They are not going to pass a deal.

[neilgin1]

I'm not just talking about the debt ceiling, i speak also of a debt reduction proposal, either the 4 trln, or the 3 trln over 10 year

the markets are showing us that. the way silver is trading right now....its breathtaking...Sep's 40.20 right now, up a buck and a quarter...IF, we close above $41 today, and dont laugh, we are off to the races.

i cant believe these guys in Congress...and its not just them. i heard theres talk of a 1 trln dollar-10 year defense cut plan on the table, which is 100 bln off a yearly 700 bln defense budget, and the Pentagon is whining, When the [fluff] are these guys just gonna grow up?

not gonna, just going to keep buying silver. Hell with 'em all.

[neilgin1]

unbelievable!

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/republ ... now-projec

Tyler Durden's doing some great work over at zero hedge....and Boehner TOO sez no deal.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/boehne ... bt-ceiling

[Market Harmony]

Will this be the death-nail for the bond market?

[Country]

Will this be the death-nail for the bond market?

I don't think so. The Bernanke will buy all the bonds. But, the dollar might just depreciate big time.

[Market Harmony]

Will this be the death-nail for the bond market?

I don't think so. The Bernanke will buy all the bonds. But, the dollar might just depreciate big time.

Yes, that's sort of where I was going... FED buys bonds, dollar dies, bond guys decide to demand higher interest on the bonds, and Treasury obliges... Cycle repeats and expands until bonds are dead

[VWBEAMER]

I think Obama will mint the the trillion dollar Platinum coin...if he does Gold and silver will make a sharp rise on inflation fears.
http://wallstreetpit.com/79740-is-coin-seignorage-obamas-magic-bullet

The reason I say this is he needs to keep spending to keep the economy going ( he believes) and he has shown us that he is willing to bend the rules to get his way.

[68Camaro]

Well I'm lovin' it. I hope the non-Democrats (regardless of what label they go by) stick to their guns and refuse to pass any debt extension without the fix that is needed.

Do I expect a true default. Naw... They'll continue to patch crap together and stretch things out for more time.

Do I expect some eventual caving - frankly yes. They've never fixed things in the past. I think they are incapable of doing the right thing for any long enough time period to have a positive long-term effect. I would love to be pleasantly surprised. But not expecting it.

[No82s]

If they don't its just an automatic balanced budget amendment. The have enough money coming in for the interest, and social security at this point in time is still bringing in more than it sends out. Thus any default would be a decision to do so, and they aren't that dumb.......

[kidman232]

debt talks collapse, obama talking live

[AlexTG]

Let is all burn down.

[Oakair]

Let is all burn down.

We can only hope...

[Country]

What do you'all think will happen on Monday when the US financial markets open?

[Mossy]

Obama is under pressure from the gun control side as well. ATF had operations going, FBI had at least one, and Dept of State had one (with real military weapons going to the Zetas). He should be catching it from all directions.

[BamaJoe]

I'm with Ron Paul on this one. Default now and avoid even greater pain later.

[IdahoCopper]

Obama and Congress are deadlocked on raising the debt ceiling.

The Republican majority Congress is dead set against raising taxes, and Obama insists on raising taxes on the "rich".

What the media and Obama are failing to discuss, is the looming inflationary spiral, that will inflate prices and wages far beyond anything in history.

With QE1, QE2 and soon to be implemented QE3, the money supply has been inflated to absurd levels. It takes about 2 years for those monetary increases to reflect in prices, then wages.

So by demanding increased taxes on the "rich" now, before that massive inflation hits, Obama is dooming the vast majority of Americans to higher taxes. By acting now, when he thinks "class warfare" on the rich can be sold to an unsuspecting public, those taxes will be in place, when we all are "rich" in a year or two in the highly inflated currency.

Obama forgets, that not all of us are stupid, or asleep.

