hanumanj

A Look at US Debt Levels as a Percentage of GDP

Not sure where you get your data, but a simple search finds that the US National debt is $9 trillion (not counting this year's $500 billion), which is closer to 70% of GDP

America's Fiscal Crisis: Tough Decisions Needed Now

What you fail to mention is that Republican presidents are responsible for every increase in the US debt as a percentage of GDP since World War II. That's right, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II are the only presidents since WW II to leave office with the country in more %GDP debt than when they came in. And they've pretty much doubled it from 35% to 70%. Just Google "US National Debt" and look at White House data.

Peterson likes to point out that Democrats have been bad alongside the Republicans ("Running on Empty," by Peterson), but at least they decreased the debt. Peterson also likes to defend the 15% tax rate on the 20-30% carried interest that hedge-fund and private equity managers make using other people's money. It is, after all, how he made his money. But ironically, investors in hedge-funds have to pay full ordinary income gains on shorting the market, while the hedge-funds get the tax breaks using other people's money.

McCain and his supporters with money continue to want to have it their way -- an unregulated financial system, lavish paydays for bad performance while creating the the present mortgage mess -- yet they seem oblivious to the longer term consequences of what has been done by the ridiculously ignorant, or devastatingly stupid, Republican politicians of the last 30 years.

The country needs some simple analogies to bring home the meaning of the current US financial catastrophe. The pie chart you show is astonishing -- we spend four times the amount per year on interest on the national debt than we spend on education. How have we allowed the country to be run in this way?

Someone has to get Obama to learn to convey this data in support of his desire to turn us around. McCain is a lost cause -- he's worse than a dumb engineer, unable to remember what he said the day before. But Americans are a gullible lot, and the Democrats seem on the verge of shooting both feet at once.

IndyMac Failure - Test of FDIC Insurance

A quick compounding of inflation at just 3% for the past 75 years shows that $100,000 in 1933 dollars is almost $1million in today's dollars. So, the FDIC provides just 10% of the insurance that it was originally chartered to do -- just one more indication of the Great Unwind of the finances of the US Government. And after the world wakes up and starts selling our dollars, the US will be worth even less.