The issue here is whether America pays its bills.  We are not a deadbeat nation.  … This is the United States of America. We can’t manage our affairs in terms of the way we pay our bills? … I don’t think anyone would consider my position unreasonable. — President Obama, today So President Obama does […]

In the recent debate over the so-called “fiscal cliff,” President Obama was reportedly at one point offering to raise the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67 and Social Security. However, in view of the coming retirement crisis due to the decline in defined benefit plans guaranteeing a specific retirement income, this is a […]

Here are reminders of Angry Bear posts and contrbutor thinking on “Wealth, debt,and consumption”. Wealth versus income Usually my articles present facts and data and try to drive down to a conclusion. This time, I’m going to drive down to a couple of questions. Income and consumption jazzbumba Part 1…spending as a fraction of net […]

From Reuters comes this piece on arms spending: Demand for big-ticket U.S. weapons is expected to stay strong for at least the next few years, the trade group said in a 2012 year-end review and forecast released in December.Fears resulting from China’s growing military spending (bolding mine…the US has about 4.8% spending to GDP ratio) […]

Note that in this table from 2010 a full fix is 0.6. And that the North West Plan is close to Options 2 and 3.

Paul Krugman: … I get calls. The White House insists that it is absolutely, positively not going to cave or indeed even negotiate over the debt ceiling — that it rejected the coin option as a gesture of strength, as a way to put the onus for avoiding default entirely on the GOP. Truth or […]

by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Health Care Thoughts: Electronic Medical Record Meltdown In the past I have predicted the EMR focus of the Obama administration might not work as well as intended. Sadly, and many billions of dollars later, I may be correct.(The New York Times has run many pieces on this, the latest on […]

Either that or he means that the public understands what the debt-ceiling statute actually is, and will never support Congress’s authorization of payment of already-incurred expenses earlier authorized by none other than Congress itself. Obama and the congressional Dems should take the ball Walden has handed them and run with it.Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of […]

by Mike Kimel The Problem with the Second Amendment A well regulated militia, being necessary to the securityof a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shallnot be infringed. I am no constitutional scholar, or even an attorney, but I did take American History in high school, and it seems to […]

I’ve long been troubled by a Paul Krugman comment from 2008: There’s no obvious reason why consumer demand can’t be sustained by the spending of the upper class — $200 dinners and luxury hotels create jobs, the same way that fast food dinners and Motel 6s do. And I find in his concluding comment from […]