Economic "Perfect Storm" Unfolding

Nouriel Roubini, who forecast an economic "perfect storm" earlier this year, says his storm is now unfolding.

He cites 4 main elements in the "perfect storm":

stalling growth in the U.S., debt troubles in Europe, a slowdown in emerging markets, particularly China, and military conflict in Iran

One of these has not come to fruition. Let's hope he's wrong.

POTUS Dances Around "Trillion"

The President craftily danced around the size of our current debt in his most recent address. In his some 2,600+ word address the President only mentioned "trillion" three times.  Two were references where he was pointing the blame at the other party and one was one which he proposed increasing taxes and cutting some waste to trim a meager 4 trillion. (I think Obama should've watched this recipe first).

. . . instead of using it to pay off our debt, the money was spent on trillions of dollars in new tax cuts, while two wars and an expensive prescription drug program were simply added to our nation’s credit card. . . the deficit was on track to top $1 trillion the year I took office. . . .

. . .  It would reduce the deficit by around $4 trillion and put us on a path to pay down our debt. . .

First, of all the speech has so much to critique.

Hopefully, later tomorrow I'll have time to go through and analyze it.  But, notice in all of his 2,600+ words President Obama only mentioned TRILLION three times.  There were four references to the "wealthiest" Americans and corporations and their necessity to bear the burden of the United States failed fiscal policy.

This is obviously intentional.  You don't want Americans to actually ask how much one Trillion dollars is. If Americans understood how much ONE trillion dollars actually is (and I'm not sure I can fully grasp it other than to say I've never seen a trillion of anything). To give you an idea of how big ONE trillion is it's approximately the number of grains of sand that 89 standard dump trucks can hold, depending on whether it's coarse; fine; or medium grit sand.

Call your Congressmen and tell them NO on increasing the debt limit.  Tighten the belt first and then cut spending.

I'll post later on the rest of the speech.

A Visualization of Our Debt

As our congressmen and president weigh raising the debt limit one crafty individual demonstrates the horrific magnitude of our debt.

A visualization of US debt (credit card bill)

stacked in 100 dollar bills

Approximately 15 trillion dollars in $100 bills
stacked neatly on pallets dwarfing the Statue of Liberty.