Can someone explain the government shutting down in the USA thing please?

Or more accurately the whole circumstances leading up to it. Sounds bat shit mental.

Debt has to be paid, rather than new money printed as has been happening. Why earn more money, when you can print as much as you want?

from what i can gather, nothing has happened, will happen etc etc so in other words, about as crazy as the the bat shit i sat in last week…so not crazy at all. just a bit wet and slimey

Oh, and
http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/us_debt/us_debt.html

MOAB – that’s pretty bloody scary.

As I understand it, the mentalist Tea Party movement don’t like the idea of “socialised healthcare” (despite it being passed into law three years ago) and are doing everything they can to stop it. Nose, Face, Spite. you get the idea.

And at some point (today) they choose not to borrow more and say ‘live within your means, we don’t want to borrow more’. So a game of accounting and political brinkmanship is happening.

The country is (unofficially) bankrupted not to mention morally bankrupted and is fubard.

Some more scary reading – read the middle bottom bit…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/our-mountain-of-debt/2011/07/18/gIQAkh4FMI_graphic.html

Imagine a bloke falls off his bike in the middle of nowhere and is in a critical condition. He’s unemployed and doesn’t have much money and has no health insurance. The air ambulance costs a fortune, and each day in intensive care the bills keep racking up. It’s going to take him many many years and cripple him financially to pay it all back.

We can’t go on racking up debts – shall we just pull the plug on him?

No.

It’s just too dangerous for them to borrow more! Borrow more and they edge too close to not being the reserve currency, oil no longer being traded in dollars, you name it!

The ROW doesn’t want dollars anymore, big big problems afoot and why a its possibly worth having a reserve in gold for when tipping point is hit.

Sounds quite end of world that but could be interesting times ahead

The West Wing did this brilliantly.

Its all poltics. This is not the first time this has happened. Whilst Obama (Democrat) is president he doesn’t control the “parliament” as he can be out voted by the Republicans who won more seats. The US keeps running into its debt limit as its spending more than it earns, if the Republicans / parliament don’t agree an increase to the limit the US government cannot pay the bills – hence the potential shut down. In return for it’s agreement the Republicans try and stall / overturn Obama’s key policies.

If the national debt of the USA was laid in a single line of $1 bills, it would stretch from Earth, past Uranus.

If the national debt of the USA was laid in a single line of $1 bills, it would stretch from Earth, past Uranus.

Which explains why it’s probably more sensible to carry $10 bills rather than $1 bills.

Ok, so the house killed that, so the GOP (which allegedly means grand old party, but I think my acronym of God’s Own Party is more accurate) has tabled a new amendment where any need for them to provide healthcare for their staff is removed, which is really nice for their staff. Bastards.

It would be funny if it wasn’t peoples lives they were dicking about with just to pander to their extreme right wing…

President trying to do the right things (more affordable healthcare and stopping the US federal addiction to debt). Tea Party element of GOP weeing in shoes to make tedious points and position themselves for future positions of power. GOP throwing spanners in works to see if they can get the president to blink first. Don’t think he will.
In a nutshell.

So many STW parallels….

That first link…jeyzus. 😯

The other thread just got shut down so I’ll ask here.
Is there an infographic anywhere that shows the whole worlds national debt ?
It would be interesting to see which countries owe how much to which other countries and what the interest rates are.

It looks like USA and Greece are heavily in debt, so are there other countries which are equally heavily in investment ?

just found this

But it doesn’t indicate who owes who. There seems to be a lot of debt about though.

As a percentage of GDP, the US public debt is still lower than the UK, France, Japan, Italy…

Very simply, the US has a legal limit on the level of debt outstanding (the debt ceiling) and a legal requirement to pass the budget by 1 October. Lots of fudging and politics around both (ceiling breached despite usual creative accounting) and especially horse trading over Obama’s healthcare program. Brinkmanship taken right and over the brink.

