight was somehow the Republicans’ fault or the Tea Party’s fault, you are frankly either stupid or you are insane.

4.  Obama refused to produce ANY plan of his own.  A president is supposed to lead.  And Obama not only failed to lead, he REFUSED to lead.

Republicans were BEGGING Obama to submit a plan so that the country could have some frame of reference to negotiate from:

Obama has set forth no plan to deal with anything whatsoever regarding the budget/debt ceiling crisis:

SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH): Where’s the president’s plan? When is he going to lay his cards on the table?

Senator Marco Rubio understood this when he utterly destroyed Bob Schieffer on CBS’ “Face The Nation” program after Schieffer – in his masquerade as a “neutral reporter” cited the Obama talking point as the “objective” view:

“OK, so where’s the plan? Where’s the president’s plan? I’ve never seen a piece of paper with the president’s name on it that’s his plan to solve this crisis. I’ve seen press conferences. I’ve seen lectures that he’s given to the Congress. I’ve seen these press avails where the camera comes in and takes a bunch of pictures. I haven’t seen a plan. Where is the president’s plan?“

And President Obama’s failure to lead is undermining negotiations. From ABC’s “This Week”:

MS. AMANPOUR: You also heard what Jack Lew said if there was part of a big deal, it would involve entitlements –

SEN. KYL: But we have no idea what he’s talking about. That’s the problem. Republicans are not willing to make a deal based upon some vague commitment that, sometime in the future, the president might be willing to look at something that he won’t identify.

By refusing to offer any kind of plan of his own, and for being like jello and taking one position one day, and a contrary position the next, Barack Obama created this crisis.  Republicans offered several plans, and they PASSED two bills that would have averted a credit downgrade.

5.  Obama REPEATEDLY fearmongered the debt negotiations and used reckless and false rhetoric such as “default.”  There is absolutely no question that Barack Obama quite literally FORCED this downgrade by using demagogic and flat-out false rhetoric.

The fact of the matter is that Obama repeatedly raised the public spectre of a “default” even as he tried to privately assure the banks that there was no way the U.S. would ever default.  What do you call that if not quintessential demagoguery???  Meanwhile, the actual facts of the matter – that the $200 billion in monthly revenue the U.S. was receiving was easily enough to pay all of America’s sovereign debt obligations with enough to pay out on Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, VA benefits and active duty military pay – proved that Barack Obama was playing an incredibly dangerous game.  Just what the hell were the ratings agencies to do about the fact that the sitting president of the United States repeatedly said that the nation might actually DEFAULT on its debt???

Obama repeatedly and in public raised the possibility that the United States might default.  And if default was ever even a possibility, our credit worthiness was in question.

Republicans tried to assure the nation, the markets and the world that the United States would NOT default.  Unfortunately, the president did everything he could to undermine that confidence.

Meanwhile, Obama was caught red-handed publicly frightening the American people with default talk while privately assuring the banks that there would be no default.

A Politico hit piece written on August 11th took a remark by an S & P official who specifically did NOT blame Republicans and then distorted it to blame Republicans:

Without specifically mentioning Republicans, S&P senior director Joydeep Mukherji said the stability and effectiveness of American political institutions were undermined by the fact that “people in the political arena were even talking about a potential default,” Mukherji said.

“That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable,” he added. “This kind of rhetoric is not common amongst AAA sovereigns.”

 Politico is trying to make it sound like it was the Republicans who hyped the fear of a default.  That is a flat-out LIE.  It was Obama and Geithner and the Democrat Party that continually raised the fear of “default,” even as Republicans continually assured the country that the U.S. could and would continue to make timely payment of principal and interest on its debt throughout any impasse.  Just as the U.S. government did the LAST time the government was shut down.

I pointed this fearmongering tactic out on July 18.  And on July 23, I pointed out that Obama’s fearmongering with the threat of “default” could very well lead to disaster.  I wrote:

This wouldn’t have been such a terrible crisis if Obama had been honest and promised that the U.S. would and could meet its obligations. Instead he used the debt ceiling deadline (said “deadline” already having been changed three previous times) to dishonestly demagogue and fearmonger the crisis ala Rahm Emanuel’s “never let a serious crisis go to waste” advice. In short, OBAMA LARGELY MANUFACTURED THIS CRISIS. Because all the rating agencies have done is take Obama’s demagogic rhetoric seriously.

So it’s just a little damn late for liberals to now try to blame Republicans for something that Obama started doing and then did often.

6.  Obama IRRESPONSIBLY did NOTHING for nearly three years while this went from a problem to a crisis to a disaster.  Why didn’t Democrats raise the debt ceiling in December after the election when Democrats still had total power over all three political branches in Washington?  Look at what Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said here:

Why Didn’t Democrats Raise The Debt Ceiling Last December?
Doug Mataconis   ·   Thursday, July 28, 2011

As we hurdle toward uncertainly, it’s worth noting, I think, that the Democrats passed on the opportunity to deal with the debt ceiling back in December 2010 when they still had control of Congress. Why, you might ask? I’ll let Harry Reid explain:

Briefing reporters yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he’s glad the debt ceiling was left out of this tax package. And he was unusually blunt about why.

“That’s something that we talked about,” Reid said. “My personal feeling is that I’m not sure — and a lot of my caucus doesn’t agree on this — but I think it may be better to do the debt ceiling, raise it next year rather than now.”

Why?

“I want the Republicans to have some buy-in on the debt,” he said. “They’re going to have a majority in the House. I think they should have some kind of a buy-in on the debt. I don’t think it should be when we have a heavily Democratic Senate, a heavily Democratic House and a Democratic president.”

Reid was responding to questions being raised as to why he wouldn’t attach the debt ceiling increase to the bill to extend the Bush Tax Cuts, a bill the GOP would be unlikely to vote against. His reason? Pure politics. Not shocking to those of us who have watched Washington for a long time, but it’s worth noting that neither side is innocent here.

Basically, Harry Reid was saying, “I want a huge fight.  I want to play a big game of chicken with America’s credit and its future.  I want a fight to the death so I can turn out my shrill rabid leftwing hate machine out.”

And the Democrats got EXACTLY what they wanted, didn’t they?

There is absolutely no question whatsoever that the Democrat Party engineered this crisis.  They should get to wear the result (the downgrade) like an albatross around their necks. 

7. Obama REFUSED to consider plans such as the House-passed Ryan Budget and the Cut, Cap and Balance bill.  Had we passed the Ryan budget that was passed by the House of Representatives, we would not have been downgraded:

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Paul Ryan responded to Standard & Poor’s downgrading of America’s long-term debt by explaining to host Chris Wallace that Republicans in the House “passed a budget, which according to somebody from S&P yesterday, would have prevented this downgrade from happening in the first place.”

That budget had more than $6 trillion in cuts.  But Obama would have vetoed that bill even if the Democrats in the Senate had voted for it.

Had we passed the cut, cap and balance bill that was also passed by the House of Representatives, we would not have been downgraded:

Mr. Beers of the S&P said on FNC, ”Cut, cap and balance would have averted the downgrade since it is the only serious outlook on the debt.”

