I am greately concerned as an american about all of our debt. Eventually, we are going to have to pay it back, and the more money we borrow, the less our currency is worth.
We won't pay it back and China knows it, we will default on it. A sad and brutal truth, China will cut us off and take the loss we will be grappling with some really hard decisions, kind of like Schwarzenegger is coming to terms with and doing what must be done, tighten the belt because there is no more money.
Germany Blasts 'Powers of the Fed'
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a rare public rebuke of central banks, suggested the European Central Bank and its counterparts in the U.S. and Britain have gone too far in fighting the financial crisis and may be laying the groundwork for another financial blowup.
"I view with great skepticism the powers of the Fed, for example, and also how, within Europe, the Bank of England has carved out its own small line," Ms. Merkel said in a speech in Berlin. "We must return together to an independent central-bank policy and to a policy of reason, otherwise we will be in exactly the same situation in 10 years' time." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124398546796379239.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
It's times like these I'm glad I'm Canadian...
I really hope you guys can get your debt paid off, though I'm worried that you might not be able to..
More and more jobs/industries are being outsourced and moved to other countries, where it's much cheaper to pay workers, which means a worsened economy for America, = harder to pay off debt :(.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Quote from "Sixen" »
"One in every 10 million people can potentially have a headache from this pill." God forbid she is the 0.000000001% of having a headache.
Oh this is interesting, below is a piece written by Bix Weir, two things make it interesting 1st the below conversation does happen in the MSNBC video towards the end exactly as typed out. 2nd, Jim Willie (who writes some very serious doom and gloom, far gloomier than I) wrote a piece on Germany as pointed out below. You have to add two and two together so it's anyone's guess if the detective work here is accurate but regardless it's interesting to watch Larry Summer's nervous and panicked at Obama's office door. For anyone who doen't already know Larry Summers, like Tim Geithner helped repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which prevented shifty and dangerous trading practices. That act was repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Yes that would be Phil "America is a nation of whiners" Gramm. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
On May 28th, the night before the White House taping, Jim Willie of Goldenjackass.com posted an article called The Hitman Cometh where he claimed the Germans are trying to withdraw all their physical gold from US control and several 'hit men' have been hired to take down the COMEX and the LME:
was watching the NBC special called "Inside the White House" last night and was struck by a meeting with Larry Summers and the President.
It was touted as an "all access" day in the life of the President but at 7:15 minutes into Part 1 Larry Summers and a man who I believe is Austan Goolsbee come into the Oval Office for a call with "the Germans". Summers is obviously on edge and shuts down the cameras when he begins to discuss the problem.
Summers: "Life has changed..ahh..since the briefing?ahh?
Obama: "For the better or for the worse?"
Goolsbee: "Net-net for the better, wouldn't you say Larry?" (Goolsbee speaks loudly and unconvincingly for the cameras.)
Summers: '(nervous laugh)..there's elements of both. The Germans...actually we should stop (the cameras) here."
The cameras and staff are quickly 'ushered out' of the Oval Office.
The above story is proof bankruptcy works and works well. Allowing incompetent companies to fail through bankruptcy and opening the door for competent people to take them over. This will save more than 13,000 jobs at Saturn and its roughly 350 dealers nationwide. Even better, now the new company can focus on just making Saturn?s and do it better than before. I have two Saturn?s so I am very happy to hear this.
The government needs to stay out of private industry and let the markets correct as they must. That is true good capitalism. All this stimulus and recovery nonsense is going to come back and haunt us in the next 10 years and it will be worse than today. This downturn is going to be painful no matter what anyone does, that can't be prevented because the downturn is the medicine to cure an unhealthy market, but it's been proven again and again throughout history intervention will make it far more painful.
That won't ever happen, the market is only going to get worse and worse. Even if it recovers. There are too many institutions and laws that obstruct the process as is. We're at an impass right now. We have a purely free market currency, a fiat dollar, but we have laws and other things that are directionally socialist. We've been going in this direction since the New Deal.
The saturn buyout will be good though, I agree with you.
Looks like the bond market bubble is starting finally get the attention it needs, a little late I think though. A few 100 points the economy will go down like a ton of bricks. The policy makers best pull their head out of their ass and fast.
