Friday, July 22, 2011

A Little Truth A Little Fear

Years ago, I had a discussion with my uncle concerning the national debt.  This would have been in the 80's.  My uncle had reached senior management status as a career diplomat and was a really great guy whom I loved and admired.

Anyway, I was fussing and fuming about the debt and the hole we were digging for ourselves and his calm response was, "What does it matter?  It's money we owe to ourselves."  Pretty much the same thing Tricky Dicky Cheney said.  I have also been told that same thing by some senior businessmen and other political insiders, including a U.S. Representative.

The other day, the Walking Man waxed profane on this subject and published this chart, which I unashamedly stole from him.



I know from other sources that these figures are pretty darned accurate and as you can clearly see, the great majority of the national debt is owed to ourselves, not to some foreign debt-mongers who are gonna soon take over and abuse our women and children.  Now, I am not suggesting that the debt to ourselves isn't important, in fact, the debt to Social Security and the retirement funds is damned important, but these figures do raise some interesting questions.

First, I would like to know who the 42.2% that comprise U.S. Individuals and Institutions are.  I'll wager that at least some of them are the same SOBs who took the TARP money, bought U.S. Securities with it, and then sold them back to the Treasury at a profit.  A first class circle jerk.  But I imagine the great majority of it is individuals and investment funds who hold U.S. Bonds.

Secondly, it's damned time for the Government to step up and admit that they have squandered the Social Security Trust Fund so-as-to hide the true cost of their boondoggles.  I believe the only two presidents I ever heard tell the truth on this issue were Jimmy Carter and Geo W. Bush, as much as I hate to admit the latter.

Now here's the rest of the story.


9 comments:

  1. One good bit of thieving deserves another!

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  2. I stole this video from WM and put it on my blog. Now I will steal yours to put on FB.

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  3. Damn! Here I was thinking I could stimulate some good conversation and all I've done is hatched a bunch of thieves. I guess it takes one to know one.

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  4. You's been robbed, dude! And btw, make that 3 lifts. No, wait, I actually stole it from walking man...or was it Susan? Hmmmmm.

    I might as well add this to my pissed-off-and-want-to-bludgeon-someone list. The guy is right, the mealy-mouth asstards in D.C. are not talking about this shit.

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  5. I still cannot believe the republicans scream about deficits now but ignored the national debt Bush ran up during his years in office. It screams utter hypocrisy to the American public and themselves.

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  6. Alright! Now we're getting somewhere. One more thief and an irate citizen. I suppose we're all irate citizen thieves.

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  7. Debt is a fact of life, it really always has been. But continually upping the amount of debt, and not attempting to pay it down is BS. And yes, Beach Bum, you are 100% correct, EXCEPT I'm not sure the American public is smart enought to SPELL hypocrisy, so they surely don't understand it.

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  8. I just wish the whole system would come crashing down to Planet of the Apes level NOW so we don't have to live through the next 15 or so years listening to all the jabbering fools wondering why everything is all fucked up all of a sudden.

    Personally, I'm sitting here in sweltering NYC wondering if something is going to knock out the power grid across several states again. It's about time for a Black Out.

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  9. Here's the problem--if you or I had run up an incredible debt, we couldn't pay off our bills and the interest from our credit cards just piled up, would all those nice creditors say: Hey, WM, Mr. C, JadedJ and folks, we need you to stay solvent, so we will grant you a reprieve so that you don't declare bankruptcy.

    Naw, I didn't think so. Yes, I'm not the federal government, so who gives a hoot about me. But last time I checked, I funded the damn thing.

    I'm too hot right now to come up with anything intelligent.

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