Harry Reid played a procedural game to prevent that bill from even coming up for an actual vote.  And – again – Obama said he would veto it if it came to his desk.  And when Obama made that announcement, the long-term bond market just went right down the toilet.

But it is REPUBLICANS’ faults that we were downgraded? Versus Obama, who at absolutely no time offered an actual plan of his own?

Someone pointed out that blaming the Tea Party for the downgrade is rather like blaming the Betty Ford Clinic for alcoholism.

8.  Obama’s reckless Federal Reserve policies forced this downgrade.

Japan was downgraded by S & P back in January and that fact would have lit a fire under the feet of a wise American president.  But nope.

Among other factors in Japan’s credit downgrade was its policy of quantitative easing.  We’ve already done QE twice (essentially creating $1.2 trillion dollars out of thin air) and are all but promising to do it a third time. 

Quantitative easing reduces the value of the dollar (making each dollar worth less and undermining saving) and sets up obvious future inflation and even hyperinflation if the economy actually begins to revive and more dollars begin chasing the same amount of finite goods and services.

QE was one giant step toward collapsing the U.S. dollar.

Don’t think that such reckless short-sighted fiscal policies didn’t hurt us and won’t hurt us even more in the future.

9. Obama REFUSED to sign a balanced budget amendment that would have prevented a downgrade.  Democrats offer the following as a refutation of this premise, saying that a top S & P official said that a balanced budget amendment would NOT have helped.  But what S & P’s John Chambers said was that:

“In general, we think that fiscal rules like these just diminish the flexibility of the government to respond. Also, when Congress has a long track record of trying to bind itself with various rules…But when push comes to shove, they don’t bind very much. So even if you had a Balanced Budget Amendment, you’d have some questions about it’s credibility, and it would just reduce your flexibility in a crisis.”

Here are the facts, however: 1) We most certainly COULD structure a balanced budget amendment that has a “way out” in case of true emergency with some high but not outrageous vote threshold granting an exception.  2) We most certainly COULD structure a balanced budget that was otherwise binding apart from such a declared emergency/crisis.  3.  Fourteen states – Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming – have AAA bond ratings in America.  And all fourteen of those states have particularly rigorous balanced budget requirements in addition to maintaining budgets that do not rely heavily on borrowing.  And while their balanced budget requirements are not the official reason for their high bond rating, it is because of that requirement that they do not excessively borrow.

Obama openly mocked a balanced budget.

It is morally insane to continue to blame Republicans for massive spending when Republicans want a balanced budget requirement that would prevent massive spending.  But the very same Democrats who refuse to allow a balanced budget requirement that would curtail federal spending to get off the ground continue to blame the Republicans who are doing everything they possibly can to curtail spending.

10. Obama CONTINUED to demand tax increases even after the Democrat-controlled Senate abandoned tax hikes.  Frankly, Obama has been all over the board on tax hikes, which further demonstrates why John Boehner’s frustration in trying to negotiate with a man who had all the consistency of jello that had been left out of the refrigerator was correct.  He’s wanted tax hikes until he didn’t want them only to want them again.

In August 2009, Obama said, “you don’t raise taxes in a recession.”

Well, here we are with an economy that is on the verge of going into a severe double-dip recession – which economists say would be even worse than the last one that we allegedly just got out of – and Obama begins harping on tax hikes and pushing a class warfare agenda as a condition for getting a debt ceiling increase.

Until he backed Harry Reid’s kind-of sort-of plan that didn’t have any tax hikes in it.  Until he changed his mind and began to call for tax hikes only hours after backing a plan that called for no tax hikes:

In his White House speech tonight, President Obama renewed his call for a debt-ceiling impasse solution which requires “the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to give up some of their breaks in the tax code and special deductions.” In other words, he wants tax increases, even though earlier in the day, he backed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s “plan” (using the term loosely, as explained here and here) which, according to two separate reports (USAT; ABC), includes no tax increases.

In other words, the President, from all appearances, changed his mind — again. Calling the President’s performance in the debt-ceiling matter during the past several weeks “Jello-like” would appear to be an insult to the referenced food product.

What on earth is Obama’s position?  Which was different yesterday and which will very likely be different again tomorrow and then different from that the next day?

One other thing on this point: Democrats were demanding that the Republican House increase taxes when DEMOCRATS didn’t have the political will to raise taxes in late 2010 when they had control of all three political branches.  How was demanding that Republicans do the very thing they ran on not doing when even DEMOCRATS wouldn’t do that very thing just a few months earlier doing anything other than deliberately creating a crisis?

11. Obama allowed vile and poisonous rhetoric to poison the climate.  Hey, I’ll tell you what.  I’m going to be talking about yo’ mamma.  I’m going to publicly say that yo’ mamma is a whore and a slut, and that yo’ mamma has no idea who yo’ daddy is because she was doing the nasty with like 300 guys the week you were conceived.  But, you know what, after that I hope you sit down with me for a nice quiet negotiation and display a willingness to compromise.

And do you know what kind of “willingness” you’re going to show me?  How about the willingness to punch me in the face about a thousand times?

Democrats called us “terrorists” and “bomb throwers.”  They compared us to Hezbollah and Hamas and accused us of taking America hostage.  Obama’s very own vice preseident called Republicans “terrorists.”  And then they’re somehow surprised that we didn’t cheerfully show up at the negotiating table every day with an attitude of “let’s work together”???  And the same people who just rabidly demonized us were saying, “Why won’t they work with us?” 

How about because you’re about a hundred million gazillion years from evolving into slime for starters?

The Democrat Party poisoned the negotiations.  As I’ve already documented, they could have averted this entire mess to begin with by doing their jobs last year.  THEY DELIBERATELY AND INTENTIONALLY SET UP THIS FIGHT.  They wanted this poison pit.  And they put their fangs on and started spitting out venom right away.

And Barack Obama sat back and let them do it.

For the record, in terms of which party was “terrorist,” consider how the Democrats voted for the bill that increased the debt ceiling and averted the shutdown.  We find that not only was the Democrat Party as a whole more “terrorist” than the Republican Party, but in fact that the Democrat Party was even more “terrorist” than THE TEA PARTY CAUCUS all by itself.  Which is to say that every single time Democrats point a finger at Republicans and label them “terrorist,” there are in fact three terrorist fingers pointing back at Democrats.

12. The Obama administration arrogantly and irresponsibly refused to deal with reality.  There’s the way you wish real hard upon a star that the world would be, and then there’s the way the world actually is.  Which world do you want the president of the United States of America to live in?

If you picked the real world, you should agree with me that it is time to get a new administration.  Because the one we’ve got lives in some combination of Never Never Land and fantasy land.

Look at what Obama’s handpicked tax cheating Treasury Secretary had to say about the possibility of a rating downgrade before he proved to be so completely wrong:

Geithner Downgrades His Own Credibility to Junk
By Jonathan Weil- Apr 20, 2011 4:00 PM PT

Fox Business reporter Peter Barnes began his televised interview with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner two days ago with this question:“Is there a risk that the United States could lose its AAA credit rating? Yes or no?”

Geithner’s response: “No risk of that.”

“No risk?” Barnes asked.

“No risk,” Geithner said.

