Do you think the US should raise the debt ceiling or deliberately default?

We’re screwed either way, so it’s almost six of one, half a dozen of the other.

When the stock market closes early on August 3 because it has dropped more than 30%, please ask the Tea Party person how they are going to restore your 401K. When interest rates rise dramatically overnight, ask the Tea Partier how they’ll get interest under control again.

The US defaulting will drive us much deeper into another recession.

Oh yeah, the US defaulting on it’s obligations will just do wonders for the world economy.

@ETpro I read the question as, “When you jump off the bridge do you want a parachute or a coffin?”
The default would throw the country into a real TEA PARTY. We as country would be paying even more to borrow money ( read it—do business with rest of the world). It would not make any difference if we were on the world all by ourselves but we are connected monetarily with the rest of the world. Or we could stop buying anything foreign!

@Adirondackwannabe

It’s going to eventually anyway. Maybe sooner is better.

@CaptainHarley Have you gone into bankruptcy?

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I read what you say as, default is okay.

Once, many years ago.

Defaulting would be idiotic, especially considering the plans on the table to cut at least 1.7 trillion from the budget, and as much as 4 trillion. The Tea Party, as per usual, has no clue what they’re talking about. The best case scenario from international economists is that we lose our perfect credit rating, and the economy goes into a recession from the fall-out. Worst case scenario, our credit rating drops significantly, people stop buying our bonds and we can’t pay for anything and the US ceases to be the worlds superpower.

Republicans need to quit being the party of no, come to the table and compromise, and agree to the closing tax loop holes and raising taxes on the richest in this country.

Default would be a terrible thing. The dollar would be devalued worldwide. We really don’t know where the problems would stop. The layoffs would be massive. Government contractors would not be paid.

We could spiral into a worldwide depression.

The Tea Partiers are insane and ignorant.

@CaptainHarley

Okay than how many years to get yourself straight and to the point where you buy a car or get a credit card. I don’t think the country could wait for a length of time with all the foreign bond holders asking for immediate payment.

Raise the debt ceiling. And then the leaders agree on policies that will lower the deficit.

Easier said than done? YES.

I realize that the US Economy is significantly more complex than my personal finances, but if I found myself in a position where the only way to pay my debts was to open more credit cards, my first item of business would be to STOP SPENDING MORE MONEY THAN I’M MAKING!!!

The dollar has been devaluing for many years. Look at the price of gold (i.e, real money) and you can see that. The US Government has been, effectively, taxing the world’s middle and lower classes for years by printing as much money as it wanted.

Of course they should raise the ceiling. What I truly wonder about is where are all these “Professional Politicians” hiding that Obama says are smarter than us who should be able to get this job accomplished? What is so freaking hard about facing facts and balancing a budget???

Term limits…Term limits…Term limits…Term limits…Term limits…

@Tropical_Willie

You’re comparing apples and oranges.

If the U.S. defaults, shit will hit the fan. Badly.

If the US continues to spend money like it was going out of style, shit will hit the fan. Badly!

@CaptainHarley That, too, because it would lead to default.

I would really love it if you Americans dragged my country, me and my family down with you.

So default, please. You’re bound to make loads of new friends from other countries.

If you read the Tea Party position, it is not to default but rather to pay the interest and let other things get stalled. There is plenty of money to pay the interest, SS and military salaries. Much of Washington however would be shut down (I’m not sure how bad that is). The problem I see, is that if no agreement is reached, Obama will have absolute control over what gets paid and what does not. I hope all of you have confidence in his ability to make the right decision because I don’t. Obama has just refused an extension (3 months I believe) of the debt ceiling and I have not heard a single word about anything he will cut from the budget. We know he wants the tax hikes but what is he willing to give up? Anything? How much pain is he willing to impose on the public to get his way? I suspect he willing to put us through a lot to accomplish what he believes America should look like. It’s like the Cuban Missile Crisis. We have the blockade in place. Is Obama willing to fire the first shot if we hit Aug 2? I think he is.

@atomicmonkey

Mind your own Country, please.

@atomicmonkey I agree with @CaptainHarley mind your own country.

I don’t get it though… anyone would know, if you are about to default on your credit card debt, and there is now visible way to get caught up, do you take out more credit cards to continue affording things?! ?! ?! HELL NO!

I know it’s more economics than I’ve been schooled on, but if you wouldn’t do it with your own credit cards, why would the country keep doing it, since the debt is divvied up to us anyway?!

