If we keep things up, though, it may turn out that the sad joke is on our debt-holders. If we end up with massive inflation, we can pay it all off with a toaster.

__________________
The Patient Sufferance - Politics for People Tired of Politics

Or just opt out of the UN completely and charge them for the real estate at full cost!

__________________
I have the body of a god! To bad its Buddha!

*Roar of the Crowd*

That is an excellent place to start, in my opinion. At the bare minimum, if we must remain a member, we should cut our contribution to what might be expected of any other member. But I'm not even sure I like us as UN members, controversial and difficult as it would be to extricate ourselves from that incestuous morass of corruption.

__________________

He's come to save the day!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVFdAJRVm94

If we do that, then the joke is on us, because we wont be able to buy this hypothetical toaster, and a lot of people with a lot of guns will be VEEEERY unhappy with us.

__________________

He's come to save the day!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVFdAJRVm94

Of course, that is what will eventually happen.

No, we will start fresh with a new currency, and we will just make the toaster ourselves. But there will certainly be lots of economic pain.

People with guns? We are the biggest, baddest, nation on the planet when it comes to "lots of guns". Our military is second to none. When the debt holders get screwed, they will just have to lick their wounds, because none of them are going to start a war over it.

Yay for the Amero.

Yay, spread da muddafukn' wealth.

__________________
Sic Semper Tyrannis






http://www.myspace.com/swoop187muzic

A few months ago the vast majority of business economists mocked concerns about a ''double dip,'' a second leg to the downturn. But there were a few dogged iconoclasts out there, most notably Stephen Roach at Morgan Stanley. As I've repeatedly said in this column, the arguments of the double-dippers made a lot of sense. And their story now looks more plausible than ever.

The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn't a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

---Paul Krugman, 2001

Krugman, then calling for a housing bubble, now calling for a Fed Rate of -5.6% (that's right, negative 5.6% interest). What genius. No wonder he won a Nobel.

__________________
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. ---P. J. O'Rourke

Wait, a negative 5.6% interest rate? So I would get money for borrowing money?

__________________
I have the body of a god! To bad its Buddha!

just read this on yahoo: Fed officials warn weak recovery won't spur jobs - Yahoo! Finance

fed is expecting very meager job growth starting some time next year. this was never going to be a fast recovery (no matter which party happens to be in control of the govt).

__________________
"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good." --Thomas Paine

Exactly. The absurdity of such a policy recommendation can only be missed by someone so entrenched in the theoretical world promoted by academia, that he is completely oblivious to the happenings in the real world.

In regards to your comment on the speed of recovery, one with a conspiratorial mind could almost entertain the idea that a major political party could have envisioned this economic train wreck, and wanting nothing to do with being at the helm of said train, ran a sacrificial lamb (albeit an old, unelectable, lamb) for President in 2008.

Especially if said party had actually planned and purposely caused such train wreck, in an attempt to "rule from the ruins" once the final collapse comes.

In such case, such parties logical course of action after they lost the election would be to simply oppose any kind of change and all, and wait for their nefarious scheme to continue as planned.

They would need a particularly gullible group of supporters, loyal beyond all sense and reason.

__________________
Alizee Jacotay, the reason god invented hips

Assuming you're referring to Krugman, your claims are offbase.

He is what he really said:
Zero lower bound blogging - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

The problem is, of course, that paying people to take out loans with you is what caused the whole crash. And now that Dollars is now the "Carry Trade" instead of the Yen, we can look forward to a Japan style decade of drab.

__________________
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. ---P. J. O'Rourke