'I would not be surprised if the official end of the U.S. recession ends up being, in retrospect, dated sometime this summer' he said in a lecture today at the London School of Economics. 'Things seem to be getting worse more slowly. There?s some reason to think that we?re stabilizing.' http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ayAXvw0Mc3CY
Recovery to what Paul? Of course he thinks charts such as these are a short term problem too. He also admitted he never imagined the crash occurring on the size and scale it did in October of 2008 in his blog. Can we revoke his prize if the economy tanks again in a couple years? http://www.diablofans.com/forums/showpost.php?p=428610&postcount=392
I think we should give Peter Schiff, Robert Kiyosaki, Jim Rogers, and Marc Faber Nobel prizes, they saw it coming years ago and proposed solutions then, those who should have been listening weren't though, they were all patting themselves on the back for having great profits.
Good vid
I wish I could say I was shocked, but I'm not.
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) told Greta Van Sustern that China is investing away from the dollar. Kirk said that China has invested in an oil field this year and bought enough gold to fill up Fort Knox twice!
Jim Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, criticizes the performance of the Federal Reserve.
Jim Willie CB writes the Hat Trick Letter, his father was a legendary investor on Wall Street with deep ties to people in the know. Many of his letters read like something out of the X-files where a conspiracy is around every corner and you half expect to see agent Mulder and Scully to appear at any moment chasing little green men. That said he has on occasion gotten it right, his technical analysis has been ultimately correct for what so far has come to pass, his timing on it though has been off.
The overview of this commentary is the treasuries are starting to show signs of imminent collapse, I tend to agree with this piece by him because of all I have read about what China is doing now. Clearly we are in uncharted waters now.
Indeed the charts are showing dramatic movement now, a reflection of concern I have had over these charts by the FED I posted a while back. We can't escape the fact we have printed and borrowed more money than ever before in our nations history and until these charts come way down we are at severe risk. http://www.diablofans.com/forums/showpost.php?p=428610&postcount=392
The trends are undeniable, the point of posting this is preparation for another possible shoe drop, we may see another oh shit moment. I'm not making predictions, just saying the possibility is not that far fetched. It may take a few years but honestly they have fixed nothing as of yet, clearly we are doing more damage with all this borrowing. It may not be a half bad idea to hedge your food costs and load up a little bit on the non-perishable foods while they are still fairly inexpensive. I'm not saying head for the hills all is lost, just prepare yourself for rising costs of goods, lets hope not too high. It's not unrealistic, our grand parents use to have pantries to stock up on food and there were times in the 30's where they needed them. As for myself I hold a modest safety net of gold and silver as a last resort backup, the typical recommendation in the investor circle is 10% of your investments. Doing that can't hurt either, just hold it and hope you never need it.
No I'm Peter Schiff :thumbsup:! I've read a fair amount on the history of money, it's only been in the last 38 years the world has thought of precious metals as not being money. It's plausible to make sure you have a safty net. I'm not suggesting anyone needs to by farmland, run for he hills, buy ammo, and wait for WWIII. I'm just saying the bond bubble and US treasuries will come crashing to earth sooner or later and it's good to be prepared. Everything that goes up must come down and our currency is floating in the clouds right now.
I started as a quasi-admin/sales rep guy for a marketing firm in 1989, one thing lead to another from there. I read a lot (probably over 200,000 pages I would guess at this point) and learned as much as I could both by book and hands on as often as I could.
If we're on the topic of legitimate money. Since we can't go with silver or gold and see a successful currency... then why don't we try using rare woods as well?
I would be for fine chocolate myself but I would eat all my wealth. Seriously i think people would have a rough time with wood because it can be burned and that is that. Gold is special as it is non-corrosive. You can drop it in the ocean, dig it up in a million years and there it is as pristine as they day it was dropped. The other advantage of it is it's highly m alleable so it can be molded into very precise equal weights. Silver bears similar qualities as well. Whatever they use it will likely be a metal or an uncorruptable mechanism that has intrinsic value as a store of wealth.
Here is a fine list showing all the broke indebted countries of the world.
Border guards in Chiasso see plenty of smugglers and plenty of false-bottomed suitcases, but no one in the town, which straddles the Italian-Swiss frontier, had ever seen anything like this. Trussed up in front of the police in the train station were two Japanese men, and beside them a suitcase with a booty unlike any other. Concealed at the bottom of the bag were some rather incredible sheets of paper. The documents were apparently dollar-denominated US government bonds with a face value of a staggering $134bn (?81bn).
