As the House Majority leader symbolically bows to his freshmen captors by loudly slurping tea in the President's face...
and his sneering head negotiator Cantor slinks into oblivion after his possibly criminal insider trading goes public...
and Democrats who voted to a man against raising the debt ceiling for Bush Jr cry when they are denied one...
Reagan got 17 by the way, 3 more than Bush Jrs 14 about which Republicans seem to have gone amnesiac
and the first black POTUS turns white as his base begins to organize a full fledged boycott...
The Econoomist asks "is this the worst congress ever" and answers yes....
take a look at this recent rundown on the downturn in the American prospect:
NOTHING FIXED, STILL INSOLVENT & FRAUD RIDDEN
One should constantly remember that no solution to the financial crisis has been installed, nothing fixed, no big banks liquidated, no end to monetary inflation, no end to outsized USGovt deficits, no change of Goldman Sachs running the USGovt finance ministry, no discharge of big bank home inventory, no end to secretive subterranean support of stocks and bonds, no revival of the housing market, no return of US industry from Asia, no prosecution of Wall Street for multi-$trillion bond fraud, no end to money laundering of narco funds to Wall Street banks, no interruption to the endless costly wars, no end to the propaganda obediently pumped out by the US press & media networks. Nothing has changed except that some commodities are lower in price, including the queen Silver.
The steady stream of debt downgrades around the world curiously overlooks perhaps the worst offender of all, the United States. Refer to its horrendous PIIGS-like key ratios with much higher volume of debt. It seems good sport to nail Greece or Spain with a debt downgrade, when the US wrestles with a debt limit and chronic $1.5 trillion annual deficits, even costly endless wars. So Moodys is telling the USCongress that they better raise the debt ceiling or else. Or else what? Nothing!! The German debt rating agency Feri had the stones to downgrade the USGovt debt from AAA to AA. It is a significant slap in the face. They pointed to the fact that for the third consecutive year, the USGovt deficit is over 10% relative to gross domestic product (GDP). Its CEO Tobias Schmidt said, "The US government has fought the effects of the financial market crisis primarily by an increase in government debt. We do not see that here is sufficient alternative measures. Our rating system shows a deterioration, so the downgrading of the credit ratings of US is warranted. Deficits of such magnitude are not a sustainable fiscal policy. We would reconsider the rating when the US government creates a long-term sustainable budget."
The USFed is currently purchasing between 75% and 80% of all USTreasury auction bonds, notes, and bills. They use a nifty quick turnaround with the obligated Primary Bond Dealers. What used to distributed to bond funds like PIMCO and pension funds across the US land are no more. The dedicated Primary Bond Dealers have resorted to shoving all the USTreasury product back to the USFed inside one month in anything but routine FOMC operations, usually in two weeks time.
It is almost funny, if not tragic, that despite deferred criminal prosecution on mortgage bond fraud, despite being banned in Europe for misrepresentation and collusion to conceal sovereign debt, Goldman Sachs still has total control of the USDept Treasury. If only the people were more aware that GSax under Robert Rubin leased, sold, and leveraged a few $trillion in profit from the gold bullion that used to reside in Fort Knox.
http://www.financialsense.com/contribut ... em-failure