Here's some lovely Thursday afternoon news: The credit rating agency Moody's has pre-warned the United States about the possibility of debt default later this year, saying that it will downgrade ratings on America's public debt — the safest investment in the world — from AAA to AA should an agreement not be reached.
House Republicans will give President Obama the vote he requested on a "clean" debt ceiling hike today, meaning one without any spending cuts attached. Every Republican and at least half of Democrats are expected to vote against it, thereby giving Republicans the opportunity to say to the president, See? We told you that a bill to prevent America from defaulting on its debt and the global economy from collapsing wouldn't pass without some fundamental changes to the social contract attached, so now let's, uh, end Medicare or some such. What a world, right?
Were there any compassionate Democrats out there to cheer up America's Accountant, Rep. Paul Ryan, after his plan to eliminate Medicare and replace it with health insurance "premium support" for old dying people won Democrats a conservative-district seat in last night's Gawker Election? Oh, just Bill Clinton.
A new poll of terrified and economically illiterate Americans ("the public") finds that more Americans are worried about our growing national debt than are worried about the prospect of defaulting on that debt, by failing to raise the nation's debt ceiling. Americans! Always saying nonsensical things
Congressional Republicans are falling under the spell of an unorthodox group of financial experts who dispute the views of their peers and say that the U.S. could default briefly on debt payments without major, lasting consequences to the U.S. economy and international markets.
The fact that the US has just bumped up against its debt ceiling with no plan in place to raise it, on the very same day that the man in charge of the world's money was denied bail on a rape charge, may cause you what we euphemistically refer to as "the vapors," meaning "heart attacks, accompanied by wild investments in gold."
The federal government is expected to reach its $14.3 trillion borrowing limit on or around May 16. House Republicans have been demanding deep spending cuts in exchange for a vote to raise this ceiling, even though no congressional leader would really allow the United States government to reach this limit and default on its debt shortly afterwards, thereby destroying the global economy forever.
Sarah Lawrence is America's most expensive college. It'll cost you a cool $59,000 to send your whelp there to sit shoeless on a grass lawn, becoming a lesbian. Why so pricey? The school's president has all sorts of dubious explanations.
The framework for deficit reduction President Obama will lay out Wednesday is a mixed bag for members of his party. It borrows heavily in some areas from the conservative-leaning Bowles-Simpson recommendation, but commits elsewhere to enhancing the cost-cutting programs in the health care law and rejects Republican proposals to privatize entitlements, or maintain or reduce the tax burden on the upper class.
Okay, banksters, let's call a temporary truce: We'll stop calling you sociopathic bloodsucking hell monsters for a few weeks, if you can just get Speaker John Boehner to stop using the impending debt ceiling vote as leverage to cut basically every entitlement program. We're all in this together against the dingbats who don't understand that failing to raise the debt ceiling means Global Apocalypse, not "tightening our belts" or whatever other homey metaphor that doesn't apply to macroeconomic reality.
Hey, underemployed recent college graduates struggling in the worst job market in a generation: do you have a trillion dollars? I really hope you have a trillion dollars. Because you owe a trillion dollars, in student loans.
Fresh off last week's down-to-the-wire spending showdown, President Obama and Speaker John Boehner are locking horns again on fiscal matters — and this time the stakes for the U.S. economy are even more monumental.
The White House released its big budget proposal today for fiscal year 2012, which begins in October. There's been talk about major cuts the administration would be making, and this proposal would supposedly cut $1.1 trillion in deficits over the next ten years. It mostly accomplishes that through a five-year spending cap on non-defense discretionary funding, an area that only accounts for 12% of the budget anyway and isn't related to America's long-term debt problems. But it may make President Obama seem tough to Washington Post columnists, so it must be done!
The Way We Live Now: in a state of total war. If we must sacrifice a portion of this nation in order to more thoroughly dominate another nation, well, that sounds like a good deal to us. Suck it, Japan!
The Way We Live Now: putting our head right through the ceiling. We are giants. We grow a foot every day. Our ceiling's only seven feet high, and we're eight feet tall. Should we raise the ceiling? Nah. Risk it!