[reddirtcoins]

Wish I was a 100 miles in the middle of nowhere... lol

[neilgin1]

What do you'all think will happen on Monday when the US financial markets open?

higher. the debt ceiling WILL be raised, thats a done deal, too many Fortune 500 CEO's have been calling EVERYBODY, at the White House, the Hill, American Enterprise Institute, any beltway institution in the loop, and screaming bloody murder for days now, and you'll hear no more QE3 talk, QE3 will now be "stealth Q3's", in 70 to 100 bln chunks, that guys like zero hedge will dig up, we'll see charts of M2 spiking, etc.

the debt reduction package, thats a whole different animal. If I...was the President, i'd call in the "gang of six, along with Pelosi, Reid, McConnell and Boehner, and say, "here's what we're going to do, we'll do 2 dollars of cuts to every dollar of revenue raising, we'll leave the Bush tax cuts in place, what i get is that you stay away from Social Security and Medicare, and we hit the DoD with a 2 trln $ cut over 10 years, which means 200 bln off a yearly 700 bln budget the DoD gets now, which should put us in the ball park of a 3-4 trln debt reduction over 10 years...maybe more".

you see, ANY politician KNOWS Social Security is the "third rail" of politics, touch it and you die, so they'll give on that, Pelosi and Reid will scream about the Bush tax cuts, but in the end the President is leader of the party, so they got to sit down and shut up, the 2 to 1 cuts to revenue can be bargained up to 3 to 1, only as long as the Pentagon steps up to the plate.

if you frame it to the DoD as a "patriotic, self sacrificial" thing to do, they might buy in, because the face of counter insurgency is winding down, are we going to fight a war with China in 10 years...doubt it, and in the end both the DoD and everybody else in the frigging world KNOWS we dont need 11 aircraft carriers, the things are obsolete anyway
(check this....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millenium_Challenge )

our warfighting doctrine is not the "2 and a half war" past doctrine, believe me, 500 bln a year is still pretty lethal. Our current warfighting strategy is called "Full Spectrum Dominance" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-spectrum_dominance)

you ever wonder why we do Iraq, and control most of the oil bearing regions, and you dont hear a peep of protest from the chinesse and Russians? you ever wonder why we no longer have a NASA based space shuttle and nobody in govt says a peep?

look to the heavens, what we MUST have up there is beyond lethal, google "Space Command" and you will see the website of the most potent warfighting force nobody talks about....we aint crumbling THAT quick and we do have some very smart people in the Dept of Defense, so i would think they can make do on 500 bln a year.

the only two rubs are this, first we are at Peak Oil, and that is why, we have all this global turmoil, EVERYTHING< EVERY INVESTMENT is somehow tied to petroleum, and it is dwindling. Second, there are some bad unpatriotic folks that WANT a Depression, to wit, why pay 70 cents on the dollar for something you can buy at 10 cents to the dollar?

thats bad stuff, thats unAmerican, but a lot of these vipers are NOT American...they dont care, they dont love this country, they only love money, and will do whatever they got to do, or step on whoever they got to step on to get it, and that includes you and me, our families, our children, our nation.

Patriotism isnt buying a 7.99 cent American flag at Wal Mart, its about binding ourselves together, and being very calm and purposeful as One Nation in such a time as this.

im hoping against hope.

[neilgin1]

to put a button on everything i just wrote, watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igXHsHZh ... r_embedded

its how i feel.

[68Camaro]

Hopefully we don't have to always agree on everything. Iron sharpens iron. I have to respectfully disagree with some of your defense spending strategy, Neil. I agree that there is money that could be cut, but first - BEFORE you cut - you've got to get us out of the wars Neil. You can't cut the budget AND expect us to fight the wars - that 200 billion you want to cut is being spent fighting those wars. The next issue is that (since we have to deal in reality) troop drawdown will happen too slowly. It's a hard thing to do, but the troops have to be let go. (That won't happen - but it should - with some type of safety net, GI Bill, etc.) What will actually happen is that we will have the current sized military for too long, and the bulk of the balance of the budget will be spend on them. So what will actually get cut is all the development that creates the tools that allow our warfighters to be dominant.

So reality is that within 4 years we will have a Jimmy Carter military (both size and capability) that can't fight it's way out of a paper bag. Everyone in the world will know it. And we will be in no position to be able to do what Reagan did in the 80s, to make a later correction. It will eventually be our end. Maybe not now, or in 10 years, but eventually. We like to talk tough, but Red Dawn ain't going to happen when we are overun by 100 million Chinese with weapons superior to ours. And the Chinese are catching up to us, and FAST.

As to aircraft carriers, they are now principally force projection in time of minor conflict. In a new major conflict they would tend not to be used for WWII purposes; any that survived the initial stages of the conflict would primarily be used as remote portable airstrips. Yes, many of the carriers would be lost. That doesn't lessen their value up to that point. And any truly serious next major conflict isn't going to be like anything we've ever seen before. We don't know what its like to loose 20,000 troops in a single battle anymore. We used to know that - accepted it as an awful fact of war. Now, it will demoralize the country. I'm afraid it will cause us to surrender instead of fight.

