Kotlikoff on NPR Hits US$211 TRILLION Debt … Economist Calls Entitlements A Massive Ponzi Scheme And Says US Is Actually $211 Trillion In Debt … In an interview with NPR, former Reagan economic adviser Laurence Kotlikoff said the U.S.’s “true indebtedness” amounts to $211 trillion. That’s more than 15 times the $14 trillion official figure. “We’re focused just on the official debt, so we’re trying to balance the wrong books,” Kotlikoff said, naming Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for the skyrocketing unofficial figure. If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. – Business Insider
US Government Incensed by Wall Street Corruption, Attacks Wall Street … Hartmann: A French Revolution on Corps – off with their Corporate Heads! …We learned this week that Wall Street needs to lawyer up – because the Federal Housing Finance Agency is filing suit against more than a dozen of the nation’s biggest banks – accusing the banksters of selling junk-mortgage securities to investors – which was the trigger of Bush’s 2008 financial crisis. Mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lost more than $30 billion after the banksters hustled them into buying these piles of mortgage junk – and now the government is coming to collect. – Thom Hartmann; The Big Picture
Iraq War – Declare Victory and Leave? … The Obama administration has decided to drop the number of U.S. troops in Iraq at the end of the year down to 3,000, marking a major downgrade in force strength, multiple sources familiar with the inner workings and decisions on U.S. troop movements in Iraq told Fox News. Senior commanders are said to be livid at the decision, which has already been signed off by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Panetta, touring sites Tuesday in advance of the Sept. 11 10th commemoration, insisted “no decision has been made” on the number of troops to stay in Iraq. “That obviously will be the subject of negotiations with the Iraqis and as a result of those negotiations. As I said no decision has been made of what the number will be,” he said. The US currently has 45,000 troops in Iraq. – Fox News
Kotlikoff on NPR Hits US$211 TRILLION Debt
Economist Calls Entitlements A Massive Ponzi Scheme And Says US Is Actually $211 Trillion In Debt … In an interview with NPR, former Reagan economic adviser Laurence Kotlikoff said the U.S.’s “true indebtedness” amounts to $211 trillion. That’s more than 15 times the $14 trillion official figure. “We’re focused just on the official debt, so we’re trying to balance the wrong books,” Kotlikoff said, naming Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for the skyrocketing unofficial figure. If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That’s the fiscal gap… Why are these guys thinking about balancing the budget?…They should try and think about our long-term fiscal problems. His comments were reminiscent of a Bloomberg editorial he wrote last year. – Business Insider
Dominant Social Theme: These are just numbers and don’t mean anything.
Free-Market Analysis: Laurence Kotlikoff, who made news last year via Bloomberg when he wrote that the US was $200 trillion in debt, is at it again. Now he’s gone on the flagship of US state media and made the same statement. He hasn’t backed off a bit and is reemphasizing that when one tallies up US debt, it needs to be done within the context of the country’s entire responsibilities.
For some reason (we can surely guess why), politicians and mainstream media economists have been reluctant to speak out about “true indebtedness” – but this doesn’t make the numbers go away. Between military expenditures and redistribution programs like welfare and social security, the US is facing an impossible task. And this is Kotlikoff’s point, obviously. The US isn’t just broke. It’s bankrupt.
Of course, as DB follows the memes of the elite, we would also hypothesize that Kotlikoff’s points surely make a case for increased US austerity. And as we have pointed out in the past, austerity and anti-corruption campaigns that are afflicting more and more countries are actually quite authoritarian in nature and increase the power of the state.
It is an open point as to whether Kotlikoff has a larger agenda or not. Certainly the US’s longterm fiscal problems are even more severe than the short-term ones. But we would argue the solution is not austerity but a radical reshaping of the entire Western economy. Start by shutting down central banks and go from there.
US Government Incensed by Wall Street Corruption, Attacks Wall Street
Hartmann: A French Revolution on Corps – off with their Corporate Heads! …We learned this week that Wall Street needs to lawyer up – because the Federal Housing Finance Agency is filing suit against more than a dozen of the nation’s biggest banks – accusing the banksters of selling junk-mortgage securities to investors – which was the trigger of Bush’s 2008 financial crisis. Mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lost more than $30 billion after the banksters hustled them into buying these piles of mortgage junk – and now the government is coming to collect. – Thom Hartmann; The Big Picture
Dominant Social Theme: It’s about time that Fedgov politicians went after America’s corrupt private sector. Thank goodness for government. They’ll take these people out.
Free-Market Analysis: We’ve always kept our eye on what Western governments are doing to the private sector in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis (which is ongoing). We’ve done this because of what happened after the 1929 stock market crash.
The 1929 stock market crash and subsequent depression were caused by government (and Federal Reserve) interference in the market place. Instead of reducing government, Congress and the President went on a wild regulatory spree in the 1930s that resulted in the SEC, NASD and numerous regulations and laws that have only become more onerous as the years have gone by.
Today, the financial sector of the US (and Europe) are not recognizably free-market. One may call them socialist, fascist or even authoritarian, but the idea that Western securities industries are anything but a kind of government appendage at this point is risible.
And now the US government is getting ready to sue Wall Street over mortgages. Wall Street and the federal government are so intertwined at this point that it is almost impossible to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. In suing Wall Street, the federal government might as well be suing itself. But that won’t be how the lawsuit will be reported.
The meme of the avenging government is still alive in the 21st Century, despite a century’s worth of disastrous securities regulations. What did the millions of regulations now on the books do to ameliorate the latest great, financial crisis? Absolutely nothing. Now the US fedgov will sue Wall Street. And what will it accomplish? Nothing more than what came before.
Iraq War – Declare Victory and Leave?
The Obama administration has decided to drop the number of U.S. troops in Iraq at the end of the year down to 3,000, marking a major downgrade in force strength, multiple sources familiar with the inner workings and decisions on U.S. troop movements in Iraq told Fox News. Senior commanders are said to be livid at the decision, which has already been signed off by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Panetta, touring sites Tuesday in advance of the Sept. 11 10th commemoration, insisted “no decision has been made” on the number of troops to stay in Iraq. “That obviously will be the subject of negotiations with the Iraqis and as a result of those negotiations. As I said no decision has been made of what the number will be,” he said. The US currently has 45,000 troops in Iraq. – Fox News
Dominant Social Theme: The war is won. Bring ’em home. Iraq is a proud nation now, independent and free.
Free-Market Analysis: Thousands of soldiers are injured and dead due to the Iraq war, and yet a reason for fighting still eludes the establishment, which has tried out numerous rationales. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was the first one. Then we heard that al-Qaeda was active in Iraq. Finally, it was determined that the US had gone to war to aid democracy in Iraq.
Of course, none of these reasons justified a trillion dollar war. None of them justified spreading depleted uranium (giving rise to birth defects) that has afflicted much of Iraq ever since. And the democracy that Iraq is supposed to be experiencing is of a minimalist sort to say the least.
Like most wars, Iraq is petering out without providing substantive change. The government is still oppressive – though more chaotic than ever – and partially controlled from Iran so far as we can tell. The economy has been set back numerous years and the war has likely destabilized the sociopolitical scene in Iraq for years to come.
It is in fact possible that Iraq will eventually split up into three countries representing the main groups in Iraq – Shia Muslims, Sunni Muslims and Kurds. Whatever happens, those families who lost loved ones or are living with devastating injuries now will certainly be within their rights to ask what happened in Iraq and whether it was worth the cost. The same could be said for Afghanistan and most if not all of the other illegal wars NATO and America are now engaged in.