It’s enough to make you wonder: How could Geithner know this to be true? The short answer is he couldn’t.

And keep in mind that Weil was pointing out that Timothy Geithner had forfeited any credibility BEFORE the downgrade so disastrously proved him completely wrong.  It was an utterly inexcusable thing to do.

This is hardly the kind of leadership we need.  When our house is about to burn down, a confident assurance that there isn’t any fire is beyond stupid.

That’s twelve reasons why the American people should be blaming the man who ought to have a big “The buck stops here” plaque on his desk anyway.  And some of them are pretty damnable reasons, indeed.

Obama On Downgrade, Market Plunge: ‘The Buck Stops With (Anyone BUT) Me’

A quote from Fox News Special Report on Obama’s remarks today:

“He didn’t offer much new or take responsibility for the exploding debt. …  The White House doesn’t seem to want to admit it’s been adding to that debt handily.”

Turbo Tax Timothy Geithner (that’s the guy who wasn’t smart enough or honest enough to pay his own taxes before taking a job making him responsible for everyone else paying their taxes) was asked if the White House accepted any responsibility for this disaster.  And nope (see also here for video):

Harwood: Do you feel that you or the administration’s policies are in any way responsible for this downgrade?

GEITHNER: Absolutely not. You’ve seen the president work incredibly hard and make really amazing progress trying to heal the damage caused by this terrible crisis. And you saw him work his heart out to try and bring both parties together to reach agreement on a long-term fiscal deal. Made some progress, didn’t solve it all, but a very good down payment.

Mind you, this is the same utterly clueless idiot – who represents the arrogance and stupidity of the Obama administration – who said there was “No risk” that the U.S. would be downgraded to begin with.

Nothing to see here folks.  The White House had nothing to do with any of this.  Don’t look to us for any answers.  Go talk to President Bush and blame HIM three years into the Obama administration. 

At the White House press conference, Jay Carney repeated the party line that no one should look to the White House to be responsible for anything.

On the TV circuit, Democrats repeatedly trotted (or is that “Trotsky’d”???) out the poll-tested talking point that this is the “Tea Party downgrade” because the Tea Party wanted to reduce America’s debt which is clearly stupid in any debt crisis, right?  I mean, so what if America’s debt just crossed the tipping point threshold of being more than its ENTIRE gross domestic product?!?!?

Democrats are crawling out to any mainstream media venue that allows cockroaches (that’s pretty much any mainstream media venue, mind you) and calls the Tea Party “terrorists.”  But the vote on the debt ceiling extension combined with the fact that Democrats never bothered to offer any plan of their own on top of the fact that they still haven’t come up with an F-ING BUDGET after 832 days really ought to point out that when they point a finger at us and call us “terrorists” three fingers are pointing back at themselves.

Democrats would have to quadruple in maturity to even qualify as “infantile.”

Sadly, Bush is the only president who is responsible for anything these days.  Did I mention we’re well into the third year of the failed Obama presidency?

Here are a few write-ups in the blog world that I found interesting:

50 Minutes Late Obama FINALLY Speaks About S&P,He Takes NO Responsibility More Lecturing and Blames Congress!

Barack Obama says the U.S. always is and always has been a triple-A country, despite its rating agency downgrade.

He said also the U.S. didn’t need a rating agency to tell it that it’s political system was having trouble functioning.

Speaking at the White House on the Standard & Poor’s downgrade, Obama renewed a plea to Congress to take action in September of help create jobs and cushion Americans from a still weak economy.

Obama said financial markets around the world “still believe our credit is triple-A.  I and the world’s investor’s agree.”

Well, if “agree” means “panic-selling that puts us into bear-market territory” with a 635 point smackdown that constitutes the sixth largest loss on the Dow in history, then Obama ISN’T completely out-of-touch with reality.

Obama offered no solutions whatsoever.  That after not bothering to speak at ALL for the entire weekened after the downgrade was announced on Friday, and apparently after showing up fifty minutes late to his own pony show.  The markets were down when Obama started speaking, and after he reasurred the world the markets pretty much said, “That’s it; we’re outa here.”

Obama’s Address to the Nation: Draws line in sand, there must be no lines in sand other than the ones I draw
Posted by William A. Jacobson   Monday, August 8, 2011 at 2:03pm

Barack Obama read a statement today, my paraphrases and quick transcription:
 
Disputes downgrade. Quotes Warren Buffett that U.S. should have AAAA rating.
 Need “balanced long term approach” — needed “day I took office.” Blames “prolonged debate over debt ceiling” for downgrade, and string of economic disruptions in Japan, Europe and the Middle East.
 
Solution is simple: “Tax reform that will ask those who can afford it to pay their fair share.” And “modest adjustments” to entitlements.
 
Not a lack of plans, “insistence on drawing lines in the sand.”
 
Most immediate concern of Americans is slow pace of recovery coming out of “worst recession” in our lifetimes. Extend payroll tax cut as soon as possible, and extend unemployment insurance payments. One million fewer jobs if don’t do this. Plus, more infrastructure spending.
 
These are proposals Republicans had agreed to in the past and should agree to now.
 
“This is the United States of America, no matter what some ratings agency says, we will always be a AAA country.”

So put on your make-believe pirate hats, boys and girls.  Because we’re going to live in a fun pretend world where we AREN’T downgraded and all of Obama’s utterly failed policies are just working swell.

I like the way the headline brings out that only Obama’s line in the sand demanding tax hikes will be accepted.  If you have your own ideas, you’re responsible for the crisis because OBAMA IS HE WHO MUST NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE.

Obama set this crisis up in two ways: 1) he demanded the largest debt ceiling increase in history which in turn forced Republicans to demand concessionsn (see here for the historic asininity of that demand).  Just so he could get through the 2012 election for his own political ambition at the expense of the country; and 2) He NEVER offered his own plan and took any personal leadership whatsoever; and 3) he repeatedly used the horrific spectre of a “default” which forced Standard & Poors to take his idiot fool warning seriously.  Republicans repeatedly tried to assure the nation that we were never in any risk of default; on top of the fact that we had enough revenue coming in to pay all of our fundamental obligations, we could simply print more money if we truly had to.  But Obama chose to fearmonger and demonize us into this credit downgrade.

Mind you, I am asking the question that if “making the people who are already paying ALL the taxes pay their ‘fair’ share” is the answer, THEN WHY THE HELL IS SOCIALIST TAX-HELL EUROPE going down the toilet and out into the stinky sea?

Barack Obama NEVER bothered to offer a plan so that anybody could have any idea where he was at any point to actually intelligently negotiate with him.  His budget was such a sick, pathetic DISGRACE that it got voted down 97-0 in his own Democrat-controlled Senate.  And did I mention that Democrats STILL HAVEN’T BOTHERED TO SUBMIT A BUDGET AFTER 832 DAYS?!?!?

This downgrade is a national disgrace.  And the man with whom the buck stops whether he’ll ever actually accept any responsibility or not is the FIRST DOWNGRADED PRESIDENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY.  What I said remains true: this entire fiasco proves that Obama is dishonest, polarizing and in over his head.  And at no time has Obama ever once demonstrated ANY leadership whatsoever.