How on earth did these two men, who at first refused to identify themselves, come to be there, trying to ride the train into Switzerland carrying bonds worth more than the gross domestic product of Singapore? If the bonds were genuine, the pair would have been America's fourth-biggest creditor, ahead of the UK and just behind Russia. No sooner had the story leaked out from the Italian lakes region last week than it sparked a panoply of conspiracy tales. But one resounded more than any other: that the men were agents of the Japanese finance ministry, in the country for the G8 meeting, making a surreptitious journey into Switzerland to sell off one small chunk of the massive mountain of US bonds stacked up in the Japanese Treasury vaults.
In the event, late last week American officials confirmed that the notes were forgeries. The men, it appeared, were nothing more than ambitious scamsters.
Here is where it gets interesting, a smart commenter caught what the writer of this article did not. In fact there are number of good unanswered questions below. Mine would be why would you forge over a $100 billion in hot potato bonds no one wants? Where is the profit in that?
I have a question to ask the world:
If these documents were counterfeit how come the two Japanese men were released with their forged bonds? Colonel Rodolfo Mecarelli of the Como Italian Provincial Finance Police reported that the two were released along with their booty. Italian law requires that if counterfeit the documents are destroyed and the smugglers incarcerated. If they are legit the documents are seized until a fine is paid.
How come the US Prosecutors office did not indict and extradite these smugglers? There are more holes in this saga than Swiss cheese. Someone wants this to fade away into the moon-lighty-night so I will probably be labeled a conspiracy theorist for pointing out the obvious. Welcome to the New World Disorder!
Yes there have been reports of they were released, in even more concerning is the fact the news has tried to drop this story to the back page.
Take what you like from it but even if we are to take the official story at face value it still smells like a rotting fish. It's not very hard to understand why the US would want them to be fake, if they turned out to be real in the news the bond market would crumble overnight. Those looking to dump US bonds for real would also not want the story to be true because they would not be able to get rid of theirs fast enough, it would cause a global panic. This is one story where it's in everyone's interest that is be reported as it is.
No I'm Peter Schiff :thumbsup:! I've read a fair amount on the history of money, it's only been in the last 38 years the world has thought of precious metals as not being money. It's plausible to make sure you have a safty net. I'm not suggesting anyone needs to by farmland, run for he hills, buy ammo, and wait for WWIII. I'm just saying the bond bubble and US treasuries will come crashing to earth sooner or later and it's good to be prepared. Everything that goes up must come down and our currency is floating in the clouds right now.
That is absolutely a factual statement. History has proven this many times over. There is a reason i do not invest into the stock market and have become more conservative in saving money. I think i will always be a democrat though. I hold to many values from that party becuase by default i am a caring person.
In your opinion Vegas, what kind of disaster situation do you think we are in? Not that i think we are all gonna die or live in trash cans or anything hahahaha XD
That is absolutely a factual statement. History has proven this many times over. There is a reason i do not invest into the stock market and have become more conservative in saving money. I think i will always be a democrat though. I hold to many values from that party becuase by default i am a caring person.
In your opinion Vegas, what kind of disaster situation do you think we are in? Not that i think we are all gonna die or live in trash cans or anything hahahaha XD
I find, and I say this with respect, that one of the great misconceptions about being conservative is that supposedly you don't care about your fellow man.
Helping your fellow man, by teaching him to help himself, is a far more caring act than giving him help with no expectations of responsibility of himself.
OK this is long winded but I couldn't think of how to make it shorter
I've voted both ways myself, I'm very much a centrist. On one hand I agree with the left on environmental issues and don't see why the right don't try to make it work under their platform more. Even if you don't believe the overwhelming scientific consensus man is causing issues for the world, they can't argue these kinds of emissions are not bad for people. If you can start your car in a closed garage and die from asphyxiation it's certainly no stretch to think a lot diseases such as cancer might be the result of ingesting lower quantities of these airborne toxins.
I think the US government should stay out of abortion decisions. I also think gay people should have the right to the pursuit of happiness like everyone else. Personally I get the willies at the thought of two dudes getting it on but I don't feel threatened or get angry over such things. Funny I lived in SF for 10 years and never quite felt comfortable with that scene but having lived around that environment I can say it's hardly a threat to our society. I don't have to understand it, only that everyone has right to the pursuit of happiness.
On health care I don't know what the answer, that's funny because I work in the industry. On one hand I think we will be burdened heavily by a nationalization of the system but on the other hand the private system isn't working real well either.
