Federal debt limit raised to $9,000,000,000,000

[AlanM]

Your not making me feel better Alan.

Do you believe that the reason there is no 7.62 x 39 available is cause it's all going to Iraq?

Just curious.

I have no idea why.

China is biding its time, getting prepared, taking advantage of the greed of the US businesses. They have lots of missles aimed at Taiwan, and troops massed near the coast. When they are ready, they will spring the trap, not before.

[tracysaboe]

A scenario for US default on debt.

China has been buying US debt. China wants Taiwan back under its control. China tells the US, stay out of our dispute or we dump your notes on the open market. US doesn't listen. China dumps notes on the market. US can't sell any as the market cannot absorb any more. US is forced to default.

The open market could absorb it, it would just be heavily discounted.

Tracy

[AlanM]

A scenario for US default on debt.

China has been buying US debt. China wants Taiwan back under its control. China tells the US, stay out of our dispute or we dump your notes on the open market. US doesn't listen. China dumps notes on the market. US can't sell any as the market cannot absorb any more. US is forced to default.

The open market could absorb it, it would just be heavily discounted.

Tracy

After absorbing several hundred billion dollars, the market would not be capable of buying new T-bills needed to pay the bills for US spending. Default or extreme belt-tightening at best.

[tracysaboe]

No, T-Bill will just be only worth the paper they're printed on.

They'll buy a 1$ t-bill for 10 cents instead of 1 dollar. or something.

But if a free market is allowed in T-Bills purcahsing (work w/ me here) they they will clear. They'll just be heavily discounted. Like junk bonds.

Tracy

[AlanM]

No, T-Bill will just be only worth the paper they're printed on.

They'll buy a 1$ t-bill for 10 cents instead of 1 dollar. or something.

But if a free market is allowed in T-Bills purcahsing (work w/ me here) they they will clear. They'll just be heavily discounted. Like junk bonds.

Tracy

Which means, in essence, that the interest rate paid by the treasury will be sky high. $9 trillion dollars debt with sky high interest? Doesn't sound good to me.

[tracysaboe]

Which means, in essence, that the interest rate paid by the treasury will be sky high.

Relative to the price purchased on the secondary markets, which is heavily discounted from the face value and doesn't really matter to the loanee (the gov), yes. Relative to the face value, which is what the government originally was given, no.

Tracy

[DC]

Which means, in essence, that the interest rate paid by the treasury will be sky high.

Relative to the price purchased on the secondary markets, which is heavily discounted from the face value and doesn't really matter to the loanee (the gov), yes. Relative to the face value, which is what the government originally was given, no.

Tracy

Most debt is financed short term. When that debt comes due they issue more tbills and it will be priced at the higher interest rate.

[Dreepa]

Offtopic but did you see that Iceland wants us to keep our military bases there.
The said they will be left defenseless.
1.  Tough shit.
2.  Who is going to attack you?

[Tunga]

Iceland is home to a type of Alabaster that has the unique capability of double refraction. ???

Why this is important will become obvious once time travel becomes more popular with earthlings.

Plus the town of Tunga is there. Population 43. 

[tracysaboe]

Most debt is financed short term. When that debt comes due they issue more tbills and it will be priced at the higher interest rate.

Ah.

That would cause some dramatic shifts.

But frankly, it's about time interest rates rose. The current condition is that it's around negative 5% in terms of real numbers. (because inflation is actually around 7-8% now if you measure it according to Nixon age definitions instead of the dumbed down new ones.)

Not really sure which is worse though. A catastrophic rise in interest rates wouldn't be putting them up to 8 or 9 % where they probably belong. We'd be talking double digit interest rates.

Just make sure you're completely out of debt, and get some real assets owned.

Tracy

[1984IsNow]

I can't begin to tell you how happy it makes me to know that when I'm older, there's not going to be any Social Security money for me.
Hurray. (breathe in this lovely sarcasm like the disease it is, satire and sarcasm have become the only way I can deal with the systems in place without getting too angry for my own good)

[Tunga]

Iceland is home to a type of Alabaster that has the unique capability of double refraction.

Iceland spar is a form of calcite, not alabaster.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alabaster (sometimes called satin spar) is a name applied to varieties of two distinct minerals: gypsum (a hydrous sulfate of calcium) and the calcite (a carbonate of calcium). The former is the alabaster of the present day; the latter is generally the alabaster of the ancients.

