two days until US default deadline

Killer Wench

Piliger wrote: »

No he won't. The GOP and tea Party will have to own it because the GOP will lose the House and probably the Senate and spend the next decade recovering. The same happened with Gingrich who everybody remembers, and how Clinton wiped the floor with him and the GOP of the time. Obama will not come out of the NSA scandal well but he will be hugely enhanced by this suicide pact by the GOP.

The GOP doesn't hold the Senate now and will not likely hold it for a long time going forward. The House, however, is a different due to heavy gerrymandering that took place after the last census. That, and the fact that liberals tend not to vote during off year elections which is how there was such a move of Tea Partiers into the House.

The whole intention behind this mess was to destroy Obama's legacy. They first attempted to attack the Affordable Care Act and then they realized that they had a better chance at ruining it by pursuing this default debacle.

70% of Americans hold a disfavorable view towards Republicans, but over 50% of Americans believe that Obama has contributed to this mess. The Democratic Party is hovering around 60%.

Over the weekend, there was a massive failure in the food benefit program, SNAP. Machines didn't work in multiple states, and many, many Americans assumed that it was due to the government shutdown when it was not related. There is a disconnect between the rational and gut-check opinions that Americans hold.

Freddy Smelly

donegal__road wrote: »

Plan B: Central banks getting ready for financial Armageddon.





Today's budget may not matter in a few days time.

didnt the soviet union collapse in the 80's????

Hande hoche!

Freddy Smelly wrote: »

didnt the soviet union collapse in the 80's????

It started to but really didn't stop till 1991. Good book by an Irish author http://www.amazon.co.uk/Moscow-December-25-1991-Soviet/dp/184827114X

Cookie_Monster

seamus wrote: »

And of course, there is no Oceania anymore. Nobody is concerned that the collapse of the US would let the Commies run roughshod across Europe and Asia.

Has Australia disappeared or something? What do you mean by that exactly since the continent most certainly is still around.

tdv123

I always knew those damn Americans were Hitler lovers.

seamus

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

Has Australia disappeared or something? What do you mean by that exactly since the continent most certainly is still around.

It's a reference to 1984

You can make a LOT of money off a stock market doing badly.

Indeed, the markets will be a little bit wobbly for the next 48 hours. If you have a few grand to spend and you watch some stocks closely, you should buy up anything which is dipping and then sell it on Friday when the markets are happy again and stocks gone back up.

Won't make you a millionaire, but you'll probably make some beer money for the weekend.

Eight Ball

Delighted ive no savings in the banks because if I did id be sh1tting it.

Plazaman

US Congress is as sneaky as our lads at sneaking in amendments. Seemingly any member congress can call for a vote on any bill at any time, i.e. in this case it would be a vote to end the shutdown. However just before the shutdown happened, the GOP quietly passed a measure that said only the House Majority Leader (Eric Cantor) can call for the shutdown to end.

This means that the most senior member of congress (Speaker of the House) cannot end the shutdown without permission from his own (junior) colleague so I think a default is on the cards.

Vidya below of Chris Van-Hollen (Maryland) trying to get to the bottom of it. P.S. : US politicians waffle more than Irish ones but you'll get the gist by the 5 minute mark.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/0Jd-iaYLO1A?wmode=transparent&showinfo=0&controls=1&enablejsapi=1&rel=0&version=3

General General

Plazaman wrote: »

US Congress is as sneaky as our lads at sneaking in amendments. Seemingly any member congress can call for a vote on any bill at any time, i.e. in this case it would be a vote to end the shutdown. However just before the shutdown happened, the GOP quietly passed a measure that said only the House Majority Leader (Eric Cantor) can call for the shutdown to end.

This means that the most senior member of congress (Speaker of the House) cannot end the shutdown without permission from his own (junior) colleague so I think a default is on the cards.

Vidya below of Chris Van-Hollen (Maryland) trying to get to the bottom of it. P.S. : US politicians waffle more than Irish ones but you'll get the gist by the 5 minute mark.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/0Jd-iaYLO1A?wmode=transparent&showinfo=0&controls=1&enablejsapi=1&rel=0&version=3

Fine big vidya opens when ya click tha' link

donegal__road

Freddy Smelly wrote: »

didnt the soviet union collapse in the 80's????