Let me ask you something.  I’ve said repeatedly that Barack Obama – the president of God damn America and the symbol of God’s wrath on this nation until this disgrace leaves office IN disgrace – would lead us into a Great Depression with his reckless and depraved spending.  Meanwhile, Obama, the Democrat Party and the left said that Obama would lead us unto a glorious recovery.

I’ve been pointing out since December 2008 right after Obama was elected that we would be staring into the abyss of a Great Depression due to this evil man’s failed policies.  I pointed out in that article that the Great Depression began with a market tank, followed by a series of failed liberal-progressive policies that were like sugar for a diabetic; at first things seemed to get better, and then we had the real crash.  You look at what I wrote in that article and tell me that we aren’t right on schedule. 

We have the worst economy since the LAST time a failed socialist ran it into the ground in the 1930s.  Surprise, surprise.

Let me point out that as early as October of 2008 I was pointing out the FACTS that CEOs “went as far as to say that “some of his programs would bankrupt the country within three years, if implemented.”  Let me point out that I pointed out that same fact again in February 2009 after Obama’s foolish and wicked policies started taking shape.

Who was right?  And who has been totally full of CRAP from the getgo?

Conservatives have been right again and again and again and Democrats have continued to demonize us even as their own failed policies have kept failing just like we said they would.

Barack Obama, Fearmonger And Demagogue Extraordinaire Gutting America’s Credibility With His Lies

When Obama was lying and making false promises to shove his so-called “stimulus” boondoggle through Congress, the Wall Street Journal wrote:

“President Barack Obama has turned fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package.”

History now proves that everything Obama said about his $862 billion (actually $3.27 TRILLION, according to the CBO) was false.  Not only did unemployment not stay under 8%, as was promised, but in fact unemployment actually went HIGHER than Obama said it would have if we hadn’t ever done his incredibly stupid and incredibly wasteful porkulus to begin with!

But early in his presidency, Obama learned that he could get what he wanted if he fearmongered a situation and demonized his opponents enough.  And whether he was lying while his opponents were telling the truth was of little import.

As I (along with a few million other conservatives) pointed out, Barack Obama was lying and fearmongering the economy when he repeatedly claimed that the United States would default on its debt if we didn’t pass a debt ceiling hike (which he would only allow to pass on his terms, of course).  The facts said otherwise.  Republicans filled the airwaves pointing out that Obama was lying and that the United States could and would continue to meet its obligations to its debt.

Now we find out that Obama KNEW he was lying when he has repeatedly talked about default:

Obama to Banks: We’re Not Defaulting
By Charlie Gasparino
Published July 25, 2011

While officials from the Obama Administration raised their rhetoric over the weekend about the possibility of a debt default if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, they privately have been telling top executives at major U.S. banks that such an event won’t happen, FOX Business has learned.

In a series of phone calls, administration officials have told bankers that the administration will not allow a default to happen even if the debt cap isn’t raised by the August 2 date.  Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says the government will run out of money to pay all its bills, including obligations to bond holders. Geithner made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows saying a default is imminent if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, and President Obama issued a similar warning during a Friday press conference after budget negotiations with House Republicans broke down.

While the negotiations to craft a budget remain at an impasse, Republicans and Democrats on Monday began crafting their own plans to cut spending that could lead to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. It’s unclear if a broad agreement can be reached any time soon, but even if a deal is struck, a complicating issue for lawmakers and the administration is the possibility of a downgrade to the US debt rating, which would cut the triple-A rating on the nation’s debt to a lower level.

Major ratings firms — namely Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s — have said even if the country raises the debt ceiling and doesn’t default, there’s a strong likelihood that the triple-A bond rating will be cut to double-A unless a budget can be crafted that results in $4 trillion in savings, the result of the massive debt load the country has accumulated in recent years. The nation’s outstanding debt is more than $14 trillion.

A senior banking official told FOX Business that administration officials have provided guidance to them that even though a default is off the table, a downgrade “is a real possibility for no other reason than S&P and Moody’s have to cover (themselves) since they’ve been speaking out on the debt cap so much.”

This guidance is a big reason why Wall Street has largely dismissed the possibility of default, and though the markets have been jittery amid the talk of default, they haven’t imploded as would be the case, many economists fear, if the nation missed a payment on its debt.

The banking official said the administration understands that if there were to be a default, it would likely spark another financial crisis.

“They also know they can pay the debt with cash on hand,” this official told FOX Business. The Treasury collects around $2 trillion in tax revenues, and is scheduled to pay out $200 billion in interest to bond holders. In order to meet its obligations to contractors, social security recipients and others, the administration would have to raise another $1 trillion either through cuts, higher tax revenues, the issuance of debt or a combination of all three.

Congressional Republicans believe that the Administration is raising the possibility of a default as a way to ramp up pressure on Republicans to agree to a budget deal that includes tax increases, which they oppose.

A Treasury spokesman said that “when we exhaust our borrowing authority, as we will on August 2nd, there is no way to guarantee that we will be able to pay all of our bills. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply false.”

Even without a default, banks expect some market turbulence if the triple-A sovereign-debt rating is cut, sources tell FOX Business. While bank officials do not believe there will be a “catastrophic” effect to a downgrade, that’s not to say there won’t be negative ripple effects, notably to bond deals and derivatives priced off triple-A-rated  Treasurys.

So Obama was privately trying to say one thing to the bondholders to reassure them while publicly saying the exact opposite thing to fearmonger the crisis.

Does it make you feel better to know that Barack Obama is not a profoundly stupid man, or does it make you feel worse to know that he is so dishonest and so cynical that he would actually deliberately fearmonger his nation – and push credit agencies to seriously consider downgrading U.S. credit given the president of the United States’ own constant warnings that the U.S. would default on its debt – in order to push his rabidly leftist agenda???

Here’s Obama’s tax-cheating Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner predicting the US would default on its debt while ideologically trying to demonize Republicans for said default:

“Speaking to a New York audience, Geithner said that Republicans would bear responsibility for the first debt default in the nation’s history if they insist they will not vote for an increase in the $14.3 billion borrowing limit unless they win approval of a House Republican budget plan.

“If Republicans try to impose that plan on this country as a condition for raising the debt limit, then they will own the responsibility for the first default in our history, with devastating consequences,” Geithner said in a speech to the Harvard Club of New York” (by Pallavi Gogoi in the Associated Press, 5/18/2011)

Here’s the SAME tax-cheating Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner assuring that the US would NOT default on the debt due to Republicans, as he had falsely claimed would happen:

“It’s not going to happen,” Geithner predicted, amid a warning from US ally Britain that “right-wing nutters” were posing a bigger threat to the world economy than the eurozone crisis.

And now let me return to a statement from the credit agencies that is highly illustrative:

A senior banking official told FOX Business that administration officials have  provided guidance to them that even though a default is off the table, a  downgrade “is a real possibility for no other reason than S&P and Moody’s  have to cover (themselves) since they’ve been speaking out on the debt cap so  much.”

So why are the credit rating agencies seriously considering downgrading American credit?  Because they “have to cover themselves since they’ve [that’s Barack Obama, Timothy Geithner and numerous Democrats] have been speaking out on the debt cap so much”

The sheer cynical depravity of Barack Obama and his administration and his entire Democrat Party is simply beyond astonishing.

