Black Friday: Treasury Borrowed $211.69 Per U.S. Household on Day After Thanksgiving
The U.S. Treasury increased the net debt of the United States $24,327,048,384.38 on the day after Thanksgiving, which equals approximately $211.69 for each of the nation’s 114,916,000 households.At the close of business last Wednesday, according to the Treasury, the national debt was $16,283,161,895,179.85. On Thanksgiving, the Treasury took the day off and did no borrowing. But on Friday, the Treasury increased the debt of the United States to $16,307,488,943,564.23. That was a one-day increase of $24,327,048,384.38.
When President Barack Obama first took office on Jan. 20, 2009, the national debt stood at $10,626,877,048,913.08. Since then, it has increased by $5,680,611,894,651.15.
That means that since Obama has been president, the national debt has increased by about $49,432.73 per household.
"If you took every single penny that Warren Buffett
has, it'd pay for 4-1/2 days of the US government. This tax-the-rich
won't work. The problem here is the government is way bigger than even the
capacity of the rich to sustain it. The Buffett Rule would raise $3.2 billion a
year, and take 514 years just to pay off Obama's 2011 budget deficit."
-Mark Steyn
"They say there's nowhere to cut to avert the fiscal
cliff. Really? The cost of flying, staffing and entertaining Barack Obama is
more than every European royal house combined. This isn't even a partisan
thing. When you're broke, the guy in charge should cut back. Why does Obama
have full-time movie projectionist on staff around the clock? Is it in case he
wakes up at 2 a.m. and wants to watch 'The Ice Follies of 1939'?" -Mark
Steyn
Did Obama Cut a Faustian Deal with
Morsi?
What did Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi get in return for supporting the cease fire? The idea that Morsi, a strong supporter of Hamas, just went along with the Obama program out of conviction that the Obama team had the compelling case strikes me as naïve. There had to be bargain of some sort. Obama wants something from Morsi and Morsi gets nothing in return? I see one possible alternative that Morsi agreed to support Obama's current policy in return for Obama's support of Morsi's future policy in Egypt, and back Egypt as a power broker in the Middle East.
What did Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi get in return for supporting the cease fire? The idea that Morsi, a strong supporter of Hamas, just went along with the Obama program out of conviction that the Obama team had the compelling case strikes me as naïve. There had to be bargain of some sort. Obama wants something from Morsi and Morsi gets nothing in return? I see one possible alternative that Morsi agreed to support Obama's current policy in return for Obama's support of Morsi's future policy in Egypt, and back Egypt as a power broker in the Middle East.
The crux of a
Faustian deal is bargaining away the future for present gain - selling one's
soul (the future) for worldly (present) success. For the Obama administration
this became support our policy now in the conflict between Israel and
Hamas and we'll support ($$) your policy in the future?
Here is Secretary of
State Clinton last Wednesday at a Cairo press
conference praising
the first part of the deal, "I want to thank President Morsi for
his personal leadership to de-escalate the situation in Gaza and end the violence."
Is Morsi now following up
on the second part of the deal by ramping up his bid for total power -
dictatorship - in Egypt?
Moreover, the Obama administration and its apologists seem red-faced over the
Faustian deal.
State Department spokeswoman
Victoria Nuland said Morsi's actions go against the "the aspirations of
the revolution" in 2011 that led to the ouster of longtime President Hosni
Mubarak. Compared to the Egyptian street which has exploded in protests and
charges that Morsi is trying to set himself up as a new "Pharaoh,"
this is mild criticism indeed.
Even Obama apologist and
New York Times foreign policy analyst, Tom Friedman, is lamenting
the Faustian deal, "President Obama has to be careful not to sell out
Egyptian democracy for quiet between Israel
and Egypt
and Hamas. We tried that under Mubarak. It didn't end well."
The Obama administration
and its apologists can protest and lament all day and try to save face but how
can the Obama administration back out of such a deal? Morsi could cut the leash
on Hamas.
There may be another
explanation for the timing of Morsi's power grab. If so, I'd like to hear it.
Hungarian MP calls for Jewish ‘threat’ list
A call by a far-right
Hungarian MP for a list to be drawn up of Jewish politicians and government
members who pose a “threat to national security” has caused outrage among both
Hungary’s estimated 80,000-strong Jewish community and liberal politicians.
Marton Gyongyosi, a
leading MP of Jobbik, Hungary’s
radical rightwing party, called for the list in the Budapest parliament on Monday, saying that it
was justified by the increased tensions following the latest conflict between Gaza and Israel.
“Jobbik MPs have made anti-Semitic and
anti-Roma statements in parliament before, but nobody has ever called for a
list. This is totally unacceptable in a democracy,” Timea Szabo, an MP for the
liberal-green LMP party and deputy chairperson of parliament’s human rights
committee, said.
“I am a Holocaust
survivor,” Gusztav Zoltai, executive director of the Hungarian Jewish
Congregations’ Association, told Reuters. “For people such as me this generates
raw fear, even though it is clear that this only serves political ends. This is
the shame of Europe, the shame of the world.”
Up to 600,000 Jews from Hungarian
territories died in the Holocaust, the majority after mass deportations
began in the last year of the war.
Mr Gyongyosi appeared to
back track on Tuesday, saying he was referring to citizens with dual
Israeli-Hungarian citizenship. “I apologise to my Jewish compatriots for my
statements that could be misunderstood,” he said on Jobbik’s website.
Jobbik, which holds 44 of
386 seats in parliament, making it the third-strongest party in Hungary, has
been accused of stoking anti-Semitic and anti-Roma feelings and of supporting
the Hungarian Garda, a uniformed militia which has made frequent appearances in
rural areas with Roma populations, despite being banned by law.