Nicol prism (nik'ul) [key], optical device invented (1828) by William Nicol of Edinburgh. It consists essentially of a crystal of calcite, or Iceland spar, that is cut at an angle into two equal pieces and joined together again with Canada balsam. An ordinary beam of light entering the crystal undergoes double refraction, i.e., is split into two parts, each of which is affected in a different way. One of these parts, the so-called ordinary ray, undergoes total reflection at the Canada-balsam joint and is turned off from its course to pass out at one side of the crystal. The other ray, the extraordinary ray, passes on through the crystal. By means of this device a beam of light can be polarized (see polarization of light) or a beam of polarized light can be subjected to analysis. The principle involved has been applied to the microscope in the illumination of the field.

[Tunga]

Stop groveling. I hate it when you earthlings grovel. 

[Kat Kanning]

US debt clock running out of time, space

Tue Mar 28, 3:15 AM ET

NEW YORK (AFP) - Tick, 20,000 dollars, tock, another 20,000 dollars.


So rapid is the rise of the US national debt, that the last four digits of a giant digital signboard counting the moving total near New York's Times Square move in seemingly random increments as they struggle to keep pace.

The national debt clock, as it is known, is a big clock. A spot-check last week showed a readout of 8.3 trillion -- or more precisely 8,310,200,545,702 -- dollars ... and counting.

But it's not big enough.

Sometime in the next two years, the total amount of US government borrowing is going to break through the 10-trillion-dollar mark and, lacking space for the extra digit such a figure would require, the clock is in danger of running itself into obsolescence.

The clock's owner, real estate developer Douglas Durst, knew such a problem could arise but hadn't counted on it so soon.

"We really expected it to be quite some time," Durst told AFP. "But now, with the pace of debt growth only increasing, we're looking at maybe two years and certainly before President (George W.) Bush leaves office in 2009."

The clock was the invention of Durst's father, Seymour Durst, who nursed a keen sense of fiscal responsibility and believed government profligacy to be a national curse.

The elder Durst, who died in 1995, originally thought of the idea in the early 1980s as the US budget deficit started to mount during the presidency of
Ronald Reagan, but the technology was not immediately available to realise his vision.

The original 11 foot by 26 foot (3.3 meter by 8.9 meter) clock was eventually erected a block from Manhattan's Times Square in 1989 when the national debt stood at 2.7 trillion.

For the next decade it tracked, odometer style, the government's red ink with an extra feature which, by dividing the main figure by the number of families in the country, offered an estimate for how much each family owed as their share.

Toward the close of the millennium, with a booming economy fuelling annual budget surpluses, the clock began to slow and finally ran into its first mechanical problem.

"It wasn't designed to run backwards," Douglas Durst explained.

Believing that the signboard had served its purpose, the Dursts pulled the plug in 2000 with the debt total showing around 5.7 trillion dollars and the individual "family share" standing at close to 74,000 dollars.

The clock was covered with a red, white and blue curtain, but not dismantled.

"We'll have it ready in case things start turning around, which I'm sure they will," Durst said at the time.

He only had to wait two years as the Bush presidency coincided with an upsurge in borrowing. The curtain was raised in 2002 and the digital readout flickered back to life showing a national debt of 6.1 trillion dollars with the numerals whizzing round faster than ever.

In 2004, the old clock was torn down and replaced with a newer model which had optimistically been modified to run backwards should such a happy necessity arise.

Instead the debt continued to rise at such a rate that the once unthinkable total of 10 trillion dollars veered from alarmist fantasy into the realm of impending reality.

"When it became clear what was going to happen, our first thought was to free up the digital square occupied by the dollar sign so that we could cope with a 14th digit," Durst said.

The latest plan is for yet another replacement, involving a larger scale signboard.

"We're not happy at the impact we're making with this one," he said.

Durst insists that the clock is non-partisan in its effort to shame the federal government over what he sees as its willingness to gamble away the nation's future.

"We're a family business," Durst said. "We think generationally, and we don't want to see the next generation crippled by this burden," he said.

Last week, the "family share" readout on the clock stood some loose change short of 90,000 dollars.

[Russell Kanning]

Is it time to stop paying taxes?