Global Economic Crisis

The Dysfunctional  American political establishment, already presiding over a very real fiscal crisis due to an economy totally dependent on structural mega-deficits, has most recently added a self-created fiscal crisis, with one third of all federal government workers laid off due to a government shutdown, and debt default for the U.S. Treasury rapidly approaching. At almost the last possible moment, it appears that Congress will approve a Senate-led compromise, which would allow the American government to, in effect, reopen for business, alongside an extension of the debt ceiling, currently set to reach the maximum allowable figure at present on October 17.

According to details thus far being reported, it appears that the deal likely to be approved by the U.S. Congress will allow the government to reopen through February 7, 2014 and debt default avoided  for now by extending the borrowing limit, currently set at $16.7 trillion limit, through January 17, 2014. In other words, nothing is really resolved; all that is agreed on is to kick the proverbial can down the road for a few more weeks, when the next politically-manufactured fiscal crisis will occur. Wall Street, however, only thinks of the short-term, which is why the Dow Jones is soaring once more at this example of legislative  “craftsmanship” by America’s inept politicians.

If Hillary Clinton runs for President of the United States  in 2016, see the video about the book that warned back in 2008 what a second Clinton presidency would mean for the USA:

YouTube

Hillary Clinton Nude

Hillary Clinton Nude

YouTube

HILLARY CLINTON NUDE

WALL STREET KILLS--A CHILLING NOVEL ABOUT WALL STREET GREED GONE MAD

To view the official trailer YouTube video for “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

Wall Street Kills-Official Trailer

In a world dominated by high finance, how far would Wall Street go in search of profits? In Sheldon Filger’s terrifying novel about money, sex and murder, Wall Street has no limits. “Wall Street Kills” is the ultimate thriller about greed gone mad. Read “Wall Street Kills” and blow your mind.

The supposed sole superpower on the globe, the United States of America, has a government largely shut for business-thanks to the nation’s dysfunctional political establishment. It is as though Al-Qaida secretly brainwashed Congress and the White House, and gave them all a script to follow, one that inflicts as much harm as possible on the still-weak American economy.

For the past four days, President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House  John Boehner, have talked past each other, with the government largely mothballed with no budget approved by Congress. The hard-right of the Republican Party is using the shutdown of the government to pressure the Democrats to delay provisions of the Affordable Care Act, more commonly referred to as “Obamacare.” But in all fairness, the entire U.S. political establishment must take responsibility for this example of failed politics. And the worst may be just ahead. If by October 17 Congress does not approve raising the debt ceiling, currently at $16.7 trillion, a financial apocalypse may ensue.  Yet, America’s incompetent politicos seem more fixated on their narrow political agendas than preventing  what may be the mother of all economic crises.

If Hillary Clinton runs for President of the United States  in 2016, see the video about the book that warned back in 2008 what a second Clinton presidency would mean for the USA:

YouTube

Hillary Clinton Nude

Hillary Clinton Nude

YouTube

HILLARY CLINTON NUDE

WALL STREET KILLS--A CHILLING NOVEL ABOUT WALL STREET GREED GONE MAD

To view the official trailer YouTube video for “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

Wall Street Kills-Official Trailer

In a world dominated by high finance, how far would Wall Street go in search of profits? In Sheldon Filger’s terrifying novel about money, sex and murder, Wall Street has no limits. “Wall Street Kills” is the ultimate thriller about greed gone mad. Read “Wall Street Kills” and blow your mind.

Russian roulette is the macabre  game of death, in which a revolver with a single bullet is passed around, each player pointing a gun at his head and pressing the trigger. There is, mathematically speaking, a one in six chance of blowing one’s brains to smithereens. This morbid game of chance, strangely enough, has now been adopted as the primary fiscal model by that once-august body known as the United States Congress.

As numerous commentators have observed, the two-party political oligarchy that dominates American politics has becomes hopelessly polarized. That polarization in turn has morphed into  political paralysis, leading to an inability by policymakers to craft rational economic directives in the midst of an ongoing global economic crisis. The result is tepid economic growth at best, fueled by massive, trillion dollar per annum deficits that require staggering amounts of borrowing by the U.S. Treasury to stave off national insolvency. Therein lies the problem. The Obama administration must periodically come to Congress for authorization to raise the national debt limit; without such congressional approval, the government loses its authority to borrow money.  In a situation where Congress is politically divided, with the Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and venting unrestrained hostility towards President Obama,  the entire economy of the United States is held hostage to this political version of sausage-making. 

The last stand-off over the debt limit led to The Budget Control Act of 2011. The GOP acquiesced to raising the debt limit on condition that the Obama administration concurred with over 900 billion dollars in spending cuts over the next decade. And herein lay the minefield.  Since the Democrats and Republicans could not reach consensus on  those precise deficit reduction measures, they did agree  to creating a poison pill for themselves, which has since become known by the non-pharmaceutical name of sequestration. If Congress could not agree on which spending cuts to implement, arbitrary reductions in federal spending outlays would occur automatically, with 85 billion dollars in budget cuts coming into effect in the current fiscal year.

That wasn’t supposed to happen, for this was playing Russian roulette with fiscal policy and management of the overall national economy. Who in their right mind among the two political parties controlling Congress would want the entire globe to witness American legislators playing a game of Russian roulette as their methodology of economic management?  Yet that is exactly what has now happened.

There are arguments currently underway as to how much of an impact 85 billion dollars in arbitrary spending reductions will have on a still fragile economy. These concerns miss the essential point.  The fact that America’s political establishment has allowed such a spectacle to occur presents a discordant image to the global bond market that is essential for lending the credit that keeps the United States solvent. And increasingly, those critical lenders are seeing the fiscal decision-making of the United States being transformed into a farcical display of political expediency. There will come a time when  the bond vigilantes will simply have had enough of an increasingly dysfunctional political system still acting as though it presides over an unassailable superpower. When that time has come, the mother of all sequestrations will have arrived.