@CaptainHarley and @mrrich724: When your country threatens to affect global economy, you make it my business. I’d love to not be concerned about this. Newsflash – you’re citizens of the world.

If your first comment were as mature as your followup comment, it probably wouldn’t have garnered responses from us…

@mrrich724 Point taken. I am prone to multiple sarcasms.

Seriously though, you people need to think this through. If you can look past the sarcasm, my first point is that you risk making bitter enemies of the entire developed world – not just the Middle East. Desperate shmoes with nothing to lose, a passport and a belly full of hate. By the thousands. If you’re a cashed-up Superpower, this needn’t concern you. Those days are fast coming to a close, however.

The price you pay may not be monetary.

See how I come off sounding like an extremist when you strip me of my precious sarcasm? Now, back to making smartarsed comments with me…

@atomicmonkey

No offense intended but I’m not a citizen of the world, I’m an American. I don’t have a problem helping with the rest of the world where we can but I won’t fall on my sword for them. We need to take care of Americas problem first and that will help the rest of the world more than anything else.

@Jaxk I think you are missing the FACT long term US Bonds are in the hands of other countries. That if we fail to pay off a debt for any reason it dominoes into the other country.
Just think about having someone sending you worth check and your bank charge you for” Not Sufficient Funds” and you owe another country for oil, food, ships, cars etc.
We are all on the same world.

@Tropical_Willie

No, I’m not missing the fact. There are two totally different ideas on how to fix our problem. I know what I believe to be the best if not the only solution. Others disagree. Whether the bonds are held domestically or internationally does not affect what I believe to be the best solution. Just as when Obama forced BP to skip their dividend payments, he didn’t care where the stock was held. Or when he trumped the bankruptcy laws when distributing the assets of gem. He didn’t care whether the stock was domestically or internationally.

There should be no reason to default on any of our debt. But I certainly wouldn’t alter my ideas of what is best for this country because I’m a citizen of the world.

Oh, I do see your point @atomicmonkey It’s definitely an undercurrent of the news here that the rest of the world is bracing themselves as much as we are to see how our leaders resolve this issue.

If we’re going to talk about the effects that the economic activity has on others, we need to talk about the environmental damage inherent in industrial economic activity, and the effect that has on humans abroad. We need to talk about how the economy we’re engaging in has been used as a way to force subsistence farmers into debt slavery in India and various other countries, and how multinational corporations are at this very second violently evicting indigenous peoples in the Amazon (who’ve lived their since time immemorial) so they can clearcut and build hydroelectic dams (which destroy numerous native species) to power things like aluminum smelters.

Fuck the economy. Let them default.

TL;DR

The way I see it, we’ve raised the ceiling so many times already that it’s become a tradition. Then again, unless we get spending under control and revamp our tax system, whether to raise the ceiling again or default is comparable to choosing between slitting your wrists and bleeding out slowly or doing a Kurt Cobain impersonation by eating a shotgun.

It is unusual for politicians in our time to get elected unless they become whores for those who think that they are entitled to other peoples money.
I think everybody knows what is going to happen.

Prohibit the sale and consumption of alcohol within the District of Columbia and they will have the budget mess solved by 5.

@CaptainHarley I had planned on just expressing my opinion and letting all othere stand. I thought I’d ask this like a survey question and not a debate. But you set me up to express my opinion in answering yours. So to you and any others who favor surrender now, here’s my take on that.

Given what you know of bankruptcy, would you just deliberately declare it and ruin your credit worthiness, see much of what you own carted off to auction, have your house foreclosed, just because you decided to declare bankruptcy when financially you had the ability to remain solvent?

The US has been in deeper debt before and gotten out. Debt is figured by what you earn annually versus what you owe. To a man making minimum wage, (taking home $241.96 a week or $12 581.92 a year) $10,000 in debt would be a crushing debt load. To a man making $2,419.60 a week or $125,819.20 a year, carrying a debt of $10,000 would be trivial. Most likely, he would own a home and have mortgage debt alone in the range of 2 to 2.5 times his annual income, and nobody would think he was broke.

The US national debt is around 90% of our GDP. We are very, very far from broke. We need to get our financial house in order before we are broke. But when you are in a gunfight, do you shoot yourself to prevent the other guy from doing it. We;d be shooting ourselves if we deliberately defaulted.

@Poser The stop spending answer works if you;re an individual, family or even a corporation, and if you can stop spending. But let’s say you find yourself in more debt that you can handle, you review your spending, and you’re just spending on absolute necessities like a roof over your head, enough to eat, transportation to and from work and basic medical care. Do you move into the street, dtop eating, forget about medications, stop going to work to save on transportation. Probably, you take a second job, raise revenues, and pay down that debt till you can handle it.

If the US stops spending right now, that will take trillions in factory, construction and durable goods orders out of an economy that is already on the ropes. Millions more Americans will lose their jobs. Then they will default on their mortgages and the housing market will take a second nosedive. Doing that will not make the deficit go down. It will make it go up.

Here’s and interesting article today explaining why the commonly recited claim why the US is in a deep debt crisis is a falsehood..

@ETpro

He sounds just like the average sub prime mortgage buyer. Hell these rates are great, I won’t even think about what happens when the rates go back to normal. We saw what happened and apparently we didn’t learn anything. Or at least some of us didn’t.

@Jaxk Ad hoiminem away. Inconvenient facts must be killed in some way so the conclusion desired can be supported. I don’t think the author was talking about buying a hoime. I sure hope that new buyers now have wised up regarding the shinny attraction of an ARM with it’s low initial payments. I’m sure there are still some out there that have learned nothing. But the article is about evaluating the indicators that show whether the US is currently in a debt crisis or not. It isn’t a guy talking about buying his first home.

@ETpro A theory can be considered proven fact if less than 50% of the data has to be thrown away to conform with preconceived notions.

@jerv

: /

California should have waited on Carmegeddon till after we defaulted, because according to the Tea Party, roads will fix themselves if only we quit paying to fix them.

@ETpro Not quite. We need to stop paying the government for them, sell them off and privatize them, and then have them maintained by a benevolent corporation.

@jerv I hope think you forgot the ~ on that comment.

@incendiary_dan Correct; I forgot.

@jerv & @incendiary_dan I can just imagine what a cross-country trip would cost with every piece of the Interstate highway system a toll road.

@ETpro Small price to pay for low taxes and lack of government interference though :D

@jerv Hardly. I have asked and asked, but no Tea Party ideologue can point to a natin state in today’s world where this theiry works.

@ETpro But we are too big to fail. We are special. We can be the first!

Okay, I have go double over in laughter right now…

@jerv Ha! I guess we have to bail ourselves out then. Let’s pull the bung to force the ship to start taking on water and sinking, then work frantically to bail it out because it’s too bit to fail.

Welcome to the Great American Soap Opera. Of course they will raise the debt ceiling, they have no choice other than admitting that the credit-based consumer-driven “fiat-moneyed economy based on fractional reserve banking” (Not my woding,but I’ll go with it for expediency here) is both corrupt and ineffective and, more importantly, lose a lot of wealth through the chaos that would result world-wide if they just let the whole deal free-fall—kind of like what we’re seeing in Greece and the Arab World, only more wide-spread and in more important places (to US). Since nobody at the wheel in DC is actually discussing alternative systems, like going back to the Austrian School, they will extend at the last minute and continue to limp along under the constant interminable threat of default until it is resolved through a significant war and the even more profitable massive rebuilding process after the war (Yea! JOBS!), or, in other words, until enough wealth has been churned to make it safe to hand the empire over to the next political inheritor—safe for the extremely wealthy (who have demonstrated time and time again that they have no political loyalties) and with the least threat of anarchy among the cloying masses. By whatever means necessary.

What we are seeing, in this “recession,” is nothing more than a reset, like that of the 1930s, a kind of Jubileum (See your O.T.) for the global oligarchy—only with a better braking mechanism (overnight central bank and federal reserve manipulation of the markets ensuring a disaster i slow-mo and draw in more suckers with false highs to buy more worthless paper) and invisible bread lines (food stamps) to prevent panic and unrest among the unwashed. When the books once again show a healthy banking system (for it is only the books that count, not the reality) we will start all over again, buying back, with interest, the wealth we have lost from the banks we saved from default with our treasuries, our taxes. (The same banks which take tens of thousands of homes from Americans through foreclosure every month).

This latest Opera Bouffe is, in part, to determine the resolve of the tax-revolting political-activists—once very useful, but now in the face of expediency, just one huge pain in the ass. The question is Will these people be dangerous to both parties in future elections, or can they be brought under control through duress and blackmail like all the fools before them? Oooh, stay tuned. Will they default? Or will they raise the debt ceiling like the Republicans did (many of whom are the same faces sitting now at the table of the President) to the tune of $4 trillion the last time we saw this cheap Saturday afternoon cliffhanger?

Kee-rist, an idiot could write this script.