[KAiNE]

Since I joined the Fed, outstanding home-mortgage debt has jumped from $1.8 trillion to $8.2 trillion. Total consumer debt went from $2.7 trillion to $11 trillion. Household debt has quadrupled. And government debt, too, exploded. The feds owed less than $2 trillion in the second Reagan administration, a figure that had been almost constant for the previous 40 years. But under my direction, the red ink has overflowed like the Nile in flood – to over $7 trillion.
During the two terms of George W. Bush alone, the feds have borrowed more money from foreign governments and banks than all other American administrations put together, from 1776 to 2000. And more debt will be added in the eight Bush years than in the previous two hundred. The trade deficit, too, more than tripled since I’ve been at the Fed, from 150.7 to 756.8 billion, and will reach $830 billion in 2006. When I came to power, the United States was still a creditor. Now, it is a debtor, with more than $11 trillion worth of U.S. assets in foreign hands, a more than 500% increase since 1987.
Who can argue with such a record? Who can compete with it? Who would want to?

(copied from web)



-Peace

[romunov]

Here to be precise.

I guess George is just big on shopping, and it's just a coincidence that his campaign contributors and friends are making the big bucks. :hehe:

[KAiNE]

Yep....lol

[schrocat]

Are you near Bell Buckle Tn?

Just wondering...I went to school there.

[KAiNE]

Ahhh... a Webb grad huh? My father went to Webb.
Originaly I am from Southern MS.
I am in Rutherford county TN, near Murfreesboro, not far at all.

[schrocat]

I went for a few years.
My dad graduated from there.

Both my brother and I were asked not to return.
It's a badge of honor between us.

My brother slipped out a window to attend a Stones show in the early 70's...

I was there in the early 80's
I was...perhaps...a little bit...worse.

[KAiNE]

Originally Posted by schrocat

I went for a few years.
My dad graduated from there.

Both my brother and I were asked not to return.
It's a badge of honor between us.

My brother slipped out a window to attend a Stones show in the early 70's...

I was there in the early 80's
I was...perhaps...a little bit...worse.

Ya know.... Ill bet our dad's know each other. Ask him if he remembers a "Swep"
Ahh... the memories!!
I actualy did 5years in the military late 80's to 90 and have many "badge of honor" stories to tell....lmao....

Tell your brother he made a wise decision.... I'd choose the Stones over school any day!! I made a similar decsion on a Floyd show myself!

-Peace

[Qcks]

umm....

by no means do i enjoy the bush administration or support any of their policies, but to be fair, does any one know what the debt to population size is?

I do not doubt that the ratio of debt owed by our government to the individual tax payer is the highest it's ever been but i'd like to see some documentation of it.

(cause the people here ae really good at finding that sorta stuff.)

As far as Alan Greenspan goes, i think the man's a genius. He's probably why our economy isn't complete decimated, course that was probably the implication and i missed that, but i'm a little bit we todded so.......

anyway....

TTFN

[schrocat]

Qcks,

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpdodt.htm

That page has just about all you need without any spin.

From a historical perspective, Fiscal Conservatism in the US sure seems pricey.

[Qcks]

thank you, that's what i wanted to see....

[romunov]

Actually, the current administration has borrowed more money than George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren,William H Harrison,John Tyler, James K Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S Grant, Rutherford B Hayes, James A Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D Eisenhower, John F Kennedy, Lyndon B Johnson, RichardN. Nixon, Gerald R Ford, James E Carter, Ronald W. Reagan, George Herbert W. Bush, and Bill Clinton combined.

And you and your kids and grandkids are gonna have to pay for it.

[schrocat]

Originally Posted by romunov

Actually, the current administration has borrowed more money than George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren,William H Harrison,John Tyler, James K Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S Grant, Rutherford B Hayes, James A Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D Eisenhower, John F Kennedy, Lyndon B Johnson, RichardN. Nixon, Gerald R Ford, James E Carter, Ronald W. Reagan, George Herbert W. Bush, and Bill Clinton combined.

And you and your kids and grandkids are gonna have to pay for it.

Awww man. The GOP just threw a crack party on my credit card and you're laughing...that is so freakin' coooooold!

[Ninong]

I realize that's the consensus of opinion but I believe he will eventually be looked upon as an ineffective Fed chairman. His actions and inactions contributed to the stock market bubble that burst in 2000. The Dow is still not back to where it was in 2000 and the NASDAQ is less than half its previous high.

How did Greenspan contribute to this bubble? By bailing out Long-Term Capital Management in 1998 for one thing. The street got the impression that no matter what stupid things they did, Alan would bail them out.

And what exactly did he do in 1999 when the NASDAQ went up some 89% in a single year (if memory serves me, I don't feel like looking it up)? Absolute nothing except to say that "irrational exuberance" had taken over the markets. I used to use that "irrational exuberance" tag in my signature line until too many of my irrational investments exploded on me and it was no longer amusing.

