Bernanke says prompt action needed on deficit
"Mister we could use a man/Like William J. Clinton agaaaaaain!"
--With apologies to Archie Bunker
How much mileage will the GOP get out of their calls for fiscal responsibility, the very same party whose god, Ronald Reagan tripled the federal deficit while simultaneously (according to 2008 Republican Presidential nominee John McCain) cutting it? A miracle indeed.
Remember, this is the same party that, controlling all the levers of government, the Executive Branch, the House & Senate, and the Supreme Court, that inherited a federal deficit of $5.7 trillion in 2001 (when the annual deficit was a manageable $144.5 billion) and saw spending (and the budget deficit) skyrocket. In the last year of the Bush 43 regime (2008), the federal deficit swelled to $1 trillion. (It took all the Presidents from George Washington to Jimmy Carter to rack up the first trillion in public debt, over a period of 192 years!)
The Bush 43 Administration, with its tax cuts for the rich and big war budget, added $4 trillion to the deficit. When Obama took over the Presidency, the public debt totaled $9.8 trillion.
The U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK had the debt at $12.8 trillion, plus change, as of April 28, 2010. Of course, the real debt, the real liabilities surpassed the $70 trillion mark sometime in the second Bush 43 Administration, which is peanuts when you realize that the outstanding total of speculative financial contracts, swaps, options, collars, etc., is more than half-a-QUADRILLION dollars. That's a one with 15 (fifteen) zeroes after it, one thousand million million.
Who knows what new frontiers of financial irresponsibility the Orwellian Republican Party can take us if they win back power. The Weimar Republic hyperinflation may be replicated here on our shores!
Since it was the objective of many Bushites to destroy the federal government by bankrupting it, is this scenario so far fetched? Inflation would wipe out mountains of pesky debt.
[Picture: One needed a wheelbarrow to haul around the cash you needed during the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic]