Who are the people who are most playing with fire?  Republicans have been saying PUBLICLY the truth even as Barack Obama and his top officials repeatedly lied and fearmongered and demonized.  And the credit agencies had to listen to Barack Obama’s public lies and take what he was saying into account.

If America’s credit rating is downgraded – which is actually now likely – Obama will demonize Republicans for it.  But OBAMA WILL BE THE REASON.  HIS REPEATED PUBLIC STATEMENTS, ALONG WITH THE STATEMENTS OF HIS TOP OFFICIALS LIKE TIMOTHY GEITHNER, WILL HAVE FORCED THE RATING AGENCIES’ HANDS.

During the 1995 budget battle, the debt ceiling was not raised for something like five months, and there was no serious talk of reducing America’s credit worthiness.  Why?  Because Bill Clinton did not resort to the despicable degree of fearmongering that Obama has.

What should Obama have been telling the world?  That no matter what happened, the US could and would continue to pay its primary obligations and that there would be no default under any circumstances.

But what are we getting?  Here’s an example from the White House Communications Director on July 26:

WH Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer: “We are seven days away from an unprecedented financial event in this country’s history. One that could potentially put us towards a depression because the House Republicans, led by Speaker Boehner, are unwilling to compromise one inch.”

Pfeiffer spoke to CBS News Radio on Tuesday morning.

Because of dishonest fearmongering like this, the credit agencies are duty-bound to downgrade our credit rating.  If you were a credit evaluator, wouldn’t YOU listen to such official pronouncements of doom?

I’m sure I’ll be quoting myself in the months ahead.  But if – or more likely when – the United States AAA credit rating is downgraded, it will ALL be on Barack Hussein Obama.   HE is the president, and HE is the one who made all the false and demagogic and fearmongering statements that lenders repeatedly heard him make.

I’ll also point out one final fact: Barack Obama’s presidency has been an abject failure.  He took a bad situation and he made it far, FAR worse.  He has nothing – NOTHING! – to run on but demonization of his opponents.  On my view, Obama is literally hoping for the very worst outcome for America so he can blame Republicans for it with yet more lies and more demonization and more fearmongering.  Because that’s pretty much his only hope of getting re-elected.

Debt Ceiling Fiasco Again Shows Obama Polarizing, Dishonest And In Over His Head

First of all, this debt ceiling issue is critical and could literally lead to the complete collapse of the United States.

The U.S. dollar is the official global “reserve” currency.  Commodities such as oil are bought and sold exclusively in dollars.  And because of this status, the United States is not only able to purchase these commodities much more cheaply than other nations, but it can borrow more and finance its debt at far cheaper interest rates.

Here is an article dated 10 February 2011 containing a VERY ominous threat to the status of the dollars as the reserve currency:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The International Monetary Fund issued a report Thursday on a possible replacement for the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Major countries such as China, Russia, India and Brazil have already determined that they want to END the almighty status of the U.S. dollar.

And note all of these articles precede the current “debt ceiling fiasco.”  Which is to say that this was ALREADY a growing crisis.

If the United States defaults on any of its debt – or even if the U.S. credit rating is downgraded – the consequences could be utterly devastating.  Our low interest rates will shoot upward beyond our ability to continue financing debt; we will suddenly have economy-killing oil and commodity prices.

This wouldn’t have been such a terrible crisis if Obama had been honest and promised that the U.S. would and could meet its obligations.  Instead he used the debt ceiling deadline (said “deadline” already having been changed three previous times) to dishonestly demagogue and fearmonger the crisis ala Rahm Emanuel’s “never let a serious crisis go to waste” advice.  In short, OBAMA LARGELY MANUFACTURED THIS CRISIS.  Because all the rating agencies have done is take Obama’s demagogic rhetoric seriously.

I have said a number of times on this blog that when the Unites States financially implodes, it will happen very fast.  And this could be the last card in the house that makes the whole unstable structure come crashing down.

And here’s the thing.  Who is leading America through this minefield?

Barack Hussein Obama.

He is THE most inexperienced and unqualified president in U.S. history.  Hillary Clinton RIGHTLY ran the “3 A.M.” ad against him:

Joe Biden RIGHTLY said Obama was not ready to be president:

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) Reaffirmed That Obama Was Not Ready To Be Commander In Chief. ABC‘s George Stephanopoulos: “You were asked is he ready. You said ‘I think he can be ready, but right now I don’t believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.’” Sen. Biden: “I think that I stand by the statement.” (ABC’s “This Week,” 8/19/07)

Sen. Biden: “Having talking points on foreign policy doesn’t get you there.” (“Biden Lashes Out At Obama,” ABC News’ “Political Radar” Blog, blogs.abcnews.com, 8/2/07)

Barack Obama’s primary qualification for being president was that he had been a U.S. Senator for only 142 days prior to announcing his run for the presidency.  Prior to that, he had been a nobody.  He had been a nobody Illinois state senator.  He had been a community agitator.  He had NEVER ran a business and he had NEVER met a payroll.

Barack Obama is also THE most liberal and radical president.  He was THE most liberal Senator in the entire nation prior to announcing his run for the presidency.

Barack Obama is also the most divisive and polarizing man to ever serve as a president of the United States.  And to quote:

“President Barack Obama is the most polarizing president in American history, according to a poll released by the Gallup organization Monday.

The average difference in Obama’s approval ratings between Democrats and Republicans turned out to be 65 percent — the highest first-year gap of any president so measured.”

And Obama is the most cynical and dishonest president in United States history.

Obama ran as a transformative candidate who would transcend the political divides.  As the New York Times wrote:

WASHINGTON — At the core of Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is a promise that he can transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics of the last 15 years, end the partisan and ideological wars and build a new governing majority.

To achieve the change the country wants, he says, “we need a leader who can finally move beyond the divisive politics of Washington and bring Democrats, independents and Republicans together to get things done.”

But this promise leads, inevitably, to a question: Can such a majority be built and led by Mr. Obama, whose voting record was, by one ranking, the most liberal in the Senate last year?

History proves that was an evil lie.  You just TRY to show me how this country is more unified now than it had been.  Anybody who isn’t an abject MORON knows that’s ridiculous.  And if you’re a liberal and want to argue that Obama’s failure to fulfill the above promises was somehow all Republicans’ faults, then let me simply point out that it was an incredibly STUPID as well as incredibly dishonest and cynical promise to make.  Because only the worst and frankly most demented of fools would not have realized that the other party would not follow him like some pied piper.

But when you read my article that refers to the New York Times article above, you will immediately see that Obama never even bothered to TRY to live up to his “core promise.”  He was divisive and imperious from his very first day.  Obama poisoned the well between Democrats and Republicans with his “I won” crap.  He shoved a “stimulus” that ultimately was a $3.27 TRILLION Keynesian boondoggle down the nation’s throat on a bunch of false promises that it would create jobs and get America out of recession.  He shoved a terribly unpopular socialist takeover of our medical system.  Everything the man has done has polarized and divided the nation.

