Have you ever noticed that whenever it comes time to stand on principle top Republican lawmakers always fold like a 20 dollar suit?  This time it was John Boehner.  It went down like this - the Democrats knew that if they played hardball and set up a government shutdown for the weekend of the Cherry Blossom Festival that Boehner would cave.  Boehner took negotiations up to the last minute to make it "look good" for the Tea Party, but the truth is that Boehner wanted nothing to do with a government shutdown and the Democrats knew that.  The Democrats drew their lines in the sand on issue after issue and Boehner caved and caved and caved.  So now it is time to fire John Boehner along with Barack Obama in 2012.  Boehner must go.  If the Tea Party is serious about cutting government spending then they must hold John Boehner accountable and go after his seat during the next primary season.  The truth is that the "budget deal" is a complete and total joke.  A one percent cut to the U.S. government budget is laughable.  Is that why dozens of Tea Party activists were sent to Washington D.C.?  If this is the "best" that can be done, the truth is that there is no hope of ever getting U.S. government debt under control. (Read More.....)

Is the U.S. government going to shutdown on March 4th, 2011?  Possibly.  The current temporary funding extension expires on that day.  Speaker of the House John Boehner has pledged that the Republicans in the House will not pass another temporary funding extension that does not include "deep" cuts.  Barack Obama has pledged that he will veto the 61 billion dollars of budget cuts that the House of Representatives has just passed.  So now Boehner and Obama are playing a really bizarre game of chicken, and if neither of them blinks the U.S. government will shut down on March 4th.  So what will that mean?  Well, in a "government shutdown", the entire government does not actually shut down.  Rather, only "essential personnel" are kept on during a shutdown and only "essential services" are provided.  Barack Obama would keep showing up at the White House and the U.S. military would continue to do their thing.  But it would cause a temporary disruption to a lot of government activities that people normally rely on. (Read More.....)

Most Americans know that the U.S. economy is in bad shape, but what most Americans don't know is how truly desperate the financial situation of the United States really is.  The truth is that what we are experiencing is not simply a "downturn" or a "recession".  What we are witnessing is the beginning of the end for the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen.  Our greed and our debt are literally eating our economy alive.  Total government, corporate and personal debt has now reached 360 percent of GDP, which is far higher than it ever reached during the Great Depression era.  We have nearly totally dismantled our once colossal manufacturing base, we have shipped millions upon millions of middle class jobs overseas, we have lived far beyond our means for decades and we have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world.  A great day of financial reckoning is fast approaching, and the vast majority of Americans are totally oblivious. (Read More.....)

Over the past several decades, most of the major industrialized nations have been borrowing and spending unprecedented amounts of money.  This has enabled them to greatly stimulate their economies, and has allowed hundreds of millions of people to live fabulous lifestyles.  But there is a problem when nations try to live beyond their means for decades.  A big problem.  The problem is called debt.  Right now the world is facing a sovereign debt crisis that threatens to throw the entire globe into a very, very deep recession.  In fact, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King recently called this the worst financial crisis in history.  While that might be a bit dramatic (at least at this point), the reality is that the situation in the financial world is becoming very, very serious.  You see, debts have to be paid back eventually.  All over the globe, national governments are trying to deal with debt and interest on debt that has piled up so dramatically that they don't know what to do about it.  For example, the United States is in a complete mess.  The U.S. national debt is scheduled to soon surpass 13 trillion dollars.  To get an idea of how big that is, if you went out and spent one dollar every single second,  it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.  It would take you more than 403,000 years to spend 13 trillion dollars.  Are you starting to get the picture?  This gigantic debt that the U.S. government has accumulated is about to turn the American Dream into the American Nightmare.  It is literally impossible for the United States to ever pay the national debt off, and as it continues to explode it will increasingly become a crushing load that the U.S. economy can simply not support. (Read More.....)

As the U.S. media trumpets the arrival of a great "economic recovery", the vast majority of the American people are completely unaware that the entire U.S. financial system is caught in a hopeless death spiral.  The cold, hard reality is that any temporary "green shoots" that we are seeing in the economy are there not because our politicians have figured out a way to deal with the financial problems of the United States.  No, the "green shoots" are there because our politicians have flooded our economy with a whole bunch more debt.  Debt will stimulate an economy for a little while, but the truth is that any new debt just makes our long-term economic problems even worse.  But now we are caught in a never ending cycle of debt, and there is no hope that we will ever be able to pay if off.  Most Americans do not understand economics, but if they did, they would realize that the American Dream is literally being destroyed right in front of their eyes.  Not only have we squandered the vast amounts of wealth that our forefathers left us, we have also piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.  We have created an economic nightmare from which there is no escape.  Our children and our grandchildren will be trapped in it for their entire lives.  What we have done to future generations of Americans is absolutely criminal. (Read More.....)

The talking heads on all the major news shows keep telling us that the U.S. economy is experiencing a recovery.  Usually the term "recovery" is accompanied by a qualifier such as "jobless", but they continue to use the word recovery anyway.  We are told that the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression is behind us and that the great American economic machine is roaring back to life and everything will be back to normal soon.  So why does it seem like things keep getting worse?  Why does it seem like the American Dream is out of reach for more Americans than ever?  Why does it seem like economic pain is spreading to more families and more businesses? (Read More.....)