RSSYay, more debt!
Aug 02
Congrats to the USA for raising the debt ceiling. Wait, is that a good thing? No, I’d say it isn’t. I think the fight over reigning in US spending is a good one to have, but doing it over the debt ceiling seems like the wrong issue. As many people point out, the debt ceiling was money already spent. I also think it was bad for the Dems to cave over revenue increases, although that probably would have been impossible with the Tea Party crazies holding congress hostage.
But, leave it to the CBC to make the most informative tool I’ve seen to help put the debt ceiling in perspective:
Raising the roof: The uphill climb of the U.S. debt limit
Aug 10, 2011 @ 08:51:28
Congrats to S&P for pulling the trigger and punishing the US for:
1] extending the Bush tax cuts: the White House’s 2 trillion dollar ‘error’ is S&P’s increasingly probably assumption that the Bush cuts will not expire in 2013
2] threatening not to pay debts on money already spent: no business has the right to breach contracts at will, is the US too big to fail?
Granted, S&P also rated CDOs at triple-A right up until they all imploded and took out the entire economy. Their track record isn’t great. But you can’t reward Washington for dragging every tiny policy change out into huge battles to the very last minute.
Congrats to Republicans for dodging blame for all this. Americans should be lining up to lynch these people over the trillions of dollars in additional interest America will have to pay on its debt over the next decade or tow. Congrats on cutting a trillion dollars of assistance to the sick and elderly so you could pay it to big banks instead. That small victory for the rich was totally worth the months of bitter political warfare.