Belly & Yabby just don't get it.Before you join the dots boys ,you have to put lead in your pencil.The US Govt debt is $15 trillion or $200,000.00 per family of 4.Add to this their mortages and personal debt and this adds up to bankruptcy.As Ron Paul says ,it never can be repaid.So who is going to pay? The banks and Wall St won't.Real unemployment in the US is like 18%.Then there are huge numbers of under employed.How do they pay off debt?

Yabby you say profits of $50 billion are going back to the US Govt from the Fed.Well the Fed have taken far more than they have given.
$50 billion profit? It is nothing in an economy 15 times our size.Their Govt debt is 3000 times bigger than this.It won't even cover the interest payments.

Peter Hume I agree that Govt should not alone be the creator of currency.Do we go back to gold and silver as being the basis of our curencies?

Ron Paul wants a new currency to compete with the Feds $.They had competing currencies in the past.

For those of you who think all is rosy in the US,have closer look and speak to people who live there and visited there recently.It could quite easily errupt into civil war.

Yabby you have to progress beyond the Mirror and the Australian for your news and info.

Arjay, you are not the smartest pea in the pod lol, you really arn't.

What the US has to do is get back to the point where Clinton left
office, where they had a balanced budget, even a surplus. It was
those republican scoundrels, George and Dick, who gave away unfunded
tax cuts, then went on huge spending programmes, all unfunded. Now
poor old Obama is left with the mess to clean up, with an economy
in crisis.

One thing about America, they are an innovative bunch and its
innovation which will dig them out of their hole. Just look at
Google, Ebay and the rest of silicon valley. Mostly companies that
simply did not exist some years ago, now mega billion $ cash
generators. Green energy is their new baby, so stay tuned.

Why should America ever repay its debt? I remind you that the
US$ is the global default currency and countries, people need to
park their money somewhere.

It seems its 15 trillion that you are panicking about. Lets see,
3% inflation a year, that is a decrease of 450 billion, without
actually repaying a single cent! That is most likely how it will
be repaid, Arjay.

I really don't care if Fed profits are only 50 billion a year. The
point is, profits are going to the treasury, not to those evil
bankers, which you hate so much.

* speak to people who live there and visited there recently.It could quite easily errupt into civil war.*

Ooh Arjay, so how many have you spoken to? 2,3, 20, 50 perhaps? Are
they members of the conspiracy movement as you are? I remind you that
300 million live in America. Your circle of conspiracy nut friends
don't make up for the majority, just a teensy weensy small group of
extremists.

Arjay
"Do we go back to gold and silver as being the basis of our currencies?"

There's no need for government to decide. They have their own interests in conflict with those of the rest of the population, and have shown themselves completely untrustworthy and incompetent.

But if the government monopoly were abolished, and anyone could supply money in a competing market, people would almost certainly choose gold and silver for their special qualities as money - and even copper, as they have done in the past. In special circumstances, other media would come into currency, as cigarettes did during the war, or tobacco in the Old South. It should be entirely for the parties to decide, it is simply none of the government's business, and their claims to know better or to have managerial competence are false, self-interested, and destructive.

Yabby, that is just standard Keynesianism. It rests on the assumption that we can increase net real wealth by stamping pieces of paper. We can't. The only effect is to transfer wealth from the productive class to the political class. I once read about a guy during the German hyper-inflation who had paid into a superannuation fund all his working life. When he retired, he cashed in his policy, and the entire proceeds bought a loaf of bread. Inflation and central banks are nothing but machinery for legal theft, that is all. What *central banks* satsify themselves is a sustainable rate is irrelevant. Even at a rate of 3 percent, the average person's life savings will be stolen during a fifty year career. "Do the math."

The idea that inflation is necessary or desirable for generalised economic benefits is pure charlatanism, the high priests teaching the masses the Pharaoh can do no wrong, even as he defrauds them. All the problems the central banks falsely claim to solve, such as the economy tanking, are themselves the result of earlier inflationary interventions. In any event, such problems disprove the entire foundation for government intervention, namely, its supposed competence at managing the economy in the first place.

Arjay your posts a getting weirder.
Did you truly ask me and yabby to put lead in our pencils?
have you any idea what an Aussie takes that to say.
And you constantly infer those who disagree with you are,uninformed, unbalanced, have been miss lead, a host of insults.
Have you ever considered it may be you, not the world who has got it wrong.
Peter Hume come you do don't you? know that interest rates of around 3% are the profits lenders get for lending/risking their cash.
Modern, even changing capitalism, needs credit, credit lenders need profit.
We once had 17% interest, I still get verbal bashings over it, but debt was paid, some went under but we had the recent boom times and are doing well, our and Americas current debt will be repaid.

I think I may have worked out why you spend so much of your time fretting about the financial end-times, Arjay.

It's the company you keep.

Webster Tarpley, Ron Paul...

The thing is, it would be far more productive for all of us if you applied some independent thought to the issues, instead of simply channelling their views into this forum.

Do you share Tarpley's belief that the Dalai Lama is a CIA operative, for example?

http://economycollapse.blogspot.com/2010/02/webster-tarpley-dalai-lama-is-cia.html

Don't you think that is, sort of, stretching credulity just the teensiest bit?

No? Hmmm.

Do you also agree with him that Jundullah is a NATO-funded false-flag operation?

http://tarpley.net/2010/02/25/the-battle-for-baluchistan-iran-nabs-top-nato-terrorist-with-help-from-pakistan/

Or are they, as this article so persuasively advocates, an agency of the CIA?

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jundullah

Or both?

As for Ron Paul, he has some very "fundamental" concerns about life on this planet.

http://liberalvaluesblog.com/2007/12/22/ron-paul-backs-creationism-denies-evolution/

Here's advice that I can guarantee you will not take.

Find more reliable sources.

You'll find life will get oh-so-much more agreeable.

>Peter Hume come you do don't you? know that interest rates of around 3% are the profits lenders get for lending/risking their cash.

Yes I do know that. But that’s not in issue, which is, whether government should be able to use a monopoly of the supply of money to inflate the currency, and whether doing so creates net real wealth, or just transfer it from A to B.

>Modern, even changing capitalism, needs credit, credit lenders need profit.

That’s not in issue. The question is whether the government should use a monopoly of the supply of money to expand credit by lowering interest rates below the rate at which they would have been if government wasn’t doing that.

Pericles
Do you think we can increase net real wealth by inflating the currency?