Romney a Lock - You Can Put it On the Board YESSSS!!

Cran, Our economy is teetering, not strong due to some nebulous 2008 spending bill that did nothing but add $800 million more debt for pork spending onto what is now a $15.5 trillion debt load. And our monetary policy, which has been more of the tool employed to try to deal with the monkeys dribbling a football has been even more disastrous.

Watch the FOMC today. They have already been announcing that they are going to keep rates artiificially low for the next 2 years! You don't do that when you are in a recovery, or confident that what you have been doing is having any effect. It's desperation. On top of the fact that they have, in an unprecedented manner, brought the Fed's balance sheet to billions of dollars beyond anything ever imagined before. And then with all the other measures -- the quantitative easing, which is what you do to print money to inflate away your debt when rates are already at zero and you can no longer go with that feckless maneuver -- it's beyond desperation. They are doing drastic things, with long term consequences (including the fiscal policy you touted) and our economy really sucks right now. It is sitting precariously.

Our economy is already showing signs of stalling again, typically does stall heading into the summer months, and has the problem that several of our closest European friends are already sitting in brand new recessions, which tend to spread like a virus.

Ben Bernake and Barrack Obama are deathly afraid of it and know they are at the whim of forces they can't control. They can paint it as rosy as possible, but as Europe further drags us down, it is a fait accompli. The only question from a political standpoint is if they can delay the inevitable past November.

 

I don't quite grasp what you are trying to say.

Germany's debt load is less than 100 percent of its GDP. It is a veritable bastion of fiscal integrity compared to the United States. Something unthought of before Bush the second started rolling up our debt into the trillions and Obama continued the game.

Germany has NO problem borrowing and servicing its debt, let alone expanding its economy. It is growing its economy this year, and is forecast to double its growth next year.

If you are trying to compare Germany to Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, or a host of other countries. ... there is no comparison. The bailouts that have extended the life of the Euro have come on Germany's dime -- a dime, by the way, that they are not willing to keep offering endlessly; political will has been low.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0425/germany-will-skip-recession-double-growth-next-ye.html

 

If you are comparing 2008 to now, we are not in 2006 when few were predicting what was to come. We are at the point that Bear Stearns couldn't meet its obligations, at which point everyone had an inkling that something was up.

If you are relying on politicians or central bankers, though, to see the forest through the trees, I will remind you that Ben Bernake said in May, 2007 that the growing number of mortgage defaults wouldn't hurt the U.S. economy.

He is the fellow who still runs our central bank, doing all kinds of incomprehensible things without oversight to try to "manage" the current rocky waters. And a lot of the "our economy is doing fine," are regurgitations of his same old nonsense.

He has one goal now. To get us through November without any meltdowns, so as not to influence the election. He doesn't have the tools in his toolbox to do that, so it is a crap shoot that will be dependent on a ton of forces that are unpredictable.

 

I know you and I have clashed on threads like this in the past. But what you wrote seems so self evident to me.