This is not to say that Greenspan caused all the problems but he sure didn't do much to prevent them. The SEC and the NYSE did virtually nothing while all the brokerages were screwing their customers right and left. Just look at the hundreds of millions of dollars in fines that were eventually paid by all the big players, such as Merril Lynch, because of the deliberate lies told by their analysts. And who exactly was watching Author Anderson? Who was watching the big money center banks? Who was watching the big insurance companies? The truly amazing thing is that so few people have actually faced criminal charges for all of this mess. Sure, Bernie Ebbers got nailed for 25 years and Kenny Boy and Skilling are finally in court today to face the music, but the corporations themselves were pretty much let off the hook. Even the verdict against Author Anderson was reversed because the appeals court found that there was insufficient proof of criminal intent behind all the shredding they did. Besides, Enron and WorldCom, we can't forget outfits like Adelphia, Tyco and HealthSouth. Talk about a bunch of crooks!

Alan fiddled while Rome burned would be a good way to describe his lack of attention while the NASDAQ went beserk in 1999 and early 2000. And then, once the bubble burst, he panicked and did 13 rate cuts all the way down to 1%. What are we, Japan?

And what did that do? It did exactly what any moron could have told you it would do. It created a real estate bubble! Now he's in the process of reversing the rate cuts but so far the real estate market has resisted. Only in the past few months has it actually slowed down. That bubble is about to burst, too, it's just a matter of when. I thought it would burst two years ago but all it did was inflate at a faster pace.

And what happens when the real estate bubble bursts? Take a guess. Consumer spending drives the economy. Consumer spending has been fueled by rapid appreciation in home values over the past six years. Homeowners have been living way beyond their means by refinancing their mortgages every 18 months (or less). Some people even have those idiotic interest-only mortgages. What do you think is going to happen when real estate values plunge 20-30% (at least) in the overheated areas? How will those folks service their credit card debt and Mercedes loans and boat loans if they can't use their homes as an ATM machine? Defaults will zoom, leading to even lower real estate values. Some mortgage lenders will find themselves in trouble.

If Alan Greenspan is such a genius, then how do we explain WorldCom, Enron, Author Anderson and the hundreds of dot-coms that went belly up on his watch? If he's such a genius, why didn't he do something to prevent the NASDAQ crash? If he's such a genius, why does he have to raise rates a dozen or more times in succession and then drop them a dozen or more times to fix his previous "exuberance?" You can't drop much lower than 1% unless you're the Japanese. And, belive it or not, their economy is finally taking off after some two decades of disaster.

The U.S. real estate market today feels an awful lot like Japan and Hong Kong prior to the fall. I'm not saying we will drop anywhere near as much as they did percentagewise but we will drop. And once it gets rolling, it will pick up steam as the defaults pile up. I wouldn't be surprised to see a 30% correction in south Florida, the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston and other overheated markets. It won't happen all at once. And it may not start for another six months or even another year but it will happen. And then it will drag on for five or six years before turning around. The same thing happened in California between 1989-1996. The market peaked in 1989 and started falling and it didn't even begin to recover until late 1996 and early 1997. Then it went ballistic from 1998 to 2005, especially between 2001-2004 as interest rates were falling.

Oh, well... I guess I'm one of those people who doesn't think Alan Greenspan is a genius in spite of what Andrea Mitchell tells us.



P.S. -- If you want a general idea of what's about to happen, just look at what has happened to oil and gold since we invaded Iraq in March 2003. In March 2003, the Amex gold bugs index was at 118, today it's at 334. The Amex oil index was at 420, today it's at 1145. Those are pretty big runups but the interesting thing is that both oil and gold have excellerated in the past six months. Right now (this very minute) oil is $68.10/bbl and gold is $567/oz. That should give you a clue as to what the markets expect next. Oil could go ballistic if anybody attacks Iran and it can't fall below around $52/bbl because OPEC will cut back production. Gold has been going ballistic for the past six months, running up from around $410 to today's $567. Not exactly what you could call a vote of confidence in the administration's ability to rein in the deficit or curtail the balance of trade imbalance. Oil is headed for $100/bbl before the end of Bush's term and gold will hit $1,000/oz sometime in the next five or six years. The price of oil will be influenced by the geopolitical situation and the price of gold will be influenced by worldwide political turmoil and the tanking of the U.S. economy following the bursting of the real estate bubble. Cheers!

[romunov]

What would happen to the dollar if ("speaking hypothetically, of course") Iran opened its own bourse and started selling oil in euros?

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by romunov

What would happen to the dollar if ("speaking hypothetically, of course") Iran opened its own bourse and started selling oil in euros?

Whether oil or any other commodity is denominated in dollars or euros isn't nearly as important as whether the dollar is dropped as the world's reserve currency. That's a Catch 22 that no one wants to talk about, including the countries that have been semi-quietly switching out of dollars (e.g., China).

[romunov]

Iraq switched from dollar to euro... got bombed. Iran is switching to euro...

[sihaya]

Originally Posted by romunov

Iraq switched from dollar to euro... got bombed. Iran is switching to euro...

Oh, that hurts man...



Right now the US is like a teenager with his/her first credit card. It's bad now, but hopfully if we're lucky enough to get a president with half a brain next election, things could get better.

Remember that the US GPA is about $12 trillion. So you could look at the US like a medical student coming out of med school. He/she is about $200k in the hole, but he/she will be making about $200k/year from then on out (hopefully).

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by sihaya

Remember that the US GPA is about $12 trillion.

I think you mean we have a $12 trillion GDP.

[sihaya]

LOL!! Yes, I meant GDP... lord, what's wrong with me today?

[romunov]

Well, Syria dropped the dollar too...