As to Millenium Challenge, it just proved (yet again) that one of the first maxims of war is that (as always) we tend to fight the start of the next war with the tools and tactics of the last one. So the winner of the next war is the one who is best at adapting and doing so quickly. That ten-year old exercise created lessons learned, some of which have guided future development and changes in tactics. Is it enough? Dunno. Are we able to still adapt quickly in time of need? I pray we are. But I'm concerned.

What do we have in space? I have no special knowledge, but I know at least some of what types of technologies have been and are being developed, and I can tell you that there is nothing up there that makes me feel any better about any of the above. Anything up there can't take care of us without boots on the ground and the infrastructure that now goes with them. Don't drink our own kool-aid.

At the same time, some of the technologies - in the wrong domestic hands - now (or very soon) will make it very possible for the wrong person(s) in power (should that happen) to remain in power and re-establishment of a legal government nearly impossible. That scares me as well. Until I remember that there truly is a Supreme Being in charge who has a plan. (Not that some of it won't require some sacrifice.)

[68Camaro]

to put a button on everything i just wrote, watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igXHsHZh ... r_embedded

its how i feel.

Wow. I feel bad. I feel conflicted - a wet rag. The video is how I feel, too. Trouble is, I've come to realize that sometime in the past 30 years I've become the minority in this country. There are still parts of the country - maybe even whole states (cause I used to live in them) - where I think that sentiment is very strong, if not predominant. And there are even still people here, even some young people, that still feel that way. But it's no longer the soul of this country. That's what saddens me, on some days when I let it.

(Edit for clarity...)

[neilgin1]

68,
i opened two windows, so i could reference all your well reasoned points, in ALL due brotherly respect. You cant "hear" my voice, but its modulated, not this shrill stuff you hear on the media these turbulent days.

Though we're just getting to know one another, please know this, i'm an Eisenhower/Colin Powell "hawk"...also one of my hero's is an Admiral by the name of "Fox" Fallon, ex-CentCom CO.....(here's an article, you'll definitely dig on this wise warrior:
http://www.esquire.com/features/fox-fallon )
i "grew up in the Carter military, i was serving, and it nearly me got killed. long story for another time, but it was not pretty, and i'm not advocating that position at all.

as far as fighting the wars, in the Iraqi theater, hostilities have ceased, we've drawn down to, i believe 50,000 troops. In Afghanistan, most of our combat units, pretty much stay close to "green zone" type enclaves and bases, the exception being special force ops, so the war fighting tempo has slowed to a crawl...guys arent going out haji hunting a lot.
i just wish somebody would explain WHAT the warfighting endgame IS, in both theaters...what does "victory" look like?...to date i have not seen any coherent explaination. If somebody said, we have to be an in theater blocking force to counter the Chinese "string of pearls" strategy, vis-a-vis Pakistan, THAT i can see, but both Iraq and Afghanistan were a total violation of the "Powell Doctrine", which was three fold, overwhelming force, clear cut objectives that outline victory, and an exit strategy.

Military history will NOT be kind to Secty Rumsfeld, he pissed off a LOT of mid level officers, who will be in positions of leadership ten years down the line.

Furthermore, DoD wont be cashiering guys and girls currently serving, OR cutting post service benefits, military takes care of its own. The drawdown will be via attrition, and higher enlistment standards, which are already in place.

as far as this new "drumbeat" for war with the Chinese, its not necessary or helpful. I'm not an appeaser, but the Chinese arent "car crazies", they DO NOT want war with the United States, what they do want is global respect, and i believe they are entitled to that. As Fallon said, if you show yourself to a grown up on the world stage, you get to sit at the grown ups table, and in my reading, they have shown themselves as such. We should move towards engagement with the Chinese, rather than this drumbeat, because believe me, America does NOT want war with PRC.

the main threat facing the US, is an extranational "player" doing something, whether it be cyber or EMP to our electrical grid, that is our weak point, and that doesnt take 700 bln dollars a year. If you take every nations defense budget and add them up, they dont come out to 700 bln...something, to me at least, not what the Framers had in mind, but history had it own dictates, and in our national lifespan, we are, unfortunately in the grips of Empire........brother, there is so much MORE i;d love to outline, but i gots to get mobilizing, i remain, your friend, neil

i'm glad you liked that clip from "The Best Years of Our Lives"...one of my favorite films, wish i could of been part of that generation, steeled in the Depression, baptized in war, back to the arms of my wife, buying a humble home, its America that has faded.

