For those who think everything is working out fine:


Bad news

More bad news.

And this. (If you don't have NYT access, it says this, in part: September 13, 2007
Compromise on Oil Law in Iraq Seems to Be Collapsing
By JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Sept. 12 — A carefully constructed compromise on a draft law governing Iraq’s rich oil fields, agreed to in February after months of arduous talks among Iraqi political groups, appears to have collapsed. The apparent breakdown comes just as Congress and the White House are struggling to find evidence that there is progress toward reconciliation and a functioning government here.

Not all bad, Sid. The Kurds are striking deals with oilmen from Texas. Surely Bush approves of that (and so should all patriotic Americans) Heck, what's the point of invading Iraq and fighting a war thereafter if you can't get the oil? You can't go losing the lives of thousands of young men for nothing. Overthrowing some dictator on some pretext about weapons that would threaten the US (or whatever it was) is no reason to have soldiers dying for their country.

Apparently other people in Iraq,particularly those who live where there's no oil, want a share of the Kurds' profits. That's like saying that oilmen in Texas should share their profits with the people of the other 49 states. How socialist would that be?

Regarding that first link, on the falling dollar - of course currencies fluctuate, but is the US economy fundamentally flawed?

I read recently that the second biggest government expenditure for the US is servicing its debt (a debt accumulated by Reagan and the two Bush's, it seems). The biggest expenditure is the military (for example on thousand-dollar washers, or billion-dollar aircraft the air force doesn't really want).

How can a country that spends its public money that way be sound economically?

quote:

Originally posted by newnickname:
Regarding that first link, on the falling dollar - of course currencies fluctuate, but is the US economy fundamentally flawed?

The dollar has very slowly fallen by 20% from its peak in 2002 [against major currencies]. The figures for July show exports now 14% up on annual rate and imports 5% up.

The economy doesn't look sick, does it ?Unemployment isn't bad. As stated above, exports have picked up.What's the worry? True the number of new jobs is not as great as you might want for a strongly growing economy , but jobs are still being created.

Wall Street has looked a little nervy and uncertain but that's mostly an effect of unknown liabilities created when salesmen sell mortgages to people who can't afford them and the debt ends up laid off to banks and finance houses all over the place People do get edgy about what is unknown and neither truly guessable nor calculable

On the other hand, as the late Paul Getty said when the stock market started to crash in 1929 " America isn't going to go bust!" He was right, of course, but that was not very consoling at the time.

No economist, I, but my view is that between the unsustainable deficits of the bush economy, the lack of meaningful energy policy, the as yet unmeasured (and not even begun to be paid for) financial impact the war, the housing market (another bush crisis evolving from unregulated banking -- like the savings and loan crisis in which his brother and father were deeply embedded) we are headed for economic collapse; and the falling dollar, and the volatility of the stock market reflect that. I think the appearance of a good economy is to a significant mirage: it's like giving people a credit card and telling them to go out and spend. Looks great, until the payments come due.

Linking the two things - the invasion of Iraq, and the huge deficit - is a radical right-wing ideology that is the opposite of 'conservatism'. Tax-cuts for the rich, deregulation for corporations and an invasion that was to miraculously pay itself while incidentally securing what's left of the planet's oil, maybe have behind them the thought that blind self-interest - on the personal, business or national scale - is somehow beneficial and respectable.

I wonder if it's a generation of politicians or economists who had their heads turned by "Atlas Shrugged" in college. The idea that it's good for a society if everyone bullies and takes advantage of everyone else ("greed is good") I guess appeals to some inadequates who can't relate to people in any other way. (It's difficult to explain what drives Dick Cheney otherwise.)

The thinking goes - use the credit and spend, spend, spend. Grab what you can for yourself. Someone else can take the consequences, and Ayn Rand says it's ethically OK. Some tame economists are even convinced it's good for the economy. ('Trickle down'.) Start a war for no good reason - the only thing you need to guard against is that too many Americans might be inconvenienced by it, for example by having to pay for it or serve in it, or some other such old-fashioned nonsense.

Picking up on the killing of the Sheikh who opposed al-Qaeda in Anbar: What else do we expect? It's a sad fact that leaders do get assassinated.It does not mean that the situation is changed in favour of the killers. If anything, the killing will increase the resolve of those who are in the majority, those people who got fed up with al-Qaeda outsiders trying to throw their weight around and committing atrocities.In the end, terrorists who set up in any community can only succeed when the community tolerates their presence. Once the people do not acquiesce any more the terrorists find life hard. They are not helped. They get informed on. They lose their safe places. They become outcasts.In the end they give up. In this instance they are being exposed and driven out, impossible whilst the locals remained indifferent to their presence. Had they settled for killing only Americans, outsiders like themselves there but not Arab outsiders, they'd still be there causing big trouble

quote:

Originally posted by newnickname:
Regarding that first link, on the falling dollar - of course currencies fluctuate, but is the US economy fundamentally flawed?

I read recently that the second biggest government expenditure for the US is servicing its debt (a debt accumulated by Reagan and the two Bush's, it seems). The biggest expenditure is the military (for example on thousand-dollar washers, or billion-dollar aircraft the air force doesn't really want).

