blacklistednews.com says paying off national debt impossable

reply to post by Subjective Truth


Sadly.
I think you are right.
History supports you statement and there are many examples to site.

I may be wrong, but I seem to remember reading an article on Forbes.com a year or 2 ago that stated if the feds raised everyones tax rate to 99%, the debt would still never be paid off.

If that is the case, we are screwed in a way that redefines the word clusterf*ck.

Mathematically impossible, unless more presses are built to print U.S. 1000 dollar bills and insist all parties that are owed money take it in cash and accept that there is nothing to back the newly printed fiat money.

I'm probably just a raving lunatic, who has no idea what the "real" world is like, but I suggest everyone "reset". Everybody forgive everybody's debts and start over. Yeah, I am a raving lunatic.

Wouldn't forgiving everyone's debt be the very definition of bankruptcy?

Just a thought...if we did declare bankruptcy, our debtors would not be the only ones starting from scratch.

Besides, can we even imagine an Initial Gross National Overhead investment?

If it's not entirely apparent, we just aren't paying attention.

Money = Debt, and Debt = Money. Get rid of the debt, get rid of the money. Switch to barter system. Yeah! If only we had the capacity of production we once had.

this is why we all use paper money now

when the banks fall, no-one is going to except our flimsy pieces of paper for anything.

if you have $30,000 cash in a safe or $30,000(cash/assets/stocks/anything) in the bank, when the time comes that cash is not even going to be worth the paper it is printed on.

its time for the world to get off IOU notes, stay away from banks and use something that actually has a value. But what to use? I certainly dont want to live in a place where i am lugging bars of gold everywhere i go.

Originally posted by GreenBicMan
reply to post by wdkirk

 

Besides Spain, Greece, Portugal, [Insert any other small Euro country] all put together most likely dont equal what Microsoft brings in every year.. fun to talk about, but not really anything too big.

Remember Dubai's terrible problem etc.. yeah

SERIOUSLY UNTRUE.

Consider...

- Sovereign debt has usually been highly rated and is held by other Governments which would transfer a chain of catastrophe and by major main street banks - a crash here would make it all but impossible for any country to finance any budget deficit and all funding for priate ventures, even restocking supermarket shelves would disappear.. Corporate debt is lower regarded and held more by investment trusts. Sure, a bunch of seriously rich people would become seriously poor overnight and many people would loose their kids college fund if Microsoft or Disney went under but it is survivable.
- A collapse of a sovereign nation would mean mass collapse in services like law, air traffic control etc. Furthermore, many major corporations like Microsoft survive on Government contracts which they would neither be paid on nor would there be any new ones in the pipeline. If Microsoft were to fail, its competitors would merely take up the slack generally.
- BRITAIN is also amongst the countries going down. As an English speaking country, if it fails, the Americans would see the wrting on the wall and it would trigger the same in the US. Additionally, if France, UK or USA collapse, then there are three countries in the world facing possible mass terrorism or civil war with one or both sides armed with nukes.

Originally posted by lagnar
Wouldn't forgiving everyone's debt be the very definition of bankruptcy?

So, you'd be happy to see all your savings and your pension fund declared ZERO and worthless? Because sovereign debt is EXACTLY what the pension funds and your banks has been paying it into.

reply to post by aristocrat2


Countries are not on the line like corporate debt.

They do not need to pay it off all at one time

Like I said, US Markets piss the GDP of these countries daily - in fact I would go to say that Microsoft folding would have 10x bigger impact on markets than PIIGS failing -

Well maybe this is something like an insider joke but you wouldn't want to live in a world where 100% of this debt was payed off. LoL ... or so I remember.

Originally posted by Kr0nZ
this is why we all use paper money now

when the banks fall, no-one is going to except our flimsy pieces of paper for anything.

if you have $30,000 cash in a safe or $30,000(cash/assets/stocks/anything) in the bank, when the time comes that cash is not even going to be worth the paper it is printed on.

its time for the world to get off IOU notes, stay away from banks and use something that actually has a value. But what to use? I certainly dont want to live in a place where i am lugging bars of gold everywhere i go.

Which would make financing of Government debt impossible, trigger sovereing debt default, knock out all Police, Army, Air traffic control and bridge repair. Furthermore, if everyone tries to dump bonds and go into physical assets, that is PRECISELY why hyperinflation would occur with a tine of beans at $800 a tin within a month.

