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Location: Sitting on a bar stool. Guinness in hand.
4,428 posts, read 6,510,291 times
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Well Joey.
The only possible way we would recover from a default would be if we had something the rest of the world need to buy from us. Basically, I got what you need, and I'm willing to give it to you (at an inflated price) as long as your willing forget about my little debt problem I had a couple of years ago and call it square.
The problems is we produce one thing that we could possibly hold over the rest of the world's head. That is our food producing capacity. Of course we have a bit of competition from Canada. But there a large enough pie for both of us if it came down to it. The problem is that there is not promise of a major world food shortage on the level where we could possibly hold the world semi-hostage. So I wouldn't plan on defaulting anytime soon.
Also there are lessons in history of why not do default. Here's one. Back in founding of both American and Mexico, both newly independent countries had a substantial debt to pay back to creditors after their wars of Independence. Now Jefferson (who was president at this point) had two choices, either 1. default or 2. pay back the debt and suffer for a little while until we did so. He chose the second option. And because of this America was able to receive future credit lines for expansion of our country and really the rest, as they say, is history. On the other side of the coin. Mexico default and had a very hard time getting any credit at all from anyone for a long time. Heck look at the place today. While it as made some stride. They really have never recovered from the default so many years ago. BTW we import a lot of oil from Mexico. And the place is still hurt'in.
Location: Sitting on a bar stool. Guinness in hand.
4,428 posts, read 6,510,291 times
Reputation: 1721
Quote:
Originally Posted by legalhound
Baystater....please state what entity....Jefferson got future line of credit?
Quote:
Originally Posted by legalhound
errr future line of credit FROM.
Do you really think we were always this economic superpower? And that we never borrowed money from other countries? Are you serious? Here's are two creditors we had the Dutch and Portugal.
didn't I read somewhere that there are more billionaires per capita in Russia than anywhere else in the world?
I don't know where you got this bit of misinformation-maybe on the "politics" forum on C-D? Lots of BS on there!
Last I looked there were 250 or more BILLIONAIRES in the US, with Germany and Japan having a couple of dozen each, down to Mexico with a dozen or so. IIRC Russia didn't make the top ten.
The article also pointed out how barter is a big part of Russia's economy. Wow! Way to return to the dark ages. Take an introductory class in Economics and you'll see that barter provides NO EFFICIENCY to the economy. That's why "money" was invented, to lubricate the wheels of commerce!
Well, then as best as I can gather from all this, we're really not in that deep a pile of sh*t---yet. So all this talk of doom and gloom from people like Kunstler et al is pure rubbish. So what's another bank failure or 10 or 20? In the larger picture they're just drops in the bucket coz 10-15 trillion debt is not that much that we'll have little difficulty paying it back. I feel better already. And to think I was worrying about the US reverting to 3rd world status!
Syntax on that last one was a little screwed up: 10-15 is not that much that we'd have difficulty paying it back. That's not so good either but you catch my drift.
Who cares!!! DEFAULT NOW! Lets all help push the American economy into the abyss. I want to see calamity and choas. I will love seeing millions of dollars lost and people jumping out of windows!! How cool is that?? I am not worried if we can't borrow from china, we can borrow a few Rupee's from our friends in India!! Maybe they will be kind and bring jobs to desperate Americans. Yes, even Afghanistan will have a better economy than the US when it happens, but such is life. Ladies, just throw on the Buqa and ride the mule into town.
Last edited by washington twit; 04-14-2011 at 10:40 PM..
Am I in the twilight zone? Why doesn't the US just default? Hmmmm well lets see. You will crush the confidence of those who invest in America. That means no more people willing to buy US bonds and such. That means a wall street that will be renamed dead street. That means unemployment the likes of which you have never seen. That means crime, that means a lot of horrific crap that no one in their right mind wants to see happen.
I suspect we're headed in the direction you describe anyway, so why not just get it over with???
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