However I agree with conservatives with respect to economic issues in principle even though they don't follow their own advice anymore. I think markets correct faster if the government stays out of things. That's not to say I don't think the government shouldn't to place safeguards to prevent market abuses that lead to the crash.
The government however is unwieldy, slow, and often ineffective. The company I work at has government contracts with Medicaid and Medicare. My job is to comply with government security requirements in safeguarding protected health information. We get audited 4 to 5 times a year to ensure we comply, often when talking to certain divisions of the government we find they have no clue what they are talking about. The government is really good at writing lots of long winded ugly bureaucratic rules for compliance. Those who are assigned with enforcing what was written is where problems arise. Often they don't even know what was written and so ambiguous are the documents sometimes they don't understand what the implementation of it means either.
I agree with the libertarian conservatives on reducing the size of government, it's expensive and overextended. We can't continue dominating the world with military stations all over the planet being the worlds police. Eisenhower, a republican, warned us of the dangers of the industrial military complex and we didn't listen.
Lobbyist are the scourge of Washington and ultimately the biggest threat to this nations freedoms, we have become increasingly an oligarchy. The CEO where I work at is dumbfounded our government works at all. Bipartisan politics most often only happens when corporate interests buy both sides of the isle and our company has had to do that. We are supposed to have the best system, that is frightening alone to me.
Now for your question (took me long enough :D)
What are we headed for? well the above $134 billion bond scandal I posted on is a warning shot off our port bow. I think we are headed be it tomorrow or ten years from now some brutally serious consequences simply because they have not fixed anything. Indeed they have bought time and made the foreign debt problem even worse. Bush drove us to the cliff economically with unprecedented spending, Obama unfortunately in this respect at least has not changed course, he has only stepped on the gas.
He is getting his advice from some of the same people who helped create the mess we are in now and think they can fix it (for themselves), really they are simply trying to hold onto former power, control, and glory and it's a loosing battle they cannot win. What concerns me is these events which effect the world is what tests the patience and peace of countries and global interests and if we're not careful lay the seeds for global war.
Schwarzenegger says day of reckoning is here
http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2009/06/01/daily29.html
Interesting, she's 100% correct.
Germany Blasts 'Powers of the Fed'
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a rare public rebuke of central banks, suggested the European Central Bank and its counterparts in the U.S. and Britain have gone too far in fighting the financial crisis and may be laying the groundwork for another financial blowup.
"I view with great skepticism the powers of the Fed, for example, and also how, within Europe, the Bank of England has carved out its own small line," Ms. Merkel said in a speech in Berlin. "We must return together to an independent central-bank policy and to a policy of reason, otherwise we will be in exactly the same situation in 10 years' time."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124398546796379239.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
I really hope you guys can get your debt paid off, though I'm worried that you might not be able to..
More and more jobs/industries are being outsourced and moved to other countries, where it's much cheaper to pay workers, which means a worsened economy for America, = harder to pay off debt :(.
At least this thread gave me one random fact that's remotely true and interesting.
It's the decisions you make when you have no time to make them that define who you are.
Gold Panic Inside The Oval Office
http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1244050251.php
On May 28th, the night before the White House taping, Jim Willie of Goldenjackass.com posted an article called The Hitman Cometh where he claimed the Germans are trying to withdraw all their physical gold from US control and several 'hit men' have been hired to take down the COMEX and the LME:
was watching the NBC special called "Inside the White House" last night and was struck by a meeting with Larry Summers and the President.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30892505/#31073805
It was touted as an "all access" day in the life of the President but at 7:15 minutes into Part 1 Larry Summers and a man who I believe is Austan Goolsbee come into the Oval Office for a call with "the Germans". Summers is obviously on edge and shuts down the cameras when he begins to discuss the problem. GM to sell Saturn to Penske
http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/05/news/companies/saturn_penske/index.htm?postversion=2009060509
The above story is proof bankruptcy works and works well. Allowing incompetent companies to fail through bankruptcy and opening the door for competent people to take them over. This will save more than 13,000 jobs at Saturn and its roughly 350 dealers nationwide. Even better, now the new company can focus on just making Saturn?s and do it better than before. I have two Saturn?s so I am very happy to hear this.
