Archive | September, 2012
“We” Don’t Owe $16 Trillion; and You Don’t Owe $50,000
Just saw John Sununu, one of Republicans favorite Bushie junk yard attack dogs all up in arms about the debt subject to the limit (the so-called national debt) reaching $16 Trillion dollars, and going on to tell people that every man, woman, and child in the United States now owes $50,000 to pay that debt off. Now, I’m here to tell you that all that is bull sh*t.
The debt subject to the limit is a debt incurred by the Congress and the Treasury Department because when the Government spends more than it taxes, the Treasury Department issues debt instruments in the name of the US Government even though it doesn’t have to do that in order to deficit spend. These instruments make the Government a debtor. But they don’t make any individual man, woman, or child in the United States a debtor. So, the idea that YOU owe $50,000 or even a single dollar is BS. You’ve signed no such note. You’ve not charged a single dollar on your credit card for this purpose. And you’ve not made a single promise that any portion of the national debt will be paid by YOU.
Well, you might ask: “Doesn’t the US have to pay the $16 T debt sooner or later by taxing, and won’t we then be responsible for our portion in the form of a tax obligation?”
The answer is that the US must pay all its debts when they fall due. It’s in the Constitution. If the Federal Government refused to do that it would be violating the Constitution, and would be illegal. But saying that the US must pay all its debts, doesn’t say that it must do so only by using taxation to raise enough revenue to run budget surpluses and pay those debts. It’s that lie that Sununu and the other austerians want you to believe!
How we pay US debts is up to us and is a political question. If we do it the way Sununu suggests we’ll condemn the country to permanent recession in the context of a perpetually depressed economy in which the wealthy get wealthier and everyone else gets poorer. That’s what a plutocratic tool like John Sununu wants. But there are other ways to do it.
Virtually Speaking Sunday
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Criminal prosecution is for peasants
As I said when the task force was announced, I’ll just sit here and hold my breath waiting for a banker to go to jail:
A last-ditch effort by federal and state law enforcement authorities to hold Wall Street accountable for nearly bringing down the U.S. economy is unlikely to lead to any criminal charges against big bank executives, according to a source close to the investigation.
Barring a “hail mary pass,” said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is still ongoing, the members of a task force President Barack Obama formed in January to investigate fraud in the residential mortgage bond industry will instead most likely bring civil lawsuits against some of the banks involved, though it isn’t clear when these cases might come.
That means any penalties for those accused of fraud or other misconduct would be measured in dollars, not jail terms.
A spokesman for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a co-head of the task force and the driving force behind its formation, declined to comment.
Adora Andy, a Department of Justice spokeswoman, said in a statement that “all appropriate remedies, civil and criminal, are on the table.”
“As always, if working group members uncover evidence of fraud or other illegal conduct, we will pursue such conduct aggressively,” Andy said.
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