Last happened for nearly a month under Clinton.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/country-list/government-debt-to-gdp

Bbc has good Q&A section with graphic on US debt v ceiling

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24209622

Oh and closer to home check out what is happening in Italy!!!

teamhurtmore – Member
Very simply, the US has a legal limit on the level of debt outstanding (the debt ceiling) and a legal requirement to pass the budget by 1 October. Lots of fudging and politics around both (ceiling breached despite usual creative accounting) and especially horse trading over Obama’s healthcare program. Brinkmanship taken right and over the brink.

Last happened for nearly a month under Clinton.

almost, the US is near it’s debt ceiling, but that can and will be extended when it’s met (early November) what’s going on with the shutdown is more subtle than that. US federal budgets are set once a year have to be agreed by both the house of representatives and the senate to become law and be implemented. Without an agreed budget there’s no mechanism to pay most (not inc armed forces for example) government employees. What’s currently happening is that despite Obamacare being passed as law two years ago the republicans (who have a majority in the house of representatives) are blocking the budget as this includes funding for obamacare for the first time. Until the entire budget is resolved then government employees will be put on unpaid holiday (or until smaller bills for specific services to be paid are passed) which is going to take one hell of a compromise between obama and the republicans.

Thanks pjt, mine was the “very simple” version!! 😉 But estimates suggest that the debt ceiling is already breached in my understanding, but that’s for Oct 17!! As you say lots of horse trading around budgets and policy trade offs in the meantime – all rather pafhetic in the true sense of the word. If one needed an example of politics divorcing itself from the world around it…..

This is good

how the US media would report the shutdown if it was happening in another country.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/09/30/potential_government_shutdown_how_would_the_u_s_media_report_on_it_if_it.html

Well the war machine, the Fed’s support for the stock markets; and the NSA are still running… I suppose that must be a different kind of money.

This is staggering

http://www.usdebtclock.org/%5B/url%5D

This is staggering

As is this!

http://www.debtbombshell.com/%5D

So we owe £900billion but the US owes us $300billion. Calling that debt in would make a fair old dent in our national debt.

edit: although I expect we probably owe them more than they owe us!

A bit out of date, but this is similar to what you asked for..

Isn’t the UK in a shed-load of debt (and adding to it, even under a Tory government). Or are we not supposed to talk about that!

The shutdown isn’t about the debt ceiling (that was the last one). This one is about the US Government not being legally able to spend money because they can’t agree a spending bill. The (Rep controlled) Senate passed one which didn’t include funding Obamacare, so the (Dem controlled) Congress won’t ratify it. Without the bill no spending can happen, hence the shutdown.

Yes, but the figures are a whole lot more entertaining when you are a country the size of the US.. 🙂
I think the percentage of debt to GDP has been similar, but US continues to rise.

US military is the worlds biggest oil consumer

Just a snippet: The Egyptian military gets 1 $ bn US a year.

How can the US afford this?

There are alot of rich US families…organisations servicing this evangalism no?

jonah tonto – Member
from what i can gather, nothing has happened, will happen etc etc so in other words, about as crazy as the the bat shit i sat in last week…so not crazy at all. just a bit wet and slimey

POSTED 21 HOURS AGO # REPORT-POST

You have mice not bats.

Jon Stewart explaining it here:

http://jezebel.com/jon-stewart-ripping-into-the-gop-is-a-thing-of-beauty-1434750022

Good Grief – they’ve not only closed the national parks, but their websites too. Must have taken more effort to take the pages down than just to leave them? A line has been crossed.

oliverd1981 – Member

Good Grief – they’ve not only closed the national parks, but their websites too. Must have taken more effort to take the pages down than just to leave them? A line has been crossed.

Yes, some Federal agencies are going out of their way to cause inconvenience to people, probably hoping that the public will get mad at Congress. But most people see things like you said above, that they’re spending additional money on the closures.

Perfect (and high profile) example is the WWII memorial in Washington. The logical thing to do would be to put up a few signs saying that there would be no ongoing maintenance during the shutdown, so no grass mowed, no trash cans emptied, etc. Instead, they have erected barricades, then reinforced them when WWII vets entered anyways! Idiocy!!!

WWII Memorial Story

Can’t blame the employees for wanting to make a point though, can you? They are being done out of a week or more’s pay after all