Quote:
Originally Posted by xmas13
(Post 13003299)
"Maxed Out" documentary
http://www.maxedoutmovie.com/syn/index.html
Game is over :winkwink:
Europe, China and Japan won the economic war by financing US corruption with trillions of loans, enslaving a majority of Americans.
:)
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Would like to see the actual movie, but appears to concentrate on US personal debt aspects, more than the underlying foreign debt problem and the lack of resources to repay this - there are doubts about even paying the interest in the forseeable future.
Sure the government are responsible for controlling terms of personal debt and have used this for decades to keep the economy afloat. This has been a predatory exercise which benefitted card companies, banks and the corps who were filling the orders for credit card charges - and may have contributed to US internal spending power, but did nothing whatsoever for the economy of the nation as a whole. It is based on fantasy criteria and appealed to instant gratification you'd expect from kids who have no financial responsibility.
Very little of the stuff in the previous para benefitted "USA Inc", but resulted in more foreign imports (on credit) and very little increased internal production of product for export.
Think it was the spring of 2002 or 03, the US Treasury Dept issued the most comprehensive report on the US economy ever. It has taken them over 10 years to gather this data. Within around two weeks of the publication, it was presented to the president and others and immediately filed and ignored - it was a report nobody wanted to see.
Various financial orgs analysed the report and, in simplied terms, it said that 94% of all US homes and the assets within them constituted debt - whether personal or national (this is obviously well over 100% by now). The report also recommended an immediate increase in taxation to 60% "for the forseeable future".
The facts still remain that the US economy is simply not sustainable and unless action is taken to control and manage this - the downwards spiral will continue with reduced currency valuation and more credit card issuing until a few bankers terminate further credit.
There has never been a balance of trade surplus in almost 40 years. The US basically has little to offer the rest of the world in manufactured product or services - and most likely consumed whatever product was manufactured (on credit).
Current foreign borrowings are in the region of $12 billion/day - with the Central Bank of China providing around 30% of that amount. It is only a matter of time before foreign lenders start to pull the plug on loans. This has already started happening re personal debt on the home loans market. During this month (August) alone, the Federal Reserve felt the need to dump another $100 billion in currency into the banking system to keep that liquid - this is more than was needed after 9/11.
Any, even minor, change from the US's "bankers" can cause earth tremors - example - if China unloaded even a small amount of US dollar reserves, that will cause further reductions in currency. If OPEC openly considers changing from petro-dollars to a more stable currency in an attempt to cut their losses, this is not an earth tremor, but an earthquake for the US economy.
Bottom line - it's not sustainable, either on a national or personal level. There is nothing on the horizon to hope there is an ability to repay debt, tho a prospect exists of keeping control of the current damage level if there was a will to do so.
In the next short term (2-3 years), the real damage on homes will rise to the surface, followed by bad news from all support industries and retailers. The US dollar will continue to depreciate and imports will cost more - bad news for any hope of a more positive balance of trade. If "US Inc" was a corp, it would be insolvent now and filing for bankruptcy - but, hey, governments can bullshit for a longer term :winkwink: - but the writing is on the wall.