Originally posted by GreenBicMan
reply to post by aristocrat2

 

They do not need to pay it off all at one time

The question is no longer how to pay it off but simply servicing the debt.

Once they can't service the debt, all Government services crash, Police, Fire, Air Traffic Control, Army...all gone.

Originally posted by kyred
Mathematically impossible, unless more presses are built to print U.S. 1000 dollar bills and insist all parties that are owed money take it in cash and accept that there is nothing to back the newly printed fiat money.

Technically they could do that, BUT with nothing to back it, you face instant Zimbabwe style inflation.

Here's an interesting concept. Which is there more of...star in the sky or points in Zimbabwe's inflation? Answer Stars in the sky by a meagre 50%

reply to post by aristocrat2


I think it just gets rescheduled and then you owe money and get a slap on the wrist and banned from getting the leverage you once had.

Can you think of a time that you are describing has happened?

What happened when Iceland went down? I don't remember reading about stuff like that, unless they haven't officially bit the bullet yet.

Originally posted by Derised Emanresu
reply to post by itsawild1

 

There are heaps of countries in similar positions.
Heaps.
Greece.
Spain.
Iceland.
Zimbabwe.
India.
Italy.
Japan(I think the national debt to GDP was like 170%).
GDP to debt ratios are incredibly high all around the globe.

Not quite... Canada, which had a debt of nearly 100% of its GDP has now the lowest of any major western nation.

If there is a worldwide collapse, Canadians will be able to buy a cup of coffee, a sandwich and a soup with a (CAN) $5 and still be able to afford to buy up a medium sized European nation with the change.

The debt could be payed off tomorrow if we chose to do so. All we have to do is print the money. In fact that is exactly what we should do.

America has been running on debt because there is not enough money for the economy to run properly. Let's print the money, pay off the debt and face the consequences of what inflation would come. I think it would not be as bad as envisioned by many, as this money is already represented in the economy as debt which is then leveraged many times over. Remove the debt by printing money and this leverage would go away, pretty much keeping supply and demand in check.

Even if we had high inflation and a much lower dollar things would not be so bad as we would immediately become much more competitive on an international scale. Let's print the money and put this behind us and the bankers out of the leverage busines.

A mega-corporation cannot be compared to a nation´s GDP.

If Microsoft went under, it would hardly be felt in Europe or in the US other
than by adding to the unemployed 93,000 Microsoft personnel, and additional
charges to the unemployment benefits, straining the national budget by tax losses.

Microsoft only has a turnover of 58 billion $.

If the PIGS went under, it would cause world-wide trouble in the international money market.

reply to post by Udo Hohnekamp Lux.


Do you live in America?

Do you think a country that produces feta cheese,ferrari's,soccer talent and some tennis stars is going to do anything?

We could easily bail them out right now and I'm telling you it's not even a blip on our radar.

Originally posted by aristocrat2

Originally posted by Derised Emanresu
reply to post by itsawild1

 

There are heaps of countries in similar positions.
Heaps.
Greece.
Spain.
Iceland.
Zimbabwe.
India.
Italy.
Japan(I think the national debt to GDP was like 170%).
GDP to debt ratios are incredibly high all around the globe.

Not quite... Canada, which had a debt of nearly 100% of its GDP has now the lowest of any major western nation.

If there is a worldwide collapse, Canadians will be able to buy a cup of coffee, a sandwich and a soup with a (CAN) $5 and still be able to afford to buy up a medium sized European nation with the change.

last time i checked Canadas debt was around 56 Billion, tho they will never tell you that a TV

check it out for yourself
SEC filling for Canada
yes Canada appears to be a buisness in US, so i would imagine US falls so does Canda

If they government wanted to pay back the national debt, they could just drastically cut spending for a year and increase taxes such that the debt would be paid in a year or two. Poof, done.

Here's how easy it would be. Say there's $10 trillion in debt and $1 trillion in cash in circulation. When the government gets a dollar from tax revenue, it can be immediately used to buy back debt, so that dollar goes back into circulation. So we now have $9,999,999,999,999 in debt and $1 trillion in circulation. Repeat this process a whole lot and the debt is gone.

[edit on 7-2-2010 by bob135]