The world reserve currency is currently the dollar. In the main, all commodities are traded with the dollar. But now the Dollar's role as world's leading reserve currency may be at risk. A few days ago, China called for the dollar to be replaced as global reserve currency.

Jonny7

donegal__road wrote: »

The world reserve currency is currently the dollar. In the main, all commodities are traded with the dollar. But now the Dollar's role as world's leading reserve currency may be at risk. A few days ago, China called for the dollar to be replaced as global reserve currency.

Its one of the reserve currencies, the main one. After that it's the euro, JPY and GBP

The UN, Russia, China and EU have been debating on and off for several years a change in reserves to a non-paper currency.

Eight Ball

donegal__road wrote: »

The world reserve currency is currently the dollar. In the main, all commodities are traded with the dollar. But now the Dollar's role as world's leading reserve currency may be at risk. A few days ago, China called for the dollar to be replaced as global reserve currency.

China is playing it's own game against the US and is very slowly winning. They currently are outspending the US in the cyber war and people who are experts in that field think it's only a matter of time now before the US is shut down by a major cyber based attack.

KyussBishop

Eight Ball wrote: »

China is playing it's own game against the US and is very slowly winning. They currently are outspending the US in the cyber war and people who are experts in that field think it's only a matter of time now before the US is shut down by a major cyber based attack.

The US have the NSA collaborating with GCHQ, and likely a whole bunch of other foreign secret services, to spy on the Internet traffic of the entire world, and have been for years.

There's no such thing as a 'cyber war', but if there was, the US are winning by a long margin, and it's more 'governments vs civilians' than 'US vs China'.

The 'cyber war' nonsense is just perpetuated, to try and justify the massive military spending, put into spying on the populace.

clairefontaine

We have defaulted before.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-treasury-has-never-defaulted-on-its-debt-not-so-fast-historians-say/2013/10/14/bb5b12b0-34a3-11e3-89db-8002ba99b894_story.html

Piliger

Plazaman wrote: »

US Congress is as sneaky as our lads at sneaking in amendments.

How exactly have amendments been sneaked in here ?

Piliger

Killer Wench wrote: »

The GOP doesn't hold the Senate now and will not likely hold it for a long time going forward. The House, however, is a different due to heavy gerrymandering that took place after the last census. That, and the fact that liberals tend not to vote during off year elections which is how there was such a move of Tea Partiers into the House.

The whole intention behind this mess was to destroy Obama's legacy. They first attempted to attack the Affordable Care Act and then they realized that they had a better chance at ruining it by pursuing this default debacle.

70% of Americans hold a disfavorable view towards Republicans, but over 50% of Americans believe that Obama has contributed to this mess. The Democratic Party is hovering around 60%.

Over the weekend, there was a massive failure in the food benefit program, SNAP. Machines didn't work in multiple states, and many, many Americans assumed that it was due to the government shutdown when it was not related. There is a disconnect between the rational and gut-check opinions that Americans hold.

Agreed. One of the challenges that America also faces, illustrated by those numbers, is the enormous amount of lack of knowledge and apathy among huge swathes of the population. Historically this chunk of American society have felt that it is of no interest, the country continued and the economy went through normal cycles, and they just went on with their lives. When asked they have always said how awful the congress is and given negative responses to whatever president is in at the time.

What tends to be slightly hidden is that a good chunk of that chunk, as it were, are also too apathetic to vote. The probable outcome of all of that currently is that as long as Obama stays strong, the GOP will be seen to have been totally and appallingly irresponsible and also to have lost - and there will be a big shift to the Democrats.

I just hope they dont forget this debacle and don't stop the current campaigns for the Move to Amend, and the Anti Corruption Act. These are the only hopes for the system to work again.

KyussBishop

clairefontaine wrote: »

We have defaulted before.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-treasury-has-never-defaulted-on-its-debt-not-so-fast-historians-say/2013/10/14/bb5b12b0-34a3-11e3-89db-8002ba99b894_story.html

That article relies on a semantic trick, playing with words: The payments were delayed, not reneged on.

