In all their scrambling to put together the bailout, they missed the most obvious step-- fire the guy who was supposed to be overseeing this mess. Hank Paulson kept his job?
In my workplace, all you have to do to get fired, is have 7 incidents. Unexcused absences, late more than 8 minutes. They do not care what the reason is- if the bus was late, or you did not know to file official leave paperwork- they have fired good workers, top producers, award winning people- because this corporate mandate is hard & fast & not negotiable.
You meet this criteria or you lose your job.
In the Government, however, a worker can say everything is "sound" and functional, but one fine day come running, saying it has all fallen apart, we need $700 billion to keep the economy together, and he wants total legal immunity to do so.
This guy KEEPS his job?
The National debt has now soared to $10 TRILLION dollars, and the debt numbers are whizzing by even faster than before. (See the National Debt counter on the sidebar)
We don't just carry the debt, but also the interest on the debt.
The estimated population of the United States is 304,843,286
so each citizen's share of this debt is $33,303.39.
The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$3.08 billion per day since September 28, 2007!
Couric & Co reports:
The National debt has grown by more than $5 trillion during George W. Bush’s presidency.
It’s the biggest debt increase under any president in U.S history.
On the day President Bush took office, the national debt stood at $5.727 trillion. The latest number from the Treasury Department shows the national debt now stands at more than $10,203 trillion.
But the government is taking no chances. Buried deep in the hundred pages of bailout legislation is a provision that would raise the statutory ceiling on the national debt to $11.315 trillion. It’ll be the 7th time the debt limit has been raised during this administration. In fact it was just two months ago, on July 30, that President Bush signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, which contained a provision raising the debt ceiling to $10.615 trillion.
A national debt at $10.4 trillion – amounts to 69.3 percent of the gross domestic product – the standard measure of the size of the economy.
Today, OMB press secretary Corinne Hirsch, renewed the oft-made government argument that reporters should focus on just that part of the national debt that is held by the public – now about $5.6 trillion and not include that portion billed as “intra-governmental holdings” – money the government owes itself – especially the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.
Of course, the government doesn’t have that money either. It’s been spent.
President Bush made that point himself on April 5, 2005, when he paid a visit to the offices of the Bureau of the Public Debt in Parkersburg, W.Va.
He was shown a white file cabinet with keypad locks on each of its four drawers in which the Social Security Trust Fund is stored. On that day, there was no cash – as he noted in a speech later in the day.
“There is no 'trust fund,' just IOUs that I saw firsthand, that future generations will pay – will pay for either in higher taxes, or reduced benefits, or cuts to other critical government programs."
The government didn’t have the money it owed itself back then – and still doesn’t.
A couple of weeks after he took office, President Bush addressed the Republican Congressional Retreat in Williamsburg and declared that his budget “pays down the national debt.”
In recent years, President Bush almost never mentions the national debt. "
The estimated population of the United States is 304,843,286
so each citizen's share of this debt is $33,303.39.
The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$3.08 billion per day since September 28, 2007!
Couric & Co reports:
The National debt has grown by more than $5 trillion during George W. Bush’s presidency.
It’s the biggest debt increase under any president in U.S history.
On the day President Bush took office, the national debt stood at $5.727 trillion. The latest number from the Treasury Department shows the national debt now stands at more than $10,203 trillion.
But the government is taking no chances. Buried deep in the hundred pages of bailout legislation is a provision that would raise the statutory ceiling on the national debt to $11.315 trillion. It’ll be the 7th time the debt limit has been raised during this administration. In fact it was just two months ago, on July 30, that President Bush signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, which contained a provision raising the debt ceiling to $10.615 trillion.
A national debt at $10.4 trillion – amounts to 69.3 percent of the gross domestic product – the standard measure of the size of the economy.
Today, OMB press secretary Corinne Hirsch, renewed the oft-made government argument that reporters should focus on just that part of the national debt that is held by the public – now about $5.6 trillion and not include that portion billed as “intra-governmental holdings” – money the government owes itself – especially the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.
Of course, the government doesn’t have that money either. It’s been spent.
President Bush made that point himself on April 5, 2005, when he paid a visit to the offices of the Bureau of the Public Debt in Parkersburg, W.Va.
He was shown a white file cabinet with keypad locks on each of its four drawers in which the Social Security Trust Fund is stored. On that day, there was no cash – as he noted in a speech later in the day.
“There is no 'trust fund,' just IOUs that I saw firsthand, that future generations will pay – will pay for either in higher taxes, or reduced benefits, or cuts to other critical government programs."
The government didn’t have the money it owed itself back then – and still doesn’t.
A couple of weeks after he took office, President Bush addressed the Republican Congressional Retreat in Williamsburg and declared that his budget “pays down the national debt.”
In recent years, President Bush almost never mentions the national debt. "
John McCain & Sarah Palin don't mention the National Debt either. They do talk about budget cuts and slashing "pork barrel spending", but they don't clarify what they consider to be this excessive spending. They want us to trust they will "Maverick" their way through it.
John McCain has publicly stated, he does not know much about the economy, and he is a long time advocate of deregulation.
No candidate should be allowed to skate on such a topic of importance, because things can go bad, in the wink of an eye.
3 comments:
Another reason why the market is down 500 points today. I have a bad feeling about this.
The debt ceiling is going to be raised to $11.3 trillion to incorporate the $700 billion dollar bail out of Bush's Wall Street criminal pals.
Meanwhile, the bad mortgage debt is still on the books and until this is dealt with, the economy can't recover.
Not lookin' good ~ except for Obama. The worse the economy is, the more people want new/actual leadership.
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