The Public, the Budget and Plain Speaking
A trillion-dollar deficit is scary. So is a possible second Great Depression. But scarier still would be trying to solve these problems without real input from the public.
Team Obama, Technology & Public Engagement
Although Barack Obama's community organizing past was the object of derision at the Republican convention, it's easy to make the argument that it was this very experience that enabled him to build such an effective political machine, especially online. I think giving his supporters such an unprecedented ability to make themselves heard led to a lot of the enthusiasm for Obama. And now that he's the President-elect, the Obama team is in the process of transitioning that online strength into an effective component of his governing operation.
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Talk It Over
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I heard somewhere that payroll payments, that is contributions to the Social Security fund actually go into the general fund and the federal government issues treasury bonds to the Social Security fund to secure its loan from the Social Security fund. Doesn't that mean that we're paying interest to ourselves when we brorrow money from ouseelves - we are both the debtor and creditor?
Buying bonds would be one way to get your tax money back. During past times of big government spending there was an active push for citizens to by things like war bonds during World War II.
The difference now is that the amount of debt owed by foreign banks and other international investors has increased to the point that more than 2 of the 9+ trillion dollars in the debt that we owe are being financed by other countries. China is our second largest lender ($420.2 billion) and the fourth largest source comes from oil exporting nations ($113.0 billion).
Even if the debt was paid for with bonds held by US citizens, we would still have one additional problem, other than paying out interest and having put more into the pay out of Social Security than is being paid in. The money used for bonds is money that is not available for other credit needs, making credit funding scarcer and therefore more expensive. Without money for investment, the economy slows.
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