http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjbPZAMked0
See also:
http://www.janhelfeld.com/
That is what you get when you have people running things that did no more than win a popularity contest.
At most, I think only 5% of the adult population would need to stop cooperating to have real change.
well that's technically true....until the debt gets called in and foreigners suddenly own half your country.
we've been propping up the chinese economy with US debt and getting cheap goods for years. The chinese love it because their excess productivity doesn't result in deflation of the yuan (keeping growth high). We love it because we get shiny baubles practically for free.
We love it because we get shiny baubles practically for free.
Not practically, but totally free. The US isn't serious about reimbursing the Chinese of their wealth. That would require that we produce some form of wealth that we can sell back to them. The plan is to just roll over the debt, take new debt to pay off the old debt.
When was the last time the US actually had a balanced budget and paid down some of the debt? Pre 1970? We're on the road to ruin. The plan is to inflate away the debt and other social entitlement programs. Who ever buys a new US treasury bond today and intends to hold it for 5 to 30 years deserves to have what's coming to them.
Also, home owners defaulting on their mortgages (I've heard that has been happening lately) and those investors who bought that junk paper may be getting some form of bailout from Fannie/Freddie or the gov't. It's not being paid for by wealth creation. It's being paid for by inflation. It's not the same. It's really just debt default and it's being papered over by new US dollars.