Saturday, July 23, 2011

United States Debt ceiling

Watching the Democrats and Republicans squabble over the national debt ceiling is like watching my six and eight year old fight with each other.  You know what's going to happen.  No one will win the fight and they will both end up crying.  The thing that ticks me off about these two parties, they are more interested in pushing their own agenda than actually putting aside their own differences and working on making something happen.  You can sit and blame one party over the other, but the fact of the matter is that both parties are to blame.  Both parties don't care enough about our country to get something passed.  Neither are willing to compromise.  I'm sick of both parties.  If I could, I would vote for something other than the two ring circus we currently have.  Yeah, you have all the other political parties out there, but they are so far out there they are practically unsupportable.  So we are stuck where we are at.

If I had more time and energy, I'd craft some clever email, spam a few hundred of my closest friends, and do some sort of march/protest somewhere.  I would encourage others to do the same.  But, I don't have the time or the energy to do any of that.  Instead, I may blog about it and I may send my congressmen an email or two about it. 

So, I don't think we will get a deal passed unless there is an outcry from the citizens of the United States.  Americans are too self-absorbed to do anything meaningful about it.  I don't know exactly what will happen when the government defaults, but I know something for sure, we will have some gnarly inflation happen because faith in the dollar will cease.  If you look at the exchange rate of the dollar and the price of oil and gold, the dollar has weakened against all of those things.

Additionally, the country has too much outstanding debt.  We will never be able to do anything about it.  The only way to "fix" it is to monetize the national debt.  When you monetize the debt, that causes inflation.  And with inflation everyone hurts.  So, hold on.  Our bumpy ride will just get that much bumpier.