Plain and simple, pick one or pick any two options.

With who as president?

Does it really matter who is? Its so out of control I have a hard time believing anyone could keep it the same or shrink it. I would willingly donate $1000 if every man, woman and child in the US did the same to get the debt under control.

Wouldn't that cut into your "hangar rental" fund?

I picked greater than 16 trillion since Obama is going to win. If Mitt wins it will be $0 as Zombies don't care about debt.

Choice "E" .... too soon to tell.


Tom

Darn right.

Heavily depends if the Chinese increase our interest rate.

The Chinese do not set our interest rate, they just benefit greatly off an increase since they own so much of our debt.

Was referring to the interest we pay on all the money we borrow from them.

money is power, in politics ones ability to spend is everything, all those hired due to said spending owe their existance to the grand benevolent leader and work to keep the status quo, become the patronage army, join the afl-cio afscme, get a fat pension or 3, and anyone foolish enough to try to reform the system goes nowhere, this is true at all levels and the reason why the debt never goes down, they spend everything they get and then some, every year, which is why i support the tea party who is the only voice that calls for reducing tax and spending

China buys T-bills at a certain interest rate, which right now is like 1.4% (very low). The US pays those T-bills back by selling more T-bills, usually right back to China. Its a never-ending cycle, but it's sustainable (sort of) as long as rates stay low. China does not set the rate at which the T-bills are sold, its more complicated than that and depends a lot on the US's credit rating.

Way to go America! If you don't think this Presidential election matters, you haven't been paying close enough attention. I'm not interested as much in what Romney says as I am in what Obama has done. That's pretty much it for me, time to try someone else. After voting against Obama in '08, I still held hope that maybe he really could make a difference, a step in the right direction. That didn't happen. I think we can all agree that we're rooting for steps in the right direction!

Hey Tom, the one thing about that chart is that it is based off of Euro to Dollar conversion in Dec 2011, which is much higher than it is now. So in all fairness that chart is skewed.

It also shows a small snippet of an large and complicated thing called national economy. The US actually produces stuff (hard to believe) and has a growing GDP. Greece, well its just a mess. I was in Athens over the summer and that city is in a sad state of affairs. Think worse than Detroit.

That being said, I don't want to end up like a European nation, saddled with huge debt due to poor economic choices and massive social programs. We are heading that way with this administration.

I dunno bout that..Greece does produce a good amount of feta cheese and shallow BMW drivers.

Not to beat a dead horse but so much of the deficit was created in 8 yrs after Clinton. We at one time had a surplus.
The irresponsible spending during the "W" years added a lot. You cannot create money vacuums such as a war while reducing taxes. Ideally there should be a war tax during times of war. Unpaid stuff like that adds up. Also deregulating and loosening banking laws while encouraging everyone to stop renting and own fucked things up. It is a super complex problem and looking for simple answers is not recommended but just these two examples helped create some of the problems.

That's bullshit logic. The fact is, George Bush was a red blooded 'merican.
Its different when a black guy gets in debt.

It's time to take the country back!

Bush was awful (fiscally). Obama has been even WORSE. Your point?

I'm taking an economics course right now and am no way claiming to be an economist or be an expert. But the book basically gave a point of view of justifying the national debt.

Statistics about the national debt and budget deficits are daunting. The 2002 budget deficit was $106.2 billion. The national debt in 2002 was $6.14 trillion. The national debt per person is $21,000. Interest on the debt is 14% of total federal government spending. The debt is almost 60% of GDP. The trade deficit and the budget deficit have been dubbed the twin deficits because growth of the federal deficits has been accompanied by growth of trade deficits. Foreign spending is diverted from US goods and services that are exported to US investments. The budget deficits put more money into the economy and generate increased spending on all goods including imports. This phenomenon of the twin deficits mitigates the impact of expansionary fiscal policy because the expansion results in an increase in the trade deficit, which reduces GDP. Higher interest rates motivate people to save more and spend less. In addition, higher interest rates crowd out private sector investment. Because we own 80% of our debt, the problem is not as bad as some people think. The question that remains unanswered is, “How much debt is the right amount?”

So ask yourself this question if we have to borrow or finance police, fire, public facilities and operations, military.... pretty much any governement funded entity is that worth the debt we are paying? What if we didn't finance these operations?

In 4 years the debt will be roughly 400 dollars and some change. For sure.

Right Nick, the only thing is those things aren't what's creating the debt, it's the massive over-expansion of government...far beyond military, police, fire and congressional entities.

There's no question that due to the sheer size of the US economy we can float a heck of a lot more debt than say Italy, Spain or Greece...but should we continue to poke that bear?

Agreed.....the Bear is going to bend us over and go to town.

I covered it in the other thread, but none of the candidates are putting forward a plan that will eliminate the deficit for at least a decade.

Whoever wins today will either try to lock the debt at around 76% of GDP or 85% of GDP.........which means an ever rising debt level. I really don't have any hope that spending will be curbed until a Greece event happens.

This ship is going down faster than a cheap whore on a payday Friday night.

Chris no, into my Avgas 100LL fund

Fuck Nick that gave me a massive headache

Looks like the vcook debt is about to be $80 bucks on the 13th. I gotta buy the hardened edition of CoD BO2 to get the nuketown maps? WTF?

If the crappy ass hit detection is anything like BO, I'm not touching it.

BO was 10x the game that hunk of shit MW3 was.

MW3 isn't bad if you stick to just the face off maps but MW2 killed both of them as far as I'm concerned.