Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

Think at your own risk.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
News of the day
Sactions against North Korea? Yes ... unanimously ... (btw if you get a chance to catch the chilling CNN documentary about the smuggled video out of that dark, creepy country, TiVo it.

Russia in the WTO? Nope.

The head of Iraq's Olympic committee has been kidnapped, along with some 30 other people, as violence continues to spiral in that country...

Justice for the family of the Brazilian man gunned down in the London subway by mistake following the 7/7 attacks? maybe in civil court ...

Groups in Britain urge the government there to bar further arms sales to israel.

Will President Bush have a Ronald Reagan, JFK moment in Moscow? don't hold your breath.

A Fed researcher issues a dire warning: the U.S. could be going bankrupt...:
A ballooning budget deficit and a pensions and welfare timebomb could send the economic superpower into insolvency, according to research by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff for the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, a leading constituent of the US Federal Reserve.

Prof Kotlikoff said that, by some measures, the US is already bankrupt. "To paraphrase the Oxford English Dictionary, is the United States at the end of its resources, exhausted, stripped bare, destitute, bereft, wanting in property, or wrecked in consequence of failure to pay its creditors," he asked.

According to his central analysis, "the US government is, indeed, bankrupt, insofar as it will be unable to pay its creditors, who, in this context, are current and future generations to whom it has explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments of various kinds''.

The budget deficit in the US is not massive. The Bush administration this week cut its forecasts for the fiscal shortfall this year by almost a third, saying it will come in at 2.3pc of gross domestic product. This is smaller than most European countries - including the UK - which have deficits north of 3pc of GDP.

Prof Kotlikoff, who teaches at Boston University, says: "The proper way to consider a country's solvency is to examine the lifetime fiscal burdens facing current and future generations. If these burdens exceed the resources of those generations, get close to doing so, or simply get so high as to preclude their full collection, the country's policy will be unsustainable and can constitute or lead to national bankruptcy.

"Does the United States fit this bill? No one knows for sure, but there are strong reasons to believe the United States may be going broke."

Blimey! Anything more uplifting?

Ah yes, the Love Parade is back!

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posted by JReid @ 4:37 PM  
ReidBlog: The Obama Interview
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"I am for enhanced interrogation. I don't believe waterboarding is torture... I'll do it. I'll do it for charity." -- Sean Hannity
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