By the way, Obama’s dishonesty literally permeates from Obama’s very first decision to even break his promise and run for president:

SEN. OBAMA: I will serve out my full six-year term. You know, Tim, if you get asked enough, sooner or later you get weary and you start looking for new ways of saying things, but my thinking has not changed.

MR. RUSSERT: But, but—so you will not run for president or vice president in 2008?

SEN. OBAMA: I will not.

Governor Chris Christie has similarly promised he would not run for president.  I have a feeling that Christie is a far more honest man than Obama and will stick to his word.  More on that later.

Obama began his presidency by breaking his promise not to run for president.  Obama’s “core promise” is now clearly revealed to have been a cynical lie.  The man has lied without shame so many times it is unreal.  And it becomes ridiculous to try to keep track of his lies.

Obama is also a pathetic incompetent.  He is a disgrace to the presidency.  He presided over a Democrat Party that had complete control of both the House and the Senate and his government couldn’t even produce a budget.  It was an unprecedented dereliction of a basic duty.  And we’re at something like the 815 day mark since the Democrats last passed a budget.  And Obama was the man in charge of this abject fiasco.

And then when Obama himself finally came up with a budget earlier this year, it was just a useless piece of garbage that it was voted down 97-0 in the DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED United States Senate, with not even one DEMOCRAT able to say, “This budget WASN’T the brain-dead result of a complete fool who is an utter disgrace to this country.”  Obama is out doing press conference after press conference pretending that he wants to reduce the deficit; BULLCRAP!  That terrible budget fiasco he submitted would have added $12 TRILLION to our debt!!!

And if you’re fool enough to try to argue that Obama ISN’T incompetent, you explain those two facts.  You explain how Obama and his party could preside over this kind of complete failure to perform even the most basic function of governance.

Yesterday Harry Reid shut down any vote of the House-passed cut, cap and balance bill.  That bill has the distinction of being the ONLY bill that has passed either house of Congress or the White House that would solve our debt ceiling crisis, for what it’s worth.  No vote.  No debate.  Harry Reid just shut both down using his status as Majority Leader.  Reid called the cut, cap and balance bill “weak and senseless” and “perhaps some of the worst legislation in the history  of this country.”  Apparently because this racist bigot Reid liked the Fugitive Slave Act that his Democrat party once passed.

Meanwhile, the Democrats who refused to even DEBATE or VOTE on the ONLY bill that ANYBODY has passed to solve our debt crisis continue to say that Republicans are “unreasonable.”  Because apparently shutting down discussion on the ONLY piece of legislation we’ve got to save this country is “reasonable.”

So Democrats don’t have anything to offer but demagoguery and demonization.

Obama is discussing some kind of deal without bothering to have anything on the table.  Speaker of the House Boehner has described negotiating with Obama as trying to negotiate with Jello that’s been left out of the refrigerator.  He’s all over the place because he doesn’t have any proposal of his own to adhere to.

Senator Jon Kyle said:

SEN. KYL: But we have no idea what he’s talking about.  That’s the problem. Republicans are not willing to make a deal based upon some vague commitment that, sometime in the future, the president might be willing to look at something that he won’t identify.

It is an abject disgrace and a complete failure of leadership that Obama doesn’t have a plan to argue from or rally consensus to.

Oh, oh.  I just said “failure of leadership.”  Which forces me to quote Barack Obama on what even asking for an increase in the debt ceiling means in his own words:

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure,” he said. “It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”

That remark from Barack Obama alone epitomizes why this fool has ZERO BUSINESS being president of the United States.  The VERY WORST THING any Democrat can possibly say about Republicans is that they are being as despicable and cynical as THEIR OWN WORTHLESS DISGRACE OF A PRESIDENT.

How DARE this fraud lecture anybody about anything related to the debt ceiling after his own shrill demagoguery?!?!?

And so here we are.  We’ve got a president who is clearly incompetent, who has proven himself untrustworthy, attempting to pass a deal without having any kind of a plan whatsoever about what he wants to get done.  Republicans have nothing to examine and nobody to trust.

Republicans have been burned more than once by dishonest Democrats who want tax hikes now and promise cuts later.  The fact of the matter is that no agreement can bind a future Congress.

We may well be going down because we voted for the Antichrist’s useful idiot.  In voting for Barack Obama, we voted to cut our own throats.

Just remember this is God damn America.  And we’re getting precisely what we voted for.

One last thing.  The ONLY reason we “need” to raise our debt ceiling is because Washington CANNOT get it’s act together and CANNOT stop itself from reckless spending.  We need to cut spending, not raise our debt ceilings over and over again.  We need a balanced budget amendment, not four more years of Obama’s reckless policies.

Fearmongering Obama Holding Gun To Seniors’ Heads With Social Securty Threat. The FACT Is He Is A Lying Demagogue

The words of Barack Hussein Obama, our fearmonger-in-chief:

Obama in an interview with CBS said he couldn’t guarantee Social Security checks would be sent out on Aug. 3 if Congress did not raise the debt ceiling by Aug. 2, when the Treasury Department has said it will no longer have the money to pay all of the U.S. bills

Republican Allan West is entirely right in saying, “That’s fear mongering that’s not leadership, that’s sad and pathetic.”

Allow me to point out first of all that this fearmongering from Obama is nothing new.  Allow me to quote a Wall Street Journal article from almost immediately after Obama was sworn in as president:

“President Barack Obama has turned fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package.”

Obama’s fearmongering then resulted in our undertaking a suicidal $3.27 TRILLION pork-laden “stimulus” that has massively failed to do what Obama promised it would do at a giantic cost to our children.  But he is an evil, cynical loathsome man who has experience in the fact that the lowest common denominator often wins.

Let’s move on to a demonstration of a man who is A) a liar; B) a fearmonger; and C) the worst kind of demagogue.  Let me begin by citing the Bipartisan Policy Center:

Bipartisan Policy Center: U.S. Won’t Default on Debt If Congress Fails to Raise Debt Ceiling
Posted in Weekly Standard – 8 July 2011 – No comments

With under a month left until the U.S. hits its statutory limit to borrow more money, Republicans and Democrats continue to disagree about what exactly would happen if Congress and the president fail to reach an agreement that raises the debt ceiling.

“Failure to raise the limit would precipitate a default by the United States,” wrote Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner earlier this year. No, that’s not true, say Republicans. There’s enough federal revenue to pay the interest on the debt as well as fund the troops and entitlement programs.

According to a study by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), Treasury could indeed avoid a debt default by prioritizing payments, but failure to raise the debt ceiling would mean deep and immediate cuts.

Which is to say that Democrats are lying and fearmongering, and Republicans are telling the truth.  But seriously what else is new???

And, with that, a piece of an article from Market Watch that provides the numbers to support what the Republicans are saying and to factually disprove what lying Obama is saying:

Q: What is a default?

A: In this case, a default would be the failure by the U.S. Treasury to make payments of principal or interest on its debt in a timely manner.

Q: In a given month how much does the Treasury owe as interest on its debt?

A: Roughly about $15–20 billion (more on this in a moment).

Q: How much revenue does the Treasury take in on average in a month?

A: Roughly about $200 billion.

