Going Down

In the James Cameron [*spit*] movie "Titanic," there is this great scene that illustrates a point about our current economic situation.  The iceberg is struck.  Because of the glancing blow, the more primitive metallurgy that resulted in brittle steel of the hull, a long gash was ripped across three of the main watertight compartment sections of the front of the ship. With the first three main sections rapidly filling with water, the engineer/ship designer, played by Victor Garber, lays out the side view plans of the ship to show the captain that there is no doubt that the ship is going down and there is absolutely no way to stop it.  It may take an hour or so for the ship to disappear below the waves, but no amount of bilge pumping or anything else is going to stop the inevitable.

That's what is happening with our economy.

Joe Huffman has done the scaling down of the math for us to put it in a way that most Americans who would rather be distracted by the idiot box can understand.  Well, at least I hope so.  Of course, I'm not talking about the "Hopey, Changey" drones who believe that government can produce actual wealth.  Washington will simply tickle the unicorns they have behind the White House to produce streams of rainbow skittles that we can sell to the Chinese.

Here is the example that Joe provides us:

It is predicted the Federal budget deficit will reach $1.65 trillion this year with a $14.1 trillion debt and about $2.1 trillion in income. Yet the House cannot reach agreement on spending cuts. The House Republicans want to only cut $60 billion in spending and the Democrats only want to cut spending $6.5 billion. If you were to scale this down into numbers people might be able to relate to it would look like the following.


If your family income were $50,000 then:


•Family debt is $335,700 
•Family deficit is $39,300 (spending is $89,300/year) 
•The head of household wants to cut $1,430 in yearly spending 
•The spouse wants to cut $154.80 in yearly spending 
The children should cut up the credit cards and sell everything that isn’t the bare minimum needed for food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and communication. If the debt still isn’t being paid down they should consider selling their parents organs.—Joe




The RINO Speaker of the House, John Boehner, along with the rest of the Republican leadership is fiddling while Rome burns, or they've chosen to go along with the Cloward/Piven strategy and are hoping to gain positions of power in the new Socialist Totalitarian state that is being planned.  Either way, we are screwed.  You had better have lots of hard assets, tools, food, and other tangible things to survive the economic melt down.