We spend money like a drunken sailor

[foggedinn]

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we all die.

The late Sen. Everrit Dirkson said "a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon your talking real money". A trillion is a thousand billion. Change Sen. Dirkson's billion to trillion and you have the attitude of our current spendthrifts.

All our banks have stopped lending to each other and to businesses because their not sure those other banks and businesses will be around next months to pay off that 30 day note.

It's normal for the markets to swing up or down 500 points in the last half hour of trading. Traders are all that's left in the market. All the investors are hiding out in rickity storm shelters hoping the storm passes quickly. The traders are still arguing if it's going to be a v, double v, or a u shaped bottom. The notion that the bottom is going to be frying pan shaped hasn't even crossed their tiny little minds.

We're facing the total collapse of our economy and all the administration and congress can say is "we must not cut our military budget in the middle of war" It was a good ride while it lasted but, if this is the best our leaders can come up with, America is finished!

 

[The Scotsman]

............shut the exchanges down for a month!

 

[GenSeneca]

We're facing the total collapse of our economy and all the administration and congress can say is "we must not cut our military budget in the middle of war" It was a good ride while it lasted but, if this is the best our leaders can come up with, America is finished!

Typical tripe about how we spend too much on the military.... We've spent more on bailouts in 6 months than we have in 6 years of war. But that debt is OK right? So long as we spend ourselves into oblivion on anything OTHER than the military...

You're a Foggen genious.

 

[TruthAboveAll]

Typical tripe about how we spend too much on the military.... We've spent more on bailouts in 6 months than we have in 6 years of war. But that debt is OK right? So long as we spend ourselves into oblivion on anything OTHER than the military...

You're a Foggen genious.

For FY 2009 (in Billion $):

Pensions 22.5% $700.1
Health 22.9% $712.7
Defense 25.9% $805.0
Welfare 9.1% $283.1
Interest 8.4% $260.2
Other 11.1%
Protection $ 51.1
Transportation $ 83.9
General Government $ 21.5
Other Spending $ 90.2

Realistically, the Health & Welfare expenditures are related spending as social and/or entitlement programs. Medicaid, Medicare, Medical Research, and Public services (Health); Family & Children, Housing & Social Exclusion n.e.c. (Welfare). Additionally in the Welfare category is Housing ($41.4). So in essence, social programs incorporate 32% of the budget, $995.8.

Also to be noted is the fact that the Defense portion of the budget includes $91.9 for veterans (passive) and another $38 in foreign aid (passive). So that leaves $767 for active defense spending.

And you're right, GenSeneca. According to National Priorities Project (just found it, interesting site!) we are, at this moment, at the point of having spent about $573.5 billion on the war. That DOES put the bail outs in some perspective...

 

[PLC1]

Whether it's spent on the military, on social programs, interest, or whatever, the fact is that the government spends more money than it takes in, and has for some time.

Tax cuts are popular, you understand, while spending cuts are not. You can't cut (insert name of favorite government giveaway here)! Why, little warm puppies will suffer!

The result is that ten trillion plus and growing (quickly growing at the moment) debt.

Ten trillion!

Did you know that a hundred dollar bill weighs one gram?

Therefore, a thousand of them weighs a kilogram, and a million (thousand thousand) weighs a metric ton?

Did you know that a metric ton is more than a standard ton?

A billion hundred dollar bills, then, weighs a thousand tons, and is worth a hundred billion (no math genius needed for that one.) Ten times that is a trillion, or ten thousand tons, and ten times that is the national debt, one hundred thousand tons of hundred dollar bills. It boggles the imagination.

Load those hundred dollar bills into standard pickup trucks, (half ton trucks), and you need two hundred thousand pickup trucks to haul it all.

Line those pickups up end to end, allowing twenty feet for each of them, so there is room to walk between them, and they would stretch for four hundred thousand feet, or more than seventy five miles.

Imagine seventy five miles of pickup trucks, all loaded with hundreds until the springs sagged, and you can imagine the national debt. If I had even one of those trucks, I'd have half a ton of hundreds, worth a hundred million dollars. Not only would I have a shiny new truck, but I could afford to put gas in it.

Yes, indeed, the government spends like a drunken sailor. So, too do consumers, though not so much for the past few weeks.

And, how about those bankers, going to Washington in their private jets to beg for twenty five billion? How's that for spending?

Couldn't they at least have jet pooled?

 

[Rhodri]

So, the rescue/bailout plan Obama has in mind incorporates rebuilding infrastructure. Ok...do you think the I94 corridor will be widened? Bridges rebuilt? Spaghetti Junction anytown USA redone? Or..will it be bicycle lanes and parkways with flower pots? and high speed rail from Cheyenne Wy. to Denver? Will our energy power grid be upgraded? Or...some windmills on Texas plains and Internet Service in towns like Stuttgart Arkansas and Dumont Minnesota? I wonder?

 

[The Scotsman]

Rhodri....if it follows the same pattern as in the UK you'll find that public sector employees just balloon. We have a staggering number of civil servants all employed in non-productive paper pushing jobs, employed in make work schemes and employed in formulating alice-in-wonderland legislative programmes - all of which quite frankly make a mockery of what Government is.... or at least should be about!

I feel sorry for you guys, as I've said before we've just got rid of our political actor (Tony Blair) you've just employed yours - good thing for your is it took 10 years to get rid of ours, yours has to go in 8!

 

[Pidgey]

 

[Pidgey]

Fred Thompson explains The New Economy:

http://www.hyscience.com/archives/2008/12/fred_thompson_o_4.php

 

[9sublime]

"a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon your talking real money"

I think its a good quote if you take it the other way - if you spend too much you'll end up poor and looking after your money.

 

[kikykuang]

"a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon your talking real money"

I think its a good quote if you take it the other way - if you spend too much you'll end up poor and looking after your money.

It seems that you said are good

 

[Pidgey]

For those of you misguided souls who think that the economic crisis isn't a worldwide phenomenon to do with oil:

http://www.3news.co.nz/Video/Business/tabid/369/articleID/85922/cat/52/Default.aspx#video

(This'll really break your heart, by the way!)

 

[SW85]

Typical tripe about how we spend too much on the military.... We've spent more on bailouts in 6 months than we have in 6 years of war. But that debt is OK right? So long as we spend ourselves into oblivion on anything OTHER than the military...

Hell, we've spent a trillion more on bailouts than we spent on WW2, even after adjusting for inflation.

For savings of a trillion dollars, I think I'd have preferred another world war, honestly.