There is plenty of blame to go around. How to fix it is what we need to focus on. Americans have been spoiled for a long time now. Instant gratification is the road to failure (IMO) and we as a nation need to start saving our money before we run out and buy that new car or boat or ATV.
We have fallen into the keep up with the Jone's mentality and think that since they have one, we DESERVE one too! We don't deserve squat!! Save the money and then if you still want that new (whatever) go get it! Then for your hard work and for saving the money, you do deserve it!
Will Americans do this? I doubt it. But a few will and I hope you are one of them.
As far as the current administration goes, they don't get it at all.SPENDING your way out of debt won't work! Company's that are failing should go into bankruptcy, restructure, and try again.
I,m not a cold hearted guy, I understand that many jobs would be cut and I feel sorry for those folks that are in that position. WE are FREE to fail as well as to succeed!

 

Ranch....Agree with most of what you are saying here aside from the quote above. The problem is....these companies are so big that failure (bankruptcy is a death sentence for a corporation, large or small) would lead to regional failures of mass proportions. Who's going to pay for the schools, the roads, the infrastructure, the jails.....it will end up on the Feds and cost untolled more billions. Whole economies are based on these giants. AIG is too big to fail. It can't fail, or the whole damn thing comes down around the globe.

We lose GM and Crysler or Ford and end up in a major war.....where is our manufacturing base? Where are the skilled workers?...Gone. From a national security standpoint, it's suicide. This is why every little developing nation around the globe is so desperate for an auto industry. Bankruptcy is not a simple matter of restructuring and canceling debt.

-Nobody I know got a second mortgage and went to France for the summer.

 

We as a nation were already in debt close to $11.5 trillion! With the budget about to be passed the debt will increase to roughly $15 trillion, around a 25% increase, all of that within the first 4 mo. of his term in office!
Where is the reduced spending that he promised during his campaign?
All I can say is that it's just another broken promise!
What about the promise that there wouldn't be any more earmarks? The budget is full of them!--Broken promise!

 

Its really not that simple........

The spending cuts have not been made yet. Yes the spending looks bad now, and it is bad. But the cuts take longer than the spending. You cannot just make cuts without first convincing Congress that the cuts need to be made and that take longer because you have to prove to deal with the people getting the money you are about to take away. There will be cuts.

As far as the earmarks, well Obama has continued to say he wants them gone. The problem is Congress, and in this case the Republicans mostly, added in earmarks to ride on the new budget. They were doing the typical DC bull-crap in saying "well if I cannot get my way I'm going to take advantage" this has been the MO of DC for decades. Obama admitted that the earmarks were there, he did not try to hide them. He just said it was an evil they had to work through slowly because of these old habits.

The spending looks bad, but they did the same thing during the Great Depression. Obama is not really doing anything so radical that it has not been done before. Whether or not it has the desired results we shall see.

 

It's sad when China owns $730 billion worth of US Treasury Bonds. This is the same China that has been hassling US warships in international waters off the coast of China.

 

I agree with most of what you say too, but the problem is that bankruptcy(BR) /restructuring is not really an option anymore. When in BR your creditors have to agree to make consessions and you have to find someone else that is willing to extend you credit. Before the financial crisis BR would have been an option, but not now. Like said before, it would be a corporations death sentence. And the spending that is happening is over a period of five years, it won't happen all at once. The problem here is us. Maybe not any of us or maybe all of us, but we the American consumer forgot to keep our money here at home. We started buying clothes that were cheaper that were made in China, then the American factories moved their facilities over there to stay competitive. so now all that money is employing the chinese and has been taken from our pockets. This is just one industry example, how many of your shirts are made in the USA? If we were worried about our politicians taking our money and giving it to the less fortunate, Why do we willingly give it to the chinese? Now that we have given so much of our wealth to the chinese, we have to borrow it from them to keep our lights on. We need to put unemployed Americans back to work making shirts, underwear, and socks, among other things. We as consumers need to make a consious effort to buy American. We need to repay our debts and collect from those that owe us. We should not trade with countries that do not do the same with us. All China does is buy our resources pay their people nothing to make our resources into a product that we buy back from the chinese govt. When we do this we are placing our domestic producers in direct competition with the Chinese govt. Not only for the end product but for the raw materials. When china buys our resources it pressures our supply downward and our demand increase and low and behold the price goes up, making it more expensive for US businesses to buy raw materials. I could go on and on and already have.....

 

Therein lies the problem.......One cannot expect to track Chinese subs "off the coast of China" and not expect some kind of retaliation. These were a bunch of guys in fishing boats and our sub tracking ship (pulling a sonar buoy) was shooting them with water cannons....washing them off their decks. The sounds of it are pretty funny, but I'm sure it wasn't funny at the time. I guess they were naked and still fighting and throwing dead fish at the boat. Wasn't exactly an "international incident".

 

Sigh........................

 

My guess is anyone on our ship may like to refer to it as an incident.

I'm sure the sailors and soldiers on the USS Cole thought that boat coming at them looked pretty harmless too.

 

Yes it was an incident, but it wasn't an international incident in the true meaning. So I guess we're taking every word literally. That's fine with me.

OK. So now you're equating the destruction of battleship Cole in a "safe" harbor getting blown up with sailors killed and wounded to an unarmed sub tracking boat "off the coast of China" shooting water cannons at fishing boats. That's realistic.

What does this statement have anything to do with my comments anyway. It doesn't even make sense. What does looking harmless have anything to do with it? What don't you understand about the fact that it was the South China Sea just off their coast. The question is not whether or not the Chinese response was appropriate. What the hell did they have it operating without an escort. You just have to bank on the fact that it will happen when you're that close. -Likely they were doing some mapping, as claimed.