• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

US Federal Government Shutdown | Shutdown Shutdown, Debt Ceiling Raised

Status
Not open for further replies.
Actual breakdown of US debt (via NPR) and my numbers from March.

Help explain this chart to me, specifically the $2.6T for Social Security? Is this just a projection on payments needed and, since there is no "account" holding SS taxes collected, the US is basically just going to print money to pay for it?
 
Help explain this chart to me, specifically the $2.6T for Social Security? Is this just a projection on payments needed and, since there is no "account" holding SS taxes collected, the US is basically just going to print money to pay for it?

It's illusory. One cannot meaningfully owe money to oneself.

Of course, for the reason you mention, all US debt is illusory.

By the way, all money is "printed." I wish people would understand that. When you say that the US is "basically just going to print money to pay for it," that is how it pays for everything. Every dollar in your bank account was "printed." Every dollar in everybody's bank account was "printed." So, yes, the US government is "just going to print money to pay for it."

If you or anybody else objects to this monetary system, you will need to articulate reasons.
 
Mind asking him for a link? (color of face optional)

I'm interested to see where he'd go to obtain an argument that defaulting is a "non-issue."

Just point him to the CNN article on what Treasury Secretary Lew thinks of defaulting.



http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/10/news/economy/debt-ceiling-lew-testimony/index.html

You can't let ignorance like that go unchecked because it's poisonous. You destroy that guy and leave scorched earth.
emot-911yds8d.gif

Don't make it personal. That is the shittiest cop out I've ever heard.

Actually, it falls directly in line with what I expect from people stupid enough to believe what the right wing media machine feeds them.

He's now saying that a deal will be made, and that's what he meant. I pressed him anyway and this is what I got

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archiv...-and-wont-default-on-its-debt-obligations.php

And he added this
The ONLY proven example we have is 1979. we defaulted and Dogs and Cats did not live together. The rest is hyperbole. You are arguing that what happens IF and am stating the IF is not going to happen. Regardless of the action of the assholes in Congress, the senate, and the white house. Defaulting upon debt requires that we take the money collected, which is MORE than enough to pay the debt service, and decide to not pay the debt. that can ONLY happen if the Treasury, part of the Obama Administration, decides to intentionally and with malice of forethought, just not pay the bill.
 
He's now saying that a deal will be made, and that's what he meant. I pressed him anyway and this is what I got

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archiv...-and-wont-default-on-its-debt-obligations.php

Powerlineblog is a joke, FYI.

It is true that preventing the government from selling bonds, as the Republicans are trying to do, does not require that the government not make its interest payments on the debt (technical problems aside). But that doesn't mean it will not default, because bondholders are not the only people to whom the government has made promises to pay. A social security recipient is owed payment every bit as much as a bondholder. Actually, more so, because the federal government forced the social security recipient to give up money over many years in exchange for those payments whereas the bondholder voluntarily took on the "risk."

The risk, of course, that the bondholder took on was that crazy ideologues would gain power in the government and choose not to pay him or her.
 
I am familiar with it, but if you aren't, just glance on over at the "our favorites" column on the right hand side.

..are they..super conservative...? Or something. Not trying to be obtuse, I just see the About Us is a few lawyers writing for the site. And the rest of the stuff seems on par with Fox News. I see the Favorites. But I don't know, I don't get the immediate "joke" part, as in they are a joke and not to be taken seriously, but I don't see anything that screams out joke. I want to be mean to that guys friend too :(
 
ROFL at the "China" column on that spreadsheet hahahahahahah

It was for another NeoGAF discussion where some idiot was claiming China held most of the US debt ;)

Help explain this chart to me, specifically the $2.6T for Social Security? Is this just a projection on payments needed and, since there is no "account" holding SS taxes collected, the US is basically just going to print money to pay for it?

It just means that SS administration holds $2.6T worth of Treasury notes as investments which would be paid back by the US taxpayers (as is the case with all debt holders). If you want to think about it another way, if the government defaults, the American people are the ones that get fucked the hardest. Not China. Not Japan. Not Brasil. The American people get fucked.
 
I am familiar with it, but if you aren't, just glance on over at the "our favorites" column on the right hand side.

lol
Sorry to burst your hyperbole bubble but the ONLY time we defaulted and what it meant was a "soon to be forgotten" blip that did incur some costs impacts but nothing major. Funny how this Chicken Little style screaming of the Sky is Falling is from people that are intentionally making zero effort to work or negotiate. http://swampland.time.com/2013/10/07/no-negotiate-obama-enters-second-week-of-shutdown-standoff/ ---- "For seven days the federal government has been closed, and for seven days Obama has refused to negotiate with House Republicans. He’s cloistered himself in the White House as the GOP takes a lashing in the press and across the country, emerging only to fan the flames."