The potential catastrophe being touted over the US debt, is of debt being reneged on, not delayed - so that's a rather important detail to leave out, in the context of the current debate.

Piliger

clairefontaine wrote: »

We have defaulted before.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-treasury-has-never-defaulted-on-its-debt-not-so-fast-historians-say/2013/10/14/bb5b12b0-34a3-11e3-89db-8002ba99b894_story.html

An irrelevance of no value in the current situation.

GLaDOS

Deal agreed apparently

http://www.thejournal.ie/us-reaches-deal-on-debt-ceiling-1133025-Oct2013

sentient_6

This whole thing confuses me. What have they done only say yay we can borrow more, sure that doesn't fix anything. & why bother setting limits in the first place if they know every time it will just need to be raised.....its clearly not as if they intend to address the imbalance in the mean time.....surely this is only going to come around again in no time after they borrow trillons and trillons in a couple of months(or whatever).

Seachmall

KyussBishop wrote: »

The US have the NSA collaborating with GCHQ, and likely a whole bunch of other foreign secret services, to spy on the Internet traffic of the entire world, and have been for years.

There's no such thing as a 'cyber war', but if there was, the US are winning by a long margin, and it's more 'governments vs civilians' than 'US vs China'.

The 'cyber war' nonsense is just perpetuated, to try and justify the massive military spending, put into spying on the populace.

Of course there's a "cyber war", with China, the US, Israel, Russia and Iran all known to be major players.

Given that Cold War style sleeper cells and spies are still being found it'd be absurd to think the information war hasn't gone digital.

There's no doubt a lot of attacks are coming from civilian groups but, as Stuxnet proved, governments are the biggest threat to each other.

Amirani

No surprises really.

Amirani

sentient_6 wrote: »

This whole thing confuses me. What have they done only say yay we can borrow more, sure that doesn't fix anything. & why bother setting limits in the first place if they know every time it will just need to be raised.....its clearly not as if they intend to address the imbalance in the mean time.....surely this is only going to come around again in no time after they borrow trillons and trillons in a couple of months(or whatever).

Potentially. Strong economic growth and inflationary pressures will ease the debt burden though over the medium to long term. The US fiscal deficit isn't as big a problem as some people make out, particularly given the stagnant economic situation.

donegal__road

it was all theatrics then.. sorry for wasting everyone's time!

Piliger

sentient_6 wrote: »

This whole thing confuses me. What have they done only say yay we can borrow more, sure that doesn't fix anything. & why bother setting limits in the first place if they know every time it will just need to be raised.....its clearly not as if they intend to address the imbalance in the mean time.....surely this is only going to come around again in no time after they borrow trillons and trillons in a couple of months(or whatever).

Remember they are only borrowing to spend what has already been agreed. It won;t increase spending. Under Obama spending has been reducing. But unfortunately because of trade imbalances and interest rates etc. the debt ceiling has had to be increased. It comes around again because of the idiotic system they operate and because the GOP refuse to cooperate in fixing it.

Piliger

donegal__road wrote: »

it was all theatrics then.. sorry for wasting everyone's time!

It's a lot more than theatrics. It is symptomatic of a huge crisis in US politics where money has completely bribed their government politicians and where one small group of right wing nutjobs can hold the whole system to hostage.

clairefontaine

Piliger wrote: »

It's a lot more than theatrics. It is symptomatic of a huge crisis in US politics where money has completely bribed their government politicians and where one small group of right wing nutjobs can hold the whole system to hostage.

It was a Bush appointed Supreme Court justice who made the final ruling on Obamacare. So yes, you're right.

Eight Ball

Ah can kicking. Laughable stuff yet again from the Americans.

I am pie

Eight Ball wrote: »

Ah can kicking. Laughable stuff yet again from the Americans.

Right, because the EU isn't kicking any cans right now? Ireland, Greece, Spain, Italy...all hunky fcking dory it is?

Glass houses.

Amirani

I am pie wrote: »

Right, because the EU isn't kicking any cans right now? Ireland, Greece, Spain, Italy...all hunky fcking dory it is?

Glass houses.

None of those countries have full control of monetary policy, they're forced by the troika to tackle budget deficits at present. That's not the case with the US and the Fed who can print their own money and buy their own bonds.