The government needs to stay out of private industry and let the markets correct as they must. That is true good capitalism. All this stimulus and recovery nonsense is going to come back and haunt us in the next 10 years and it will be worse than today. This downturn is going to be painful no matter what anyone does, that can't be prevented because the downturn is the medicine to cure an unhealthy market, but it's been proven again and again throughout history intervention will make it far more painful.
The saturn buyout will be good though, I agree with you.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/rising-interest-rates-a-red-flag-for-wall-street
I can't believe this guy has a PhD or Nobel prize
Recovery to what Paul? Of course he thinks charts such as these are a short term problem too. He also admitted he never imagined the crash occurring on the size and scale it did in October of 2008 in his blog. Can we revoke his prize if the economy tanks again in a couple years?
http://www.diablofans.com/forums/showpost.php?p=428610&postcount=392
I think we should give Peter Schiff, Robert Kiyosaki, Jim Rogers, and Marc Faber Nobel prizes, they saw it coming years ago and proposed solutions then, those who should have been listening weren't though, they were all patting themselves on the back for having great profits.
Good vid
I wish I could say I was shocked, but I'm not.
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) told Greta Van Sustern that China is investing away from the dollar. Kirk said that China has invested in an oil field this year and bought enough gold to fill up Fort Knox twice!
Jim Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, criticizes the performance of the Federal Reserve.
He gave a really good interview
Fed Would Be Shut Down If It Were Audited, Expert Says
http://www.cnbc.com/id/31204170
Jim Willie CB writes the Hat Trick Letter, his father was a legendary investor on Wall Street with deep ties to people in the know. Many of his letters read like something out of the X-files where a conspiracy is around every corner and you half expect to see agent Mulder and Scully to appear at any moment chasing little green men. That said he has on occasion gotten it right, his technical analysis has been ultimately correct for what so far has come to pass, his timing on it though has been off.
The overview of this commentary is the treasuries are starting to show signs of imminent collapse, I tend to agree with this piece by him because of all I have read about what China is doing now. Clearly we are in uncharted waters now.
Link to commentary
http://www.321gold.com/editorials/willie/willie061209.html
Indeed the charts are showing dramatic movement now, a reflection of concern I have had over these charts by the FED I posted a while back. We can't escape the fact we have printed and borrowed more money than ever before in our nations history and until these charts come way down we are at severe risk.
http://www.diablofans.com/forums/showpost.php?p=428610&postcount=392
The trends are undeniable, the point of posting this is preparation for another possible shoe drop, we may see another oh shit moment. I'm not making predictions, just saying the possibility is not that far fetched. It may take a few years but honestly they have fixed nothing as of yet, clearly we are doing more damage with all this borrowing. It may not be a half bad idea to hedge your food costs and load up a little bit on the non-perishable foods while they are still fairly inexpensive. I'm not saying head for the hills all is lost, just prepare yourself for rising costs of goods, lets hope not too high. It's not unrealistic, our grand parents use to have pantries to stock up on food and there were times in the 30's where they needed them. As for myself I hold a modest safety net of gold and silver as a last resort backup, the typical recommendation in the investor circle is 10% of your investments. Doing that can't hurt either, just hold it and hope you never need it.
No I'm Peter Schiff :thumbsup:! I've read a fair amount on the history of money, it's only been in the last 38 years the world has thought of precious metals as not being money. It's plausible to make sure you have a safty net. I'm not suggesting anyone needs to by farmland, run for he hills, buy ammo, and wait for WWIII. I'm just saying the bond bubble and US treasuries will come crashing to earth sooner or later and it's good to be prepared. Everything that goes up must come down and our currency is floating in the clouds right now.
So you can see I don't wear tin foil hats here are few pics of me on the picture thread.
http://www.diablofans.com/forums/showpost.php?p=448864&postcount=793
Here is a fine list showing all the broke indebted countries of the world.
Economy Statistics > Debt > External (most recent) by country
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_deb_ext-economy-debt-external/AFR
Check out the charts here, ooooosh
http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-tracking-the-second-great-depression-2009-6#tracking-the-depressions-world-output-1
OK first read this from the article Here is where it gets interesting, a smart commenter caught what the writer of this article did not. In fact there are number of good unanswered questions below. Mine would be why would you forge over a $100 billion in hot potato bonds no one wants? Where is the profit in that? Yes there have been reports of they were released, in even more concerning is the fact the news has tried to drop this story to the back page.
US says $134bn Treasury bonds seized in Italy are fake ? or are they?