How can a country that spends its public money that way be sound economically?

http://www.thetimesnews.com/news/year_5753___article.html/deficit_billion.html

Feds say deficit is down
The Associated Press
September 13, 2007 2:27 PM
The federal deficit is running sharply lower than last year even though spending in August set an all-time high, the government reported Thursday.

The Treasury Department said that the deficit through the first 11 months of this budget year totaled $274.4 billion, down 9.8 percent from the same period a year ago.

Analysts believe the deficit for all of 2007 will actually be even lower because they are forecasting a sizable surplus in the final month, reflecting in part timing issues that caused about $44 billion in Social Security and Medicare payments that normally would have been made in September to be shifted into August.

The Congressional Budget Office is forecasting that when this budget year wraps up on Sept. 30, the deficit will total $158 billion, down by 36.2 percent from last year's $248.2 billion deficit.

The government's books have been helped this year by record flows of tax receipts, which have continued even though economic growth has been reduced by a serious slump in housing.

A deficit of $158 billion would be the best showing since the budget was actually in balance for four years. The last surplus was in 2001, President Bush's first year in office.

While forecasts had projected that government surpluses would total $5.6 trillion over the next decade, the 2001 recession, spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the president's first-term tax cuts all combined to wipe out those surpluses.

Republicans contend that Bush's tax cuts are a major reason that government receipts are so strong now, but Democrats contend that the tax cuts are providing very little economic stimulus and that revenues are simply rebounding to more normal levels after slumping earlier in the decade.

The deficit hit an all-time high in dollar terms in 2004 at $413 billion and has been declining since then. The administration is projecting that the government's books will be in surplus by 2012 if Congress follows Bush's recommendations on spending restraint.

However, the Democratic-controlled Congress is pushing for higher spending for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. Bush has pledged to veto spending bills that exceed his requests.

For August, the deficit totaled $116.9 billion. However, about $44 billion of that figure reflected payments for Social Security and Medicare that were mailed in August because Sept. 1 fell on a Saturday and Labor Day came on Sept. 3.

Through the first 11 months of the current budget year, receipts total a record $2.282 trillion, up 7.5 percent from last year, while outlays totaled a record $2.557 trillion, up 5.3 percent from last year.

quote:

Through the first 11 months of the current budget year, receipts total a record $2.282 trillion, up 7.5 percent from last year, while outlays totaled a record $2.557 trillion, up 5.3 percent from last year.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong:
2.557 x 10^12 - 2.282 x 10^12 = 0.275 x 10^12
Now 275 billion dollars added to the national debt EVERY YEAR, when the interest alone on that debt is second only to all the money spent on the total military DOD budget sounds rather like real money to me.

Well, according to my calculations the deficit adds $910.00 to my personal share of the debt every year, and since my share of that debt, and every one else's share, is already almost $30,000, there's no remote possibility that I can avoid passing it on to my children, grandchildren, great-grand children ----etc. ad infinitum. Seems like something needs to change before we reach the point of no return - unless we're already there???

D'jever suspect that some people take advantage of the fog of economic facts? How many of us, who don't even know who our congressman is, understand trillion dollar figures, budget deficits, interest rates ???? In a nation where we haven't even been able to convert to the metric system?

I happily admit that I know nothing about economics, but it seems to me that growing tax-receipts at a time of record government spending aren't necessarily much to boast about; isn't that just the same money sloshing around?

The government is pouring billions into various armament and 'contractor' companies as a result of the Iraq war, and some of that, I guess, returns as tax (though not from Halliburton, which has itself decamped to the Middle East).

The billions actually come in loans from China, Japan, Korea and Europe, and are not a result of "real" economic activity, like making and selling the everyday stuff that people need.

The fact that the deficit is lower (in large measure smoke and mirrors, in that the borrowing from social securtity isn't counted, nor are the down-road costs of the war -- caring for the wounded forever [assuming they start], replacing materiel) isn't all that reassuring: the total debt was run up enormously by bush. The only way to pay it off is to balance the budget. It's like saying I'm in debt up to my ears but because I'm overspending my salary by less lately, I'm gonna be ok. Even bush supporters ought to be able to do arithmetic.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that article saying the amount of deficit this term is down rather than the total accumulated deficit - meaning we are still creating deficit but at a slower pace. If we are simply saying "We went less further into the hole this year than we did last year." then that's simply not good enough.

Do I have that right?

There's annual budget deficit, and total national debt. Under Clinton, for a while we had an annual surplus and were actually paying down debt. bush brought us back to the days of increasing debt, and huge annual deficits. Some tout the fact that the annual deficit is less lately than it's been. But since it's still present, the national debt continues to rise. There was a time when conservatives would recoil from bush's economy. Now, such values are out the window, along with, oh, believing in free press, the Constitution, separation of powers. Y'know, all that annoying democracy stuff.

'He writes that he advised the White House to veto some bills to curb "out-of-control" spending at the time Republicans controlled Congress.

President Bush's failure to do so "was a major mistake", he said.

"Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences," he says of the Bush administration.' Greenspan attacks Bush on economy