Let me know if you want to keep going or if you have finally had to admit that you are wrong. As I enjoy politics WAY more than a "normal" person I can continue on this for days. James may stop talking to me eventually. Though something tells me he's reading this and somewhere laughing at us both.

As soon as I'm off work I'm going in.

... not even sure why. lol

Empty Vessel, I keep seeing this rand paul quote thrown around.

EN. PAUL: I think it’s irresponsible of the president and his men to even talk about default. There is no reason for us to default. We bring in $250 billion in taxes every month, our interest payment is $20 billion. Tell me why we would ever default. We have legislation called the full faith and credit act and it tells the president, you must pay the interest on the debt. So this is a game. This is kind of like closing the World War II memorial. They all get out on TV and they say, we’re going to default. They’re the ones scaring the marketplace. We should never default.

SInce you know quite a bit more about this than I do, is he wrong?
 
..are they..super conservative...? Or something. Not trying to be obtuse, I just see the About Us is a few lawyers writing for the site. And the rest of the stuff seems on par with Fox News. I see the Favorites. But I don't know, I don't get the immediate "joke" part, as in they are a joke and not to be taken seriously, but I don't see anything that screams out joke. I want to be mean to that guys friend too :(

When a blog non-ironically publishes an post titled "The Mystery of Obama's Birth", I think it qualifies as a joke.
 
-- Interest payments on the debt, backed by the full faith and credit of the US will be prioritized in the event of a 'default' over discretionary spending. It's not rocket science.

Evidently it is rocket science because it doesn't work that way. This talking point, that's been spit out time after time, is tiring.
 
By the way, all money is "printed." I wish people would understand that. When you say that the US is "basically just going to print money to pay for it," that is how it pays for everything. Every dollar in your bank account was "printed." Every dollar in everybody's bank account was "printed." So, yes, the US government is "just going to print money to pay for it."
Actually only about 4-5% of money is printed isn't it? We don't need any more money than that in currency form.

Still, I know your point wasn't this. People still equate the government with a household, hence the concern with the debt. The USA can print as much money as it wants without fear of devaluation and rampant inflation as long as the world believes that it has a bright future.
 
Hmm Wall Street looks pretty sure that the default won't happen. I bet more than few of those guys got phone calls from congressmen -_-
 
..are they..super conservative...? Or something. Not trying to be obtuse, I just see the About Us is a few lawyers writing for the site. And the rest of the stuff seems on par with Fox News. I see the Favorites. But I don't know, I don't get the immediate "joke" part, as in they are a joke and not to be taken seriously, but I don't see anything that screams out joke. I want to be mean to that guys friend too :(

They are delusional right-wingers.
 
Actually only about 4-5% of money is printed isn't it? We don't need any more money than that in currency form.

Still, I know your point wasn't this. People still equate the government with a household, hence the concern with the debt. The USA can print as much money as it wants without fear of devaluation and rampant inflation as long as the world believes that it has a bright future.

Right, my point wasn't that. Technically, no money is printed. It is all digital. Paper currency just physically represents the digital accounting that is money. And all money is is digital accounting. That's why we can never run out of it.

Inflation occurs when aggregate points in the accounting system added by the government (also known as government net spending) outpace real economic production. Prices for goods and services then rise to account for that.

But the government is always adding points to the total in aggregate (what is commonly referred to as "printing money"). It has to. If it didn't, we would get deflation as the economy and population continued to grow but the total number of points "up for grabs" did not. Prices would fall. Economic production would slow and eventually halt as everybody stopped spending their points because each day made them more valuable relative to real goods.
 
Hmm Wall Street lookspretty sure that the default won't happen. I bet more than few of those guys got phone calls from congressmen -_-

More likely that the talks of temporarily raising the debt ceiling + the big sell off since mid-september lured a bunch of people in. It was off by ~5% from Sept 18th till yesterday so a bit of a bump wasn't too surprising.
 
-- Interest payments on the debt, backed by the full faith and credit of the US will be prioritized in the event of a 'default' over discretionary spending. It's not rocket science.

even if this were possible, you're just saying default on other obligations to make sure interest payments are made. It has the same effect on anyone's faith in the US paying their bills on time. Would you lend money to a company that had to stop paying their employees to make rent?
 
