2013-10-14 16:25:49.117851+00 by Dan Lyke 9 comments
Or: Short-term T-bill rates are skyrocketing because of the shutdown. Big ol' serious "duh", and it's amazing how much money the "fiscal conservatives" are costing us all. Bastards.
[ related topics: Currency Economics ]
comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2013-10-14 17:23:24.352588+00 by: Larry Burton
As the search for a way to end the partial federal shutdown and avoid a debt crisis shifted to the Senate, Democrats made plain that one of their top priorities was to diminish the next round of across-the-board spending cuts, known as the sequester, due to take effect early next year.
http://online.wsj.com/news/art...52702304106704579133413166676506
#Comment Re: made: 2013-10-14 17:45:39.919443+00 by: Dan Lyke
So if indeed the Democrats were the block here, Boehner could call everyone's bluff right now, right?
#Comment Re: made: 2013-10-14 18:21:34.385124+00 by: meuon
And I'm sure someone is making a fortune off of that...
#Comment Re: made: 2013-10-14 18:47:14.156584+00 by: Dan Lyke
So, Larry, as I dig deeper into the issue of the Republicans trying to maintain the sequester, I realize that what the Republicans don't want to do is renegotiate what the cuts are. Frankly, I side with the Democrats here: There are some good places we can cut a lot in the federal government, the places the sequester mechanism does that are not good places to cut.
#Comment Re: made: 2013-10-14 19:21:20.271944+00 by: Larry Burton
I'm not siding with anyone on this. The Democrats demanded a clean CR and the Republicans hit them with smaller and smaller concessions and the Democrats each time said, "No." My understanding is that the Republicans finally did strip away all demands and suggested a short term clean CR and a short term raise in the debt ceiling and that's when the Democrats demanded concessions on the sequester.
I've been pointing out that regardless of whether the Republicans in The House are good, evil or neutral they were elected by the people in their district and each district has approximately the same population. Whether I side with them or not I have to acknowledge that they are representative of the people of this country. If I think democracy has any place in this country I have to give credence to what The House is saying and believe that the Senate is going to negotiate with them in good faith, whether or not The Senate feels The House has dealt with them in good faith in the past or not.
What I want to see in this, right now, is what Harry Reid and Barrack Obama was asking for from the beginning a clean CR and the debt ceiling raised with no strings attached. It seems to me that the Senate Democrats are now the ones demanding concessions.
#Comment Re: made: 2013-10-14 20:35:08.873501+00 by: Dan Lyke
My impression is that the sequester isn't a clean CR, the Republican proposal has been "we'll give you the shutdown back if you'll let us have the sequester again this year". I guess I should go read some more on this.
#Comment Re: made: 2013-10-15 11:54:23.962933+00 by: stevesh
"These are short-term IOU's of the U.S. government, bills issued for 30, 60 or 90 days. They enable Uncle Sam to manage cash flow much the way a homeowner might use a credit card."
Aren't we missing the real point here with our fascination with the process, negotiations and shenanigans ? It's not an exact analogy, but isn't increasing the debt ceiling like the homeowner adding a new credit card when he's already awash in debt ? We have to stop this insane decades-long federal spending binge. That's what's going to destroy our economy, not some meaningless partisan political wrangling.
#Comment Re: made: 2013-10-15 15:25:17.965036+00 by: Dan Lyke
Holding the "debt ceiling" is like saying "we're going to not pay our credit card bill". The time to address this is during budgeting. And, yes, it'd be awesome to get spending down, and I've got a big list of places I'd love to start cutting. Slashing, really.
Cut the FHWA back to gas tax levels of funding so that we stop incurring future obligations we can't afford to maintain. Slash the "dark" budget, especially given that the CIA keeps fucking up our foreign policy hard, and the current NSA revelations show that those assholes aren't actually doing anything useful. Start cutting our military down so that as a percent of GDP it's somewhere in same order of magnitude as the rest of the world. Address the farm bill.
But ya ain't gettin' any of those from the Republicans.
#Comment Re: made: 2013-10-16 00:39:01.101293+00 by: meuon
Dan: Can we get it from anywhere? I'm normally pretty mellow about the whole political process, these partisan shenanigans show the USA politics for idiocracy they are. I'm ashamed. While I'm not a big supporter of "Obamacare", I think it's an evolutionary move in the right direction.