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  1. SiriuslyLong is offline
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    Joined: Jan 2009 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 3,560
    06-08-2012, 11:33 AM #1

    U.S. debt load falling at fastest pace since 1950s

    By Rex Nutting | MarketWatch

    WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Everyone knows America has too much debt. What they don’t know is that things are getting better, not worse.

    Little by little, our economy is reducing its debt burden, slowly repairing the damage caused by 10, 20 or 30 years of excess.

    If you want to know why economic growth has been so tepid, here’s your answer. Four years after the storm hit, the economy is still deleveraging. And it’s very hard for any economy to grow when everyone is focused on increasing their savings.

    Total domestic — public and private — debt as a share of the economy has declined for 12 quarters in a row after surging over the previous decade.
    The rapid rise in federal debt over the past four years has distracted us from the big picture. The level of public debt is indeed worrisome, but it’s not as big a worry as the economy’s total level of debt — public and private.

    Although we have a whole cottage industry devoted to warning us about the dangers of too much public debt, we don’t have any comparable Cassandras telling us about the dangers of too much private debt. Yet the history of the past 30 years (or 300) clearly shows that too much debt, of whatever variety, can pose a systemic risk to the national and global economies.

    As much as we hear politicians, pundits, tea-party patriots and the Congressional Budget Office obsessing about government debt, it was excessive private debt — not public debt — that caused the 2008 financial meltdown. And it was private debt — some of it since transferred to the public — that lies behind the current European debt crisis. (Greece is unique in having a public sector that ran up spending while its private sector is rather conservative.)

    As the political rhetoric about the federal deficit has heated up, we’ve lost sight of the progress that’s been made in bringing total debt back under control. The U.S. is actually doing much better than you’d think if you just listened to the conventional fears about how we’re rushing headlong into a debt Armageddon.

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-debt...040045522.html

    Recession = correction.

    This makes total sense. Formerly freewheeling spenders like me are saving as are many of my middle class friends and their families. Now if we can just get the government to get their fiscal house in order......... But noooooo, the "visible hand" of the statists insist on spending more to "stimulate".

  2. SiriuslyLong is offline
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    Joined: Jan 2009 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 3,560
    06-08-2012, 03:49 PM #2
    "$259.9 billion out of $288 billion (90 percent) of the funds dedicated to “tax benefits” havebeen spent."

    Lower taxes very well might be helping WE CITIZENS rebuild our savings. Lower taxes may be the long term solution to get our economy going again.

    http://www.scribd.com/doc/51404832/W...ey-Actually-Go

  3. Havakasha is offline
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    06-09-2012, 02:54 PM #3
    http://www.nationalmemo.com/david-ca...fortunate-400/

    SAT JUN 09, 2012 AT 09:00 AM PDT
    Surprise: Tax data shows top earners not paying their fair share
    byLaura Clawson
    Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson

    One measure of how big income inequality in the United States is is that pretty much any angle you choose to look at it from reveals some startling little nugget of information, the sort of example of a society run by and for the 1 percent that should put millions of people in the streets in protest. Yet we have so many such examples they become normal, almost boring.

    David Cay Johnston unearths a couple such should-cause-outrage details in a look at the 2009 tax returns of the 400 highest-income families. Consider this: six families making around $200 million each in 2009 paid no federal income taxes, while:

    [A]nother 110 families paid 15 percent or less in federal income taxes. That’s the same federal tax rate as a single worker who made $61,500 in 2009.
    Overall, the top 400 paid an average income tax rate of 19.9 percent, the same rate paid by a single worker who made $110,000 in 2009. The top 400 earned five times that much every day.

    Less than 21 percent of the 400 highest earners paid the minimum 30 percent tax rate that they would pay under the Buffett rule. This is not just income inequality, it's government-supported income inequality. For the Republican members of Congress blocking the Buffett rule, of course, it's a win-win, with the rich getting richer and the government getting poorer and weaker.

  4. SiriuslyLong is offline
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    Joined: Jan 2009 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 3,560
    06-09-2012, 03:06 PM #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Havakasha View Post
    http://www.nationalmemo.com/david-ca...fortunate-400/

    SAT JUN 09, 2012 AT 09:00 AM PDT
    Surprise: Tax data shows top earners not paying their fair share
    byLaura Clawson
    Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson

    One measure of how big income inequality in the United States is is that pretty much any angle you choose to look at it from reveals some startling little nugget of information, the sort of example of a society run by and for the 1 percent that should put millions of people in the streets in protest. Yet we have so many such examples they become normal, almost boring.

    David Cay Johnston unearths a couple such should-cause-outrage details in a look at the 2009 tax returns of the 400 highest-income families. Consider this: six families making around $200 million each in 2009 paid no federal income taxes, while:

    [A]nother 110 families paid 15 percent or less in federal income taxes. That’s the same federal tax rate as a single worker who made $61,500 in 2009.
    Overall, the top 400 paid an average income tax rate of 19.9 percent, the same rate paid by a single worker who made $110,000 in 2009. The top 400 earned five times that much every day.

    Less than 21 percent of the 400 highest earners paid the minimum 30 percent tax rate that they would pay under the Buffett rule. This is not just income inequality, it's government-supported income inequality. For the Republican members of Congress blocking the Buffett rule, of course, it's a win-win, with the rich getting richer and the government getting poorer and weaker.
    Where's the Stiglitz article on inequality?