Q: Are you saying the Treasury could pay interest on its debt 10 times over (or more) from monthly income?

A: Yes.  Therefore the likelihood of not paying interest on its debt is zero.

Q: But, what about redeeming bonds that come due?

A: As bonds come due, the Treasury would again use monthly income to pay them off. This would lower the debt owed beneath the so-called debt ceiling.  Then, the Treasury could turn around and issue debt in that amount up to the debt ceiling.

Q: Why then do Treasury Secretary Geithner and others in government make such apocalyptic statement about the horrors of default.

A: I’m afraid Secretary Geithner and others in government are doing the moral equivalent of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater and they are doing so for political reasons rather than financial reasons.  They simply do not want any interruptions in the bloated spending underway in Washington and they want to scare Americans into thinking the end of the world is nigh unless the gravy train keeps chugging along.

Math is hard for politicians

Now, let’s do the math to flesh out some of these points.  I know that for many politicians and pundits math is hard, but I’ll try to make it as simple as possible. If we do not raise the debt ceiling by August 2nd, we will not default on Treasury obligations.  Nor, will we have trouble making Social Security payments.  However, there would be a big drop — roughly 44% — in government spending because that percentage represents the difference between government revenues which would be about $200 billion for the full month of August and $172 billion for August if we start counting after the first week when the deadline hits.  Spending is slated to be over $300 billion that month.

Here are the numbers from an excellent and highly detailed study by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) quoted in this piece [emphasis added]:

…The BPC study found that the United States is likely to hit the debt limit sometime between August 2 and August 9. “It’s a 44 percent overnight cut in federal spending” if Congress hits the debt limit, [BPC’s Jay] Powell said. The BPC study projects there will be $172 billion in federal revenues in August and $307 billion in authorized expenditures. That means there’s enough money to pay for, say, interest on the debt ($29 billion), Social Security ($49.2 billion), Medicare and Medicaid ($50 billion), active duty troop pay ($2.9 billion), veterans affairs programs ($2.9 billion).

That leaves you with about $39 billion to fund (or not fund) the following:

Defense vendors ($31.7 billion)

IRS refunds ($3.9 billion)

Food stamps and welfare ($9.3 billion)

Unemployment insurance benefits ($12.8 billion)

Department of Education ($20.2 billion)

Housing and Urban Development ($6.7 billion)

Other spending, such as Departments of Justice, Labor, Commerce, EPA, HHS ($73.6 billion)

The decision to prioritize payments would fall on the Treasury department, and Powell points out it would be chaotic picking and choosing who gets paid (in full or partially) and who doesn’t…

No doubt picking and choosing who gets paid and who doesn’t would be chaotic.  And, lots of programs would not get their funding and that would lead to plenty of screaming.  Nonetheless, it should be clear from this exactly how much we are spending in excess of government revenues.  And, that could and should lead to a sober assessment of what government can and cannot do.

We can easily make all of our debt payments (both interest and principal), our Social Security payments, our contributions to Medicare and Medicaid, our payments to our active duty soldiers and provide funding to the VA system.  With room to spare.  Barack Obama and Timothy Geithner (a lying weasel who didn’t pay his own taxes) are lying weasels.

They are treacherous and un-American.  They are the very worst kind of cockroaches.  They represent everything that is wrong with this country’s political system.  What Obama is doing is low and loathsome beneath contemptible.  The only way that we wouldn’t send out Social Security checks is if Obama decides to fund demonic ACORN instead of sending out those checks (see here and then see here and here).  And the scumbag might actually do that because he’s simply that wicked and depraved and uncaring about the American people or their suffering.

Obama – the liar, the demagogue, the fearmonger – falsely demonized Republicans by claiming that they were using the debt ceiling as a gun to the American people’s heads.  HE’S THE ONE USING THIS ISSUE LIKE A GUN.

This is what happens in God damn America.

The beast is coming.  And with Obama’s help imploding America, he is coming soon.

From Bad To Worse: Japan Was On Path To Debt Default BEFORE Earthquake, Tsunami And Meltdown. America Next.

Meltdown.  That’s a good word for Japan these days.

And I’m not talking about the nuclear reactors, either.  I’m talking about what had been one of the most powerful economic engines on the planet.

Look at the facts in late 2010 BEFORE the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor.  They didn’t look pretty then; they’ve become nightmarish since:

Japan Will Default as Economy Unravels, Bass Says
October 13, 2010, 4:19 PM EDT
By Nikolaj Gammeltoft and Susanne Walker
 
Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) — Japan will be forced to default on its debt, Greece’s economy is “done” and Iceland is worse off than Greece, said J. Kyle Bass, the head of Dallas-based Hayman Advisors LP who made $500 million in 2007 on the U.S. subprime collapse.

Nations around the world will be unable to repay their debt and financial austerity in a country such as Ireland is “too late,” Bass said today at the Value Investing Congress in New York.

Japan’s economy may unravel in the next two to three years, and its interest payments will exceed revenue, he said. “Japan can’t fund itself internally,” Bass said.

The country’s year-over-year gross domestic product was 2.4 percent as of June 30. It has the world’s largest public debt, approaching 200 percent of its GDP amid a 5.1 percent jobless rate. Consumer price fell by one percent in September and has been negative each month since May 2009, as deflation has taken hold.

Pricing on Japanese interest-rate swaps is the best he’s ever seen, Bass said. Investors could make 50 to 100 times their capital betting on them, he said, calling them a lottery ticket on Japan’s economy.

Japanese bonds have returned 3.3 percent this year, according to Merrill Lynch Indexes, compared with a return of 0.872 percent in 2009.

Crisis

Bank Of Japan’s Governor Masaaki Shirakawa refused to expand monthly purchases of government bonds this year even as deflation persisted. The bank on Oct. 5 instead created a 5 trillion yen ($60 billion) fund to buy bonds and other assets, and pledged to keep its benchmark interest rate at “virtually zero” until the end of deflation is in sight. Deflation has been entrenched in the economy since 1998. The GDP deflator, a gauge of prices across the economy, has fallen 14 percent since 1997, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

A financial crisis in 1997-98 precipitated by bad loans on Japanese lenders’ balance sheets stemming from burst land and stock-price bubbles of the early 1990s set off Japan’s deflation. Property prices have slumped for 17 of the past 19 years, and stocks remain 76 percent off of their 1989 peak, according to the Nikkei 225 Stock Average.

Japan’s currency traded at 81.79 per dollar, compared with 81.72. It touched 81.39 on Oct. 11, the strongest level since April 1995.

Bass began buying securities with shorter durations last year as he predicted central bank and government actions globally to rescue the financial system will result in “outright currency debasement.”

He began buying shorter-term debt and precious metals then, anticipating hyperinflation will lead to higher interest rates. Bass also said in May that Europe’s debt crisis will not be solved by the $1 trillion loan package the International Monetary Fund and the European Union agreed on earlier that month.

–Editors: Nick Baker, Dave Liedtka

And that was all BEFORE Japan went from the frying pan into the nuclear fire.

What’s being said now?

Quake shattered Japan poses global debt worry
GARETH COSTA, The West Australian
March 15, 2011, 6:11 am

Concerns have emerged in global credit markets over how heavily-indebted Japan will be able to pay for its biggest economic reconstruction effort since World War II.

