overstatement?

The President and Vice President are selected by electoral college and not direct plebiscite.
 
emilyr said:
Redrum, a little correction about the percent of debt to GDP in the US compared to Greece. Here is a lovely slideshow about the biggest debtor nations, with the US at 96.5% of GDP and Greece at 170.5% of GDP.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/30308959/The_World_s_Biggest_Debtor_Nations
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That's the external debt and not the public which is normally reported. And also, explicit debt leaves out important obligations like pensions and social security. If you add these in, you get what's called implicit government debt. And if you use the implicit government debt to GDP ratio, the picture is much bleaker:

Germany: 255 percent
France: 255 percent
UK: 530 percent
U.S.: 570 percent

And those numbers don't even include the debt from bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We don't even know the end tab of that!

emilyr said:
But come on! This doesn’t mean the EU or its economies are failures y soy una yanqui. We have been permanently “bailed out” by China and other holders of US currency and bonds.
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You don't think there are EU states that will default? Yes the Chinese have been bailing you out, but they are not stupid. One day that is going to end.

emilyr said:
The dollar has been used as the international reserve currency since Bretton Woods established the international monetary institutions. As such, people turn to the dollar in economic crises because worldwide there will always be some stable demand for the dollar. So this designation of the dollar in some ways is sort of a false stabilizer of the dollar’s value independent of the US economy.
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I totally agree to this.

emilyr said:
We talk a lot in my macroecon class here in UBA about how there are a lot of weird things the US can do with their fiscal policy in terms of going into debt without taking on the monetary and currency consequences that small countries like Argentina have to face. It is not just because the dollar is the currency of reserve but also because US Treasury bonds are still the safest investment worldwide, even when the US economy was in crisis. And this does have to do with investors’ perceptions of the stability of the US economy, though not necessarily its growth potential. All of this to say, maybe, probably inevitably, the US will “fall” one day or at least more hopefully be forced to make decisions multilaterally instead of unilaterally and not wage illegal wars. But if the bond market is any indicator, this is not going happen soon.
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I hate to break it to you but U.S Treasury bonds are no safer than the subprime junk bonds. They were also labeled triple A just as the Treasury bonds are today. The problem is that people have faith in these junk bonds just as they had faith in the subprime junk. It's just a matter of time until the U.S bonds crash as the Greek bonds did. And it will be soon.

emilyr said:
The stock market and currency markets are NOT economies, though they do influence them and give us some insight. Case in point, all the rallying in the US stock market has not meant the end of the recession for all the struggling, real people out of work there. All of this means, we can’t just look at the way currencies are trading or government fiscal policies or even stock markets as a long run indicator of an economy; we certainly can’t make doomsday predictions about the fundamentals of an economy based on them.
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The rallying stock market was a direct result of the bailout. The stimulus package doesn't help the real economy. We clearly see the results of it today. What Bush and Obama were doing was simply to delay the inevitable. And by doing so, they made the problem worse.
 
orwellian said:
I hate to break it to you but U.S Treasury bonds are no safer than the subprime junk bonds. They were also labeled triple A just as the Treasury bonds are today. The problem is that people have faith in these junk bonds just as they had faith in the subprime junk. It's just a matter of time until the U.S bonds crash as the Greek bonds did. And it will be soon.
Click to expand...

Greek bonds are denominated in euros, which the Greeks don't have control over. US treasuries are denominated in dollars, which the Fed does have control over. Important difference, which you should be knowing. Other bad things can happen -- for example rapid inflation or a rise in te interst rates US bonds have to pay -- but there is no risk of default because unlike the Greek government, the US government can always print more money to "redeem" its bonds.
 
bigbadwolf said:
Greek bonds are denominated in euros, which the Greeks don't have control over. US treasuries are denominated in dollars, which the Fed does have control over. Important difference, which you should be knowing. Other bad things can happen -- for example rapid inflation or a rise in te interst rates US bonds have to pay -- but there is no risk of default because unlike the Greek government, the US government can always print more money to "redeem" its bonds.
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Default is not a risk. It's an option, a much better one than printing money. When defaulting creditors pick up the tab, inflation the people. The problem isn't that countries will default, the problem is that they seem to prefer printing the money.

And yes, Greek is a state within the EU, and their deficit is similar to California.

EDIT: But yeah I do know the difference. The reason for the comparison was that investors lost faith in Greek bonds, just as they will lose faith in U.S Treasuries. Defaulting or defaulting through inflation will still cause the bonds to crash.
 
The constitution provides for the extraordinary succession of the President without election.
 
All policy is instituted through a series of monolithic, top down bureaucracies managed by civil servants adverse to change and who are largely ineffectual.
 
Armed services are subject to posse comitatus.

1. Obvious: Excuse me. Is that your nose or did a bus park on your face.

 
Many pieces in The Financial Times are available by registering for free, while others are accessible only to subscribers.

It is an excellent publication, and well worth the money. It is amazing that some members who routinely pontificate on financial and monetary matters don't spare a couple of hundred dollars a year to subscribe.

Sara
 
SaraSara said:
It is an excellent publication, and well worth the money. It is amazing that some members who routinely pontificate on financial and monetary matters don't spare a couple of hundred dollars a year to subscribe.
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I agree. It's the only paper I read regularly. It costs twice what the other English papers cost: two quid for the FT versus a quid for the Guardian, Independent, Times. But you get what you pay for.
 
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