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/06/18/57461/us-says-134bn-treasury-bonds-seized-in-italy-are-fake-or-are-they/
Take what you like from it but even if we are to take the official story at face value it still smells like a rotting fish. It's not very hard to understand why the US would want them to be fake, if they turned out to be real in the news the bond market would crumble overnight. Those looking to dump US bonds for real would also not want the story to be true because they would not be able to get rid of theirs fast enough, it would cause a global panic. This is one story where it's in everyone's interest that is be reported as it is.
That is absolutely a factual statement. History has proven this many times over. There is a reason i do not invest into the stock market and have become more conservative in saving money. I think i will always be a democrat though. I hold to many values from that party becuase by default i am a caring person.
In your opinion Vegas, what kind of disaster situation do you think we are in? Not that i think we are all gonna die or live in trash cans or anything hahahaha XD
I find, and I say this with respect, that one of the great misconceptions about being conservative is that supposedly you don't care about your fellow man.
Helping your fellow man, by teaching him to help himself, is a far more caring act than giving him help with no expectations of responsibility of himself.
I've voted both ways myself, I'm very much a centrist. On one hand I agree with the left on environmental issues and don't see why the right don't try to make it work under their platform more. Even if you don't believe the overwhelming scientific consensus man is causing issues for the world, they can't argue these kinds of emissions are not bad for people. If you can start your car in a closed garage and die from asphyxiation it's certainly no stretch to think a lot diseases such as cancer might be the result of ingesting lower quantities of these airborne toxins.
I think the US government should stay out of abortion decisions. I also think gay people should have the right to the pursuit of happiness like everyone else. Personally I get the willies at the thought of two dudes getting it on but I don't feel threatened or get angry over such things. Funny I lived in SF for 10 years and never quite felt comfortable with that scene but having lived around that environment I can say it's hardly a threat to our society. I don't have to understand it, only that everyone has right to the pursuit of happiness.
On health care I don't know what the answer, that's funny because I work in the industry. On one hand I think we will be burdened heavily by a nationalization of the system but on the other hand the private system isn't working real well either.
However I agree with conservatives with respect to economic issues in principle even though they don't follow their own advice anymore. I think markets correct faster if the government stays out of things. That's not to say I don't think the government shouldn't to place safeguards to prevent market abuses that lead to the crash.
The government however is unwieldy, slow, and often ineffective. The company I work at has government contracts with Medicaid and Medicare. My job is to comply with government security requirements in safeguarding protected health information. We get audited 4 to 5 times a year to ensure we comply, often when talking to certain divisions of the government we find they have no clue what they are talking about. The government is really good at writing lots of long winded ugly bureaucratic rules for compliance. Those who are assigned with enforcing what was written is where problems arise. Often they don't even know what was written and so ambiguous are the documents sometimes they don't understand what the implementation of it means either.
If you want a taste of the stuff I must read, understand, and implement enjoy this small sampling.
http://www.cms.hhs.gov/InfoTechGenInfo/04_CIODirectives.asp
(Read the Section 508 stuff, that will make your eyes bleed LOL!)
I agree with the libertarian conservatives on reducing the size of government, it's expensive and overextended. We can't continue dominating the world with military stations all over the planet being the worlds police. Eisenhower, a republican, warned us of the dangers of the industrial military complex and we didn't listen.
Lobbyist are the scourge of Washington and ultimately the biggest threat to this nations freedoms, we have become increasingly an oligarchy. The CEO where I work at is dumbfounded our government works at all. Bipartisan politics most often only happens when corporate interests buy both sides of the isle and our company has had to do that. We are supposed to have the best system, that is frightening alone to me.
Now for your question (took me long enough :D)
What are we headed for? well the above $134 billion bond scandal I posted on is a warning shot off our port bow. I think we are headed be it tomorrow or ten years from now some brutally serious consequences simply because they have not fixed anything. Indeed they have bought time and made the foreign debt problem even worse. Bush drove us to the cliff economically with unprecedented spending, Obama unfortunately in this respect at least has not changed course, he has only stepped on the gas.
He is getting his advice from some of the same people who helped create the mess we are in now and think they can fix it (for themselves), really they are simply trying to hold onto former power, control, and glory and it's a loosing battle they cannot win. What concerns me is these events which effect the world is what tests the patience and peace of countries and global interests and if we're not careful lay the seeds for global war.
"Corporation n: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility." -Ambrose Bierce