[Tourney64]

I don't believe Obama wants to have an increase in the debt limit so the US dollar collapses, while his best friend and supporter George Soros makes billions off the crisis. This will lead to Goeoge Soros' visoin of a one world currency. If the debt limit is raised without spending cuts then it als leads to a falling dollar. George Soros wins either way.

[68Camaro]

The Brits of the 30s were sure that the world had had enough war. Certainly Hitler wouldn't be uncivilized. The only think Roosevelt did (stinkin' progressive socialist that he was) that I love him for was prepare us (on the sly, and against all the 30s peaceniks) for war, which was coming, and came.

There isn't any such thing as "civilized" to despotic dictators. Just what is convenient, or economical. The Chinese don't think twice about killing tens of millions of their own. I'm happy with commerce with them, but not willing to give them my back for a second.

Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces

"The United States has the largest defense budget in the world. In fiscal year 2010, the Department of Defense has a base budget of $533.8 billion. An additional $130.0 billion was requested for "Overseas Contingency Operations" in the War on Terrorism, and over the course of the year, an additional $33 billion in supplemental spending was added to Overseas Contingency Operations funding. Outside of direct Department of Defense spending, the United States spends another $218–262 billion each year on other defense-related programs, such as Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, nuclear weapons maintenance, and the State Department."

By function

$154.2 billion was requested for personnel
$283.3 billion for operations and maintenance
$140.1 billion for procurement
$79.1 billion for research and development
$23.9 billion for military construction
$3.1 billion for family housing

Where ya gonna cut? Not going to cut people, or Veteran's Affairs, or housing. OK. Hopefully we can cut that operations number.

Attrition happens slowly. So the next thing to go is R&D, then procurement.

Be careful how you cut. Cut the military the wrong way, and ten years from now the Chinese will be steaming their new aircraft carriers up and down our coasts. They won't need EMP as a weapon when they own the country and we are unable to protect ourselves. Neil - love you as a brother, but possible we may differ on this detail. The Aussies aren't buying our latest and best weapons systems because they fear the kiwis.

[neilgin1]

68,
i think its best i bow out of this conversation as i highly resent any comparision to any 1930's era British appeasers, as Sir Winston Churchill has always been a role model of mine. i also find it intemperate and uncivil to refer to another man i respect, FDR, in the fashion you did.

Thats the trouble with public discourse today...there is no civility, no nuance, and i will not play along.

i know just a FEW things, but those things, defense policy and geopoliticals, i have given much study and hazard to say, i know well. The Defense Dept in the 50's hated Ike, because he KNEW how much it cost to defend, and would not give into their wetdreams and greed.

so God bless you, thats all i have to say on this...i give you the floor, or should i say, Ike and JFK give you the floor 68,

first Ike http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY

then Jack, and this was the speech that probably ended his life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces

those who forget their history, are DOOMED to repeat it...doomed.

[68Camaro]

Certainly no disrepect intended to you personally Neil, nor personal association with those that won't be named, and I won't try to further explain myself on that for fear of further insulting you. We certainly can agree on Churchill. On FDR, we can agree on the part I noted, and I won't apologize for disagreeing in the balance. I personally think FDR deepened and lengthed the Depression, and expansions of several of his policies have led to many of our current ills. If you disagree then I hope you will allow me my opinion on that, as I do yours. I won't mention how much I've studied, or what I currently do. Unfortunately people can study a lifetime and still disagree. Personally I think this has been rather civil, but we will drop the discussion, and focus on other topics more to the point of this forum. Good luck on your preps. Now there we agree, for sure. With great respect...

68,
i think its best i bow out of this conversation as i highly resent any comparision to any 1930's era British appeasers, as Sir Winston Churchill has always been a role model of mine. i also find it intemperate and uncivil to refer to another man i respect, FDR, in the fashion you did.

Thats the trouble with public discourse today...there is no civility, no nuance, and i will play along.

i know just a FEW things, but those things, defense policy and geopoliticals, i have given much study and hazard to say, i know well. The Defense Dept in the 50's hated Ike, because he KNEW how much it cost to defend, and would not give into their wetdreams and greed.

so God bless you, thats all i have to say on this...i give you the floor, or should i say, Ike and JFK give you the floor 68,

first Ike http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY

then Jack, and this was the speech that probably ended his life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces

those who forget their history, are DOOMED to repeat it...doomed.