Jobbik denies any
anti-Semitic or anti-Roma sentiment, saying that it only wants to protect Hungary from
the dangers of international capital and citizens from petty theft and
lawlessness.
Liberal and left-wing
politicians also accuse Viktor Orbán, the prime minister, and his governing
Fidesz party of being soft on Jobbik and pandering to radical policies in order
to win voters from the far-right camp.
“Fidesz definitely has
double standards. When something happens like this [Gyongyosi statement], they
always denounce it but otherwise their actions and policies show otherwise,” Ms
Szabo says.
In a short statement on
its website, the Hungarian government on Tuesday said it condemned Mr
Gyongyosi’s statement “to the greatest possible degree”, adding that it took
the “strictest possible action against every form of racism and anti-Semitic
behaviour”.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/65793d06-38c6-11e2-981c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2DSycVvaS
The Coming Fall and Eventual
Rebirth of America
By Frank Ryan
The hope that many of us had that the nightmare of the Obama presidency would end faded into the night on November 6th. In reality though, "hope" was not very much of a plan.
In the experiences that I
have had assisting companies and organizations avoid bankruptcy, there is a very predictable pattern that
organizations face when they are dealing with serious financial problems.
The pattern involves
economic growth and prosperity followed by overspending. From overspending and
excess comes a period of denial that anything must change to solve the problem.
From denial comes failure. If the failure is accepted and dealt with growth is
restored and the cycle begins again. If failure is not accepted, the organization
will cease to exist.
The sheer disappointment
and almost melancholy reactions to the Obama reelection made me realize that
the American people are no different in their reactions than the employees and
managers of the companies that I am attempting to save.
In any plan to resurrect
an economy, as Mitt Romney proposed in his five point plan, a majority of
people must first come to grips with the reality of the difficulties that they
face. While the difficulties may have been obvious to those of us who describe
ourselves as fiscal conservatives, the election results convinced me that the
American people have not yet reached that same conclusion.
Typically in most bankruptcies, there is a
catastrophic event which convinces the vast majority of people that they are
really in trouble financially. We apparently are not at that stage yet in the United States.
Equally as problematic
for a financial rescue of our economy was that 13 million fewer people voted in
2012 compared to 2008.
The significance of that
apparent apathy is that apathy typically precedes a collapse in an economy.
Apathy can actually accelerate financial problems because problems are ignored
until collapse occurs. In financial turnarounds, the apathy is the "calm
before the storm"
The transition from
apathy to a cataclysmic event occurs because the disaster is
"allowed" to occur thanks to the fact that so many people
are apathetic. Problems quite simply are not dealt with.
In the United States,
the analogy would be a transition from engagement of our people searching for
hope in the 2008 election of Obama to the apathy in the 2012 election.
The false sense of
security that all will be well or that things are not as bad as they expected
them to be was prevalent in 2012. The preponderance of support Obama had from
blacks, single women, and Hispanics may well reflect the paralysis of these
groups due to fear of the uncertainty that exists in the economy.
When the apathy and fear
reaches a crisis point in the next few years, probably during our next election
in 2016, we will deal with the unmitigated disaster of the irresponsible fiscal
spending this nation has been engaged in for decades.
Once this cataclysmic
event occurs, the transition will begin. After the crisis starts, most people
willingly accept the difficult solutions that were unfathomable only months
earlier.
In the case of the U. S. economy,
the change that will take place will be the recognition that only by accepting
personal responsibility and accountability will our economy ever right itself.
If personal responsibility is not accepted, collapse of our nation, as we know
it, is inevitable.
The process that I
describe above is precisely what happened during the collapse of the Soviet Union. I also experienced the same process in Poland, Romania,
Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Belarus in the 1990's. Some of
these nations have fared well and some have not depending upon the strength of
their leaders to solve the problems.
The nations that fared
well have had leaders who understood that simple, quick fixes provide only
temporary "solutions" and that serious solutions require systemic
changes to society.
A restoration of a free
enterprise system with the right of self-determination is essential to survive
after the collapse. Free enterprise provides the fuel to the economic engine.
The basic framework of
free enterprise once existed in United
States and it is a principle which our
people typically understand and embrace.
In the United States,
we have bountiful natural resources. We generally have a well-educated
workforce. We have many baby boomers who are preparing to retire which will create job opportunities for the younger generation.
The self-correction will
require that we combine these tremendous assets to counter the negative effects
of structural problems in our economy such as public-service unions, unfunded
pensions, immigration, and other issues that we have pushed off to another
day to solve.
In Alan Greenspan's book,
The
Age of Turbulence he describes the continued volatility of the world's
economies in the 20th Century. In virtually every instance, the countries went
through a period of growth, then excess, then denial, then failure, and finally
some semblance of rebirth.
For us, Gov. Romney was a
great candidate but at the wrong time. Unfortunately for the majority of
voters, the message of how serious of a predicament we are in was lost to them.
We are going into a full stage period of denial. Gov. Romney was just four
years too early.
I am very optimistic of
the long term for our country, for as happened with our Founding Fathers, we,
too, will have a renewal and rebirth of America and the American dream
early in the 21st-century.
We are a creative and
vibrant people who believe in Life, Liberty
and the Pursuit of Happiness. Those three magical ingredients will fuel our
rebirth. It is sad, though, that we need a rebirth when death was avoidable.
Col. Frank Ryan, CPA,
USMCR (Ret.) and served in Iraq
and briefly in Afghanistan
and specializes in corporate restructuring and lectures on ethics for the state
CPA societies. He has served on numerous boards of publicly traded and
non-profit organizations.
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