The Bank of Japan’s promise yesterday of a ¥15 trillion ($182 billion) cash injection into its banking system managed to soothe global equities, but not debt markets as Japanese government credit default swap rates used to insure against debt default soared 13 points to 92.

Although not yet at critical levels, analysts said yesterday’s sharp spike in the CDS rates highlighted debt market concerns about Japan’s funding pressures within a cash-strapped global economy.

“When you have a market the size of Japan down this much, it’s going to affect everybody,” Stephen Halmarick, head of investment markets research at Colonial First State Global Asset Management, said.

“A tragedy of this proportion is going to take up a lot of economic resources.

“It’s going to have quite a negative impact on growth.”

Credit markets were already concerned that Japanese government debt had ballooned to $US12.2 trillion, or 200 per cent of GDP.

Insurance experts estimate the repair bill carried by foreign reinsurers will be capped at $US34 billion, with the rest borne by Japanese insurers, the Government and uninsured homeowners.

Japan has so far managed to function under its debt because it has predominantly been funded by domestic investors and because it runs a steady trade surplus.

However, analysts caution that short-term liquidity constraints could prompt strong yen repatriation flows out of foreign markets as occurred after the Kobe earthquake.

Early estimates suggest the cost of the Sendai earthquake will easily exceed the $US100 billion Kobe earthquake in 1995.

Japan’s increased funding pressures are also occurring in a global economy far more cash-constrained than in 1995, and unless export earnings begin flowing soon, escalating funding costs could push the country’s financing costs over the tipping point.

Japan has been one of the biggest buyers of US Treasury debt and in January pledged to also buy up to one-fifth of bonds from the European Financial Stability Fund that was created to bail out Greece and Ireland, all of which will become secondary to Japanese funding needs for the next few months.

The country is also one of the world’s biggest holders of gold bullion.

Any decision to cash in on bullion’s record price and offload much of its sovereign holding would likely depress the gold price.

Japan’s Nikkei equities index slumped 6.2 per cent, its worse daily performance in two years.

[…]

What impact will it have on the global markets if the 3rd largest economy in the world defaults?  What effect will it have on the ability of the world’s largest debtor – that’s YOU, America – to continue to get credit as WE begin to look more and more like a default-likely credit risk???

Japan was the second largest purchaser of American debt, and was so far ahead of #3 (Japan buys 3 1/4 times more of our debt than Britain), that it’s not even funny.  The U.S. needs a sucker, I mean an investor, to continue to artificially prop-up our insane lifestyle.  Who’s going to do that now?

What you’re going to see is either the Fed dramatically hasten the rate at which it devalues the dollar, which in turn will hasten the inevitable result of America becoming a banana republic, or a giant spike in interest rates as other U.S. debt buyers demand more reward for their risks.

A third alternative is that Japan could begin to sell off its US debt to raise money to rebuild.  While that seems like the obvious course, it turns out in this crazy world it isn’t; were Japan to sell it’s U.S. debt, the result would surely kill the U.S. dollar, but it would also dramatically strengthen the yen and hurt Japan’s export market just when they need it most.

My point is it’s a lose-lose.  And the U.S. loses right along with Japan.

Yet “no drama” Obama didn’t care.  He didn’t even bother to mention Japan or it’s earthquake or its tsunami or its nuclear meltdown in his address the day after the disaster.  And just to demonstrate that he truly truly, truly didn’t give a damn, he played 18 holes of golf.

See the photos of Obama’s golf outing from Sadhill.

Then there’s the unfortunate fact that this disaster has coincided with the far more important NCAA basketball tournament.  A president has to choose his priorities, and clearly the basketball won out.

Note #1: this is hardly new behavior from the man who promised “hope and change.”

Note #2: the mainstream media excoriated Bush for golfing a tiny fraction as often as Obama.  One example is the liberal Washington Post headline from August 5, 2002, “Before Golf, Bush Decries Latest Deaths in Mideast.”  I wonder what the Post’s headline would be about Obama if they had even a shred of fairness in their coverage?

We’re in trouble.  And our leader is a fool.  And we have a media that is hell-bent (literally) on ignoring or explaining away this fool’s actions and responses.

One of the things I came to believe as I realized that Obama would actually quite possibly get elected president was that our economy was dead meat.  I entirely got out of the U.S. stock market entirely and won’t return until Obama and the Democrats are out of power.  The reason is that I believed – and STILL believe – that when our economy collapses, it will happen very suddenly, like a house of cards falling down.  And it might not start in America; rather, an event in another country will set off a spiral that will envelope us and expose us for what we truly are.

And just where truly are we?

News from globeandmail.com
The scary real U.S. government debt
Wednesday, October 27, 2010

NEIL REYNOLDS

Ottawa — reynolds.globe@gmail.com

Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff says U.S. government debt is not $13.5-trillion (U.S.), which is 60 per cent of current gross domestic product, as global investors and American taxpayers think, but rather 14-fold higher: $200-trillion – 840 per cent of current GDP. “Let’s get real,” Prof. Kotlikoff says. “The U.S. is bankrupt.”

Writing in the September issue of Finance and Development, a journal of the International Monetary Fund, Prof. Kotlikoff says the IMF itself has quietly confirmed that the U.S. is in terrible fiscal trouble – far worse than the Washington-based lender of last resort has previously acknowledged. “The U.S. fiscal gap is huge,” the IMF asserted in a June report. “Closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 per cent of U.S. GDP.”

This sum is equal to all current U.S. federal taxes combined. The consequences of the IMF’s fiscal fix, a doubling of federal taxes in perpetuity, would be appalling – and possibly worse than appalling.

Our actual debt is not the fourteen trillion dollars that would be scary enough; it is $200 TRILLION.

That isn’t some rightwing thinktank saying that; it’s the IMF.

Japan had a literal meltdown.  It is about to have a financial meltdown.

And America will not be far behind.

As you look at the current fiscal situation, with Democrats not just fighting to keep the status quo of reckless and morally and mentally insane spending that will necessarily bankrupt America – and with Democrats literally sitting back waiting to demonize Republicans as “mean-spirited” the moment they try to do what is absolutely necessary to get our skyrocketing spending under control – realize that the United States is necessarily going to explode and collapse just like those reactors in Japan.

Democrats murdered America.  It was Democrats who were responsible for nearly ALL of those $200 trillion in debt that will destroy us (it is a simple fact that the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that constitute virtually all of our actual debt were all Democrat programs).  And it is Democrats who will literally fight to America’s death to prevent the nation from doing what is necessary to fix our situation before it is too late.

Social Security is now paying out more than it takes in.  Workers under forty are rightly quite confident that the system will collapse before they get a chance to collect.  Republicans want to fix the system before it collapses in order to save it.  But Democrats lie about the Republicans efforts (which would kick in slowly and not affect current retirees at all).  And Democrats race us faster, ever faster toward the collapse and nightmare that surely awaits America.

We’re a dead nation walking.  We just don’t realize it yet.

That’s the hope and change you voted for, America.  I hope you enjoy your starving in the soon-coming banana republic your false-messiah president created for you.