Discouraging news for our American cousins in today’s New York Times, the paper of record read by almost all of you. Since the advent of wee Georgie Bush, what with all his fun escapades in Afghanistan and then Iraq, the debt levels of the country have been zooming through the rooftiles, even as the country’s average IQ level plummetted into the basement.
What Me Worry
See, problem was, Georgie didn’t know these things cost dollars. Or that there was a shortage. And anyway, the total debt was just a figure on a piece of paper. So the Mighty Mental Midget borrowed a bit here and another bit there… you get the picture.
Turns out they were staring at a whole mountain of debt overload, the result of decades of living beyond their means, because why not? They ruled the world, see, and if you weren’t with ‘em, you were agin ‘em. Yee-ha!
Course, when the new guy opened up the books, well Holy Hell… seems the US owes the rest of the world twelve trillion and counting. In the next ten years another $9 trillion gets added, mostly just to pay the interest on the $12 trillion. Anyone sense a pattern here? And in a while, the annual interest will account for about a third of the total federal income tax. And that can’t be good. And of course, we’re only talking cash balances debt here, and ignoring the real picture. But see our Oct 5th article here.
Oh, and in a year or so the first of the baby-boomers starts to draw pension, and you can already hear Medicare and Social Security creaking from this side of the pond.
Our guess is that under Obama’s calm exterior, he’s got to be waking up nights with the sweats, wondering where the hell it’s all going to end. The Daily Moaner wishes the U.S. of A. the best of British. Because if the Yanks go down the pan… Britain will be close behind.