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/327857-senate-republicans-rally-around-rival-plan-on-debt-ceiling-shutdown

Senate Repubs don't like the House GOP bill and want the gov't open again. They also want a repeal of the medical device tax and income verification for Obamacare according to this article.

Wow @ the comments on that article.

The Senate Republicans win points for disliking the shitty House bill, but lose points for trying to gain leverage to push their changes to the ACA through on an unrelated issue.
 
even if this were possible, you're just saying default on other obligations to make sure interest payments are made. It has the same effect on anyone's faith in the US paying their bills on time. Would you lend money to a company that had to stop paying their employees to make rent?
-- As people are fond of saying here, the economics of governments cannot reasonably be compared to individuals or corporations. The biggest scare about the default are for payments on full-on obligations to major creditors. That's extraordinarily unlikely to happen, hence the shrugs in the market.
 
-- As people are fond of saying here, the economics of governments cannot reasonably be compared to individuals or corporations. The biggest scare about the default are for payments on full-on obligations to major creditors. That's extraordinarily unlikely to happen, hence the shrugs in the market.

The actual payments are not the issue, it's crossing the line where the US is no longer guaranteed to make good on paying their bills. Major creditors will look at a default on other obligations the same as defaulting on interest payments, because it is the same. Once you remove that guarantee, bonds aren't safe either. Prioritization is not a guarantee that interest will be paid on any given date
 
I'm not sure how this doesn't essentially continue to legitimize the use of the debt limit by R's as "leverage". So some grand bargain changes beyond sequestration must happen by late November, or...something?

I don't think Obama helped by even mentioning the possibility of a short-term extension.
 
I'm not sure how this doesn't essentially continue to legitimize the use of the debt limit by R's as "leverage". So some grand bargain changes beyond sequestration must happen by late November, or...something?

I don't think Obama helped by even mentioning the possibility of a short-term extension.

It's stupid, but he has to sign a clean bill, otherwise he is using the debt ceiling as leverage to get the Republicans to end the shutdown -- exactly what he is complaining about
 
I'm not sure how this doesn't essentially continue to legitimize the use of the debt limit by R's as "leverage". So some grand bargain changes beyond sequestration must happen by late November, or...something?

I don't think Obama helped by even mentioning the possibility of a short-term extension.

It does legitimize the tactic. This is setting a terrible precedent for the entire system- potentially making the passing of laws pointless.
 
The actual payments are not the issue, it's crossing the line where the US is no longer guaranteed to make good on paying their bills. Major creditors will look at a default on other obligations the same as defaulting on interest payments, because it is the same. Once you remove that guarantee, bonds aren't safe either.
-- Not all obligations are created equal. Investors are supposed to be cognizant of the risks of their investments. The major world-ending payments will be made, Senate or no Senate deal. May suck for man on the street or agencies now faced with unfunded mandates and such if this continues, but that doesn't mean much in the grand scale of national economics.
-- These politics are the new normal. The markets have priced in most of these risks before the shutdown even happened, even the market moves recently are within the range of normal variance. The man on the street is barely even cognizant of the shutdown. It's a bit too easy to get overheated in forum threads like this.
 
Wow @ the comments on that article.

The Senate Republicans win points for disliking the shitty House bill, but lose points for trying to gain leverage to push their changes to the ACA through on an unrelated issue.

The medical device tax repeal bill was originally designed to be deficit-neutral and had the support of a few Democrats in the Senate, but the House insisted on stripping that language out (which would create a $29 billion dollar hole over 10 years). I wonder if the Senate bill is going to reinstate that language.

That said, shutting down the government over a concession on a 2.3% medical devices tax is pretty hard to sell.
 
It's stupid, but he has to sign a clean bill, otherwise he is using the debt ceiling as leverage to get the Republicans to end the shutdown -- exactly what he is complaining about
But they aren't ending the shutdown. They're giving the shutdown a vacation for a few weeks till the shutdown comes back because they still aren't getting what they want. Six weeks isn't going to change anything.

You can't keep putting people out of work every few weeks for this bs; it's unstable to families and unstable for the economy to keep living under this pall that every few weeks there will be another shutdown brought on by one side demanding something they can't have.

You really think anyone will want to spend any money when in a few weeks the gov't may be shutdown and put people out of work again and for who knows how long?

The crazies have pushed their own party into a corner where they can't win. There is nothing to give them that will appease them at this point nor should any concessions be made for this behavior. Keeping this thing going by delaying 6 weeks is only hurting everyone else. It's time for them to realize they have no bargaining chips and give up this charade so the gov't can go back to running like it should.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom