For those who don’t like the Ryan budget for example, like the president, where’s their budget? Where is Harry Reid’s budget? Where is the Democrats in the senate’s budget?” – Sen. Marco Rubio  with Neil Cavuto

In 2004 Obama said the “monstrous” deficits were “an enormous problem” when the deficit was $413 billion. In 2008 he said increasing the debt would burden our children and was unpatriotic. Every year of his term deficits have been over a TRILLION dollars. By the end of his first term he will have increased the debt more than all other presidents combined. Can we afford four more years of two faced, self serving fiscal insanity?

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.” – Barack Obama

“Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, its time to try something new. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt.” – President Barack Obama on his Office of Management and Budget website.

“We’re spending twice as much money as we did in 2001. If you go back 15 years our deficit this year is bigger than what our entire budget was. That’s how out of control the federal government is. … There is a political reason we’re not having a budget. Everybody understands that. Nobody’s going to say it. .. because we don’t want to make the hard choices in an election year.” – Sen. Dr. Coburn

Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen said our national debt is our greatest threat to national security.

“Whether one believes leaves in a large, very active government or something more limited, mathematically, the amount of debt we already have and the terrifying rate at which it is accumulating will lead to national ruin,” Gov. Mitch Daniels

“Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.” -Alan Greenspan

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.
If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds… [we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers… And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another]… till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery… And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.” – (Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.” -  Friedrich Hayek

“Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money,by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.” – Alan Greenspan

“A small debt produces a debtor; a large one, an enemy” – Publilius Syrus quotes (Roman author, 1st century B.C.)

“Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people” – Wendell Phillips quotes (American Abolitionist and Orator whose eloquence helped fire the antislavery cause during the period leading up to the American Civil War. 1811-1884)

“The fact is, we’ll never build a lasting economic recovery by going deeper into debt at a faster rate than we ever have before. It took this nation 166 years until the middle of World War II to finally accumulate a debt of $95 billion.” – Ronald Reagan

“I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy: it keeps interest rates lower than they otherwise would be and frees savings to finance increases in the capital stock, thereby boosting productivity and real incomes.” – Alan Greenspan

When asked why the markets haven’t reacted to the US being on the precipice of collapse, Erskine Bowles said its because the US economy is  “the best lookin’ horse in the glue factory.”

Alan Simpson (former senator from WY) and co-chair of Obama’s debt commission  said economic collapse will ‘be very swift and very dramatic’.

Former Treasury Secretary Rubin said the debt crisis could explode any minute.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations that our national debt is a national security risk echoing previous statements by Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen, head of U.S. intelligence – Dennis Blair, and all of America’s intelligence agencies.

“After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don’t have. But, instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt, unlike anything we have seen in the history of our country.” – Michele Bachmann

“Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.” – Herbert Hoover

“There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.” – Richard Feynman

“Many respected economists and statesmen believe our national debt is neither unwieldy nor a dangerous burden on the country. The trouble is that a vast majority of the American people think otherwise…. It violates basic American ideas of thrift and money management. These strong public feelings cannot be ignored forever.” – Morris K. Udall

“The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to be careful to prevent their growth in our own.” – John Adams

“All of the problems we’re facing with debt are manmade problems. We created them. It’s called fantasy economics. Fantasy economics only works in a fantasy world. It doesn’t work in reality.” – Michele Bachmann

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’. The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.” – Joe Biden

“Mr. Obama plans to boost federal spending 25 percent while nearly tripling the national debt over 10 years. Americans know that this kind of spending will have economic consequences, including new taxes being imposed by the new progressives.” – Karl Rove

“I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other.” -  James Madison

“A politician cannot spend one dime on any spending project without first taking that dime from the person who earned it. So, when a politician votes for a spending bill he is saying that he believes the government should spend that particular dollar rather than the individual who worked for it.” Neal Boortz.

“There is no such thing as government money – only taxpayer money.” William Weld, quoted in Readers Digest.

See your share of the debt and how fast it is rising.

by Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D.

In a recent campaign speech, Obama said: “See, the question is not whether things will get better — they always do… The question is whether together, we can muster the will — in our own lives, in our common institutions, in our politics — to bring about the changes we need.”

This is a revealing statement. It reveals the assumption of all liberals and socialists, Obama included, that the money will always be there. Will a wrecked economy improve? “They always do.” This implies that the economy will get better, no matter what the government does to it.

Tell this to people in Communist or former Communist countries. Or to people living under religious or fascist dictatorships. The government throttles these economies to no end. The only economic growth that ever takes place is to the benefit of the rulers — mainly because of places like the United States, from whom they can beg, borrow and steal.

It’s beyond foolish to assume the economy can get better no matter what. To think this is to assume that economic growth and wealth creation happen automatically. This explains the attitudes of liberals like Obama. They resent “the rich” and people who have more because they got “more than their share” of the inevitable wealth. There’s no concept that somebody works to create the wealth, and maintain wealth and profit once it’s there. This is the attitude of a spoiled adolescent or a moocher. It’s not an attitude we should find in a President of the United States.

Liberals passed ObamaCare on the assumption that the American economy will keep on growing as it always has. Three years into Obama’s term, and it’s still not happening. The government is totally bankrupt and the currency is imperiled by the unprecedented and almost unimaginable national debt. There’s no money to pay for Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, the most expensive parts of the government. This is before the demand for these programs rises due to the aging of the population over the coming two decades. And it’s before ObamaCare, which will put millions more Americans (ultimately everyone) on government insurance, the most expensive social program in human history.

How much debt are we supposed to sustain? Hundreds of millions of trillions? What’s higher than the trillions? Do our economists even know? On our current course of little to no economic growth, and exponential growth in government spending, we’re going to get there sooner than you think.

Obama has criticized the idea of “American exceptionalism.” American exceptionalism refers to the idea that Americans are somehow different, that Americans are somehow better than everyone else. But this is the very thing Obama implies when he says that the American economy will come back, no matter what. He’s suggesting that America is somehow above the stagnation, unemployment and ruin that befell all other socialist countries and nationalist economies throughout the world. It can’t happen here, right?

The American people are not paying attention. Slightly more than half are ready to vote for his reelection, in an economy that has actually worsened under his watch. No Republican president and probably no other Democratic president would ever have enjoyed such a free ride. Too many Americans are just not thinking.

I’m not suggesting that the opposition, Mitt Romney, is any inspiration. Of course he isn’t. But voting Obama out of office ought to be a no-brainer to anybody who’s not a committed and ideological Big Government socialist. Polls show a huge majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. But Obama gets almost none of the blame, and a majority like him. If you were on a sinking ship and the captain stood there saying, “No worries. It never sinks,” how much support would you give this captain? Or would you look for another leader, or perhaps take matters of survival into your own hands, instead?

Liberals like Obama are in a bind. They hate the rich and they hate wealth. But the definition of a growing economy is wealth production. In a thriving economy, of 4 or even 6-8 percent growth a year, you see (1) the rich getting richer and (2) the poor and middle class getting richer. These are the trends. In a declining or stagnating economy, the rich stay rich while the poor and the middle class get poorer. That’s what we see happening now. Obama points to the fact that the rich are still rich and says, “See? I told you so. The rich need to pay more taxes.” This will not change a thing, and will only make matters worse.

Taxes have to actually be lowered. Of course the rich will get the biggest tax cuts — because they already pay for most of what the government does! Economic freedom will raise the standard of living for everyone. Socialism and government interventionism don’t do a thing, other than hamper or reduce the strength of the economy. Obama’s policies tend to freeze everything in place. The rich don’t mind this too much, at first, but the poor and middle class are the first to feel it. They’re the ones who will feel the inflation. Government welfare programs cannot save them, because government welfare programs do not raise the standard of living and can never hope to cover the cost of lost economic growth by all this Big Government interventionism in the economy.

The absence of a “populist’ or “blue collar” revolution for free market capitalism shows just how ignorant most people are, and how woefully ignorant their teachers, talking head intellectuals, and professors have been. The current President, a former professor himself, is the worst one of them all.

Can the economy get better and can the debt crisis be reversed? Of course they can. But not through anything Obama has done, or is proposing. To start with, we have to reverse every single thing Obama has done in office. Then we have to start reversing all the other things previous governments — Republican and Democratic — have done to hamper or harm the economy. We have to stop this cycle of insanity whereby government intervenes, makes things worse, the people scream “do something!” and the government proceeds to make it even worse.

We don’t need a bloody revolution, and we don’t need to overthrow our system of government. But we do need to radically reverse and revise almost all of our government policies of the last century in particular. Obama was supposed to bring “change,” but in reality he brought more of the same. A lot more of it. If most Americans are so convinced that the country is headed in the wrong direction, why can’t they see Obama as part of the problem?

Dr. Hurd has a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Psychology, Saybrook Institute, San Francisco, CA, November 1991. Degree awarded With Distinction. Master’s of Social Work (M.S.W.), Clinical, The University of Maryland at Baltimore, May 1988. Bachelor’s of Arts (B.A.), Psychology, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, May 1985. Distinguished Psychology Student Award, Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude. Dr. Hurd blogs at DrHurd.com

By Stella Paul at American Thinker

EXCERPTS:

“Obama’s destroying the economy,” she told me; then she looked nervously around at our hyper-Blue State neighbors.  “I feel like I have to whisper, or they’re going to come and arrest me.”

Welcome to Obama’s America 2012, a joy-free zone in which the best and brightest youth are flocking to a Communist dictatorship, because they see more hope of economic opportunity there.

But many of the most driven, entrepreneurial types — the kind of unstoppable hustlers who built America — are bolting and may never return.

Yes, for the crime of donating to Obama’s opponent, Frank VanderSloot is getting the full Roto-Rooter treatment, just like Joe the Plumber. Remember Joe?

Meanwhile, back in the former land of the free, Obama plays the same cynical game, intimidating and threatening opponents, so that even a frightened mother in the supermarket feels like she has to whisper.

But a million whispers sounds like a roar. Let’s roar.

FULL ARTICLE

By Alan Caruba

I have always been an optimist. And, I hope, a realist. Of late though, I have been entertaining some pessimist thoughts about the future of America. This runs contrary to one of the enduring attributes of Americans because, like me, they too are optimists.

The great value of national elections is that the issues affecting everyone’s future get discussed. The election of 2008 was an alarming indication of the power of the mainstream media to bamboozle voters. Aided by McCain’s near total lack of charisma or even energy, the media’s wholesale devotion to getting a completely unknown and unvetted Barack Obama elected was and is scary.

One reason for optimism is the way the current campaign to reelect Barack Hussein Obama is struggling to distract voters from the worst record of incompetence of any modern president since Jimmy Carter.

As Obama campaigns non-stop around the nation he never mentions Obamacare, the failed “stimulus” of 2009, or the outrage of the Fast and Furious program to run guns to drug cartels in Mexico. I would put money on the Supreme Court declaring Obamacare unconstitutional. And, with that, goodbye Obama. Feeling a bit more optimistic now?

The problems Americans face today have been put in place by successive Congresses over decades and the blame falls equally on both Democrats and Republicans. Too much socialism!

The 2008 crisis of the housing mortgage and the banking meltdown is the result of government sponsored agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that own half of all the mortgage loans made. There is no reason why the government should be in the mortgage business that for most of the nation’s history was the providence of the banking industry. It was the “bundled” mortgage “assets” that seduced many banking institutions to purchase them.

The nation’s tax system is shot through with special breaks to various elements of the nation’s economy and includes the highest corporate tax of any nation on earth. It requires legions of lobbyists to maintain the special favors and it ignores the lower corporate tax rates that have made other nations more competitive than ours in the global marketplace.

The problem with America is not that it has millionaires and billionaires, but that it does not have more of them. They and other wealthy Americans pay the bulk of all income taxes while some forty percent of Americans pay nothing. That level of inequality is criminal. So is the tax system. It must be reformed as it threatens to make criminals of all who must deal with it.

The failure to reform Social Security and Medicare is yet another problem threatening the economy as a smaller workforce is required to pay for a growing aged population. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 64% of voters would prefer a government with fewer services and lower taxes. The findings are consistent with findings since 2006. Just 25% want more services.

The hollowing out of the nation’s military power is a major concern because a strong military is vital for the defense of the nation and, by extension, peace in the world.

Ours has a geriatric fleet of fighter and transport airplanes and a naval fleet that hasn’t been so small since the end of World War II. Our missile system is growing moldy in its silos. Our Army, Marines, National Guard and Reserves are worn out from constant rotations in and out the Middle Eastern conflicts in a world where asymmetrical warfare is the order of the day, not massed armies.

Our society is suffering from the erosion of the most fundamental tradition—marriage. The Obama administration announced it will not enforce the Defense of Marriage Act and the President’s endorsement of same-sex marriage is abhorrent.

Popular culture has degraded to films that are either cartoons or based on characters from comic books. Movies made for adults are becoming a vanishing genre. The nightly fare of situation comedies is filled with characters for whom casual sex is the norm. The nation remains a mecca for drugs at the same time our southern border remains superficially protected while drug cartels fill the streets of Mexico with the beheaded bodies of their rivals.

Our educational system has been so debased by the teacher’s unions since the 1960s that it is commonplace to learn that our children continue to lag behind all other nations in the fundamental knowledge of reading, writing, science, history and all other fields of knowledge on which a successful nation depends.

The nation’s unions are bankrupting states with their excessive demands for salaries, health care options, and pensions. They must be curbed and we are witnessing states like New Jersey and Wisconsin that have begun to reduce this drain on public treasuries.

Lastly, the programs advanced by wealthy environmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, and others have imposed a vast matrix of laws and regulations that are putting at risk our ability to conduct any business enterprise. The Greens are successfully denying Americans access to reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas and have been seeking to erode property rights, the keystone of capitalism.

As the cartoon character, Pogo, once observed, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”

Specifically, it is a Congress and a federal government that spends more than it takes in, borrowing 40 cents of every dollar spent. That is unsustainable.

At this point I have identified a few good reasons for pessimism, but there is cause for optimism. Despite all the slurs hurled at it, the Tea Party movement that emerged to protest and to repeal Obamacare now has the active or tacit support of millions of Americans.

It will take decades to undo the damage that has been done, but it can be done and there are clear indications that most Americans have had enough of big government, big spending, and big borrowing.

We have just five months and a few weeks until November 6, Election Day. Turn out the usurper. Turn out the cowards in Congress who do not support Paul Ryan’s reforms. Be optimistic!

© Alan Caruba, 2012

By Paul Driessen

Good for Wal-Mart! Despite intense pressure by anti-biotechnology activists, the retailing giant didn’t cave in to demands that it “reject” Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) sweet corn (maize).

Other retailers had capitulated to intimidation campaigns by Food and Water Watch, Greenpeace and similar anti-technology groups: McDonald’s, Heinz, Frito-Lay, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods. So this rare display of corporate courage, ethics and common sense should be applauded.

FWW launched its campaign in January 2012, claiming GE corn “hasn’t been tested for human safety” and contains DNA traits that “are potentially unsafe.” What utter nonsense.

All biotech crops, including GE sweet corn, have gone through years of testing, studies and approval processes by the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Nutrition, Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Environmental Protection Agency and other labs, before being placed on the market. In fact, biotech crops have been tested far more rigorously than any other foods (including organic products), hundreds of peer-reviewed studies have determined that they are safe to eat. In the 16 years since such crops were first introduced in 1996, people have eaten more than two trillion servings of foods containing biotech ingredients – without a single documented case of injury to a person.

We all want safe, nutritious food, grown under the best agricultural and environmental practices. That’s what makes biotechnology so important. By precisely inserting specific traits into the genetic makeup of important food crops, scientists have been able to make many foods safer, equally or more nutritious, and better for the environment. The following traits are especially important.

Herbicide resistance. Corn that is resistant to Roundup or other herbicides enables farmers to employ no-till techniques to control weeds, instead of using cultivators to bury them too deep to grow. This preserves soil nutrients and organic matter, increases water absorption and retention, and significantly reduces erosion – improving soil fertility and crop yields, while reducing irrigation and fuel costs.

Insect resistance. A single gene (derived from a natural soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, and inserted into the corn genome) enables corn plants to make a protein that is harmless to humans, but disrupts the digestive system of insects that munch on the plants’ roots or kernels, while leaving ladybugs, butterflies and other beneficial insects unaffected. The Bt gene augments corn plants’ natural defenses, slashes insecticide spraying (by up to 85% for sweet corn), dramatically reduces corn borer (caterpillar) and rootworm (beetle larvae) damage, keeps roots healthy and plants alive, and minimizes the amount of insect-damaged corn ears that are left to rot in fields or are rejected by consumers and thrown out by grocers.

By killing insect borers in the ears, Bt corn largely eliminates pathways for fungal contamination that leads to dangerous levels of fumonisin in corn meal. This fungal toxin causes fatal diseases in horses and is linked to esophageal cancer in people and neural tube defects (like spinal bifida) in developing fetuses.

These benefits are hugely important for US farmers; for consumers who want safe, affordable, nutritious food; and especially for farmers and consumers in poor, drought-stricken, insect-plagued regions like Africa. They mean less land must be devoted to crops, leaving more for wildlife habitat, thereby improving biodiversity and ensuring sustainable agriculture. They explain why 10% of US sweet corn is already Bt (Syngenta introduced its Bt sweet corn more than a decade ago), 70% of processed foods in American diets contain ingredients from biotech crops (including corn, squash, soybeans, canola, sugarbeets and papayas), 88% of all corn (field and sweet) grown in the USA is biotech, and 17 million farmers in 29 nations (90% in developing countries) grow biotech crops on 395 million acres.

Wal-Mart doubtless understood all or most of this – and was not going be bamboozled or intimidated by a few noisy activists who did not represent its customers, sound science or the public interest.

Those activists may actually believe their allegations. They certainly know how to generate letters and phone calls, harass businesses, and frighten urban consumers who’ve never been on a farm, know little about how their food is produced, don’t understand genetics or biotechnology, and are thus susceptible to clever hoaxes and ridiculous claims by activists, who are often enlisted and paid by organic producers and retailers that profit mightily from their land and labor-intensive alternatives to conventional food.

In any event, Wal-Mart didn’t cave. So a few months later Food and Water Watch sent out a “we give up” letter, whining that Wal-Mart had “ignored the petitions, calls and public pressure” it had orchestrated. (Its 370-word letter included nine separate pitches for contributions.)

FWW also announced that it was launching a new campaign – to get state and federal laws passed, requiring that all GE foods be labeled. The proclaimed justification for labeling is that “people have a right to know what’s in their food and how it is produced.” The real reason is that labels will make it easier for anti-biotech activists to single out and stigmatize biotech products, generate consumer anxiety, and intimidate grocers into taking nutritious and perfectly safe products off their shelves.

While “progressive” (anti-business) states like California and Oregon may go along with this nonsense, responsible legislators will tell the activists to take a hike. Or they could require that all foods carry relevant (and spooky) safety labels, and consumers be offered more detailed information (prepared by competitors). For instance, lawmakers could mandate that organic products carry warnings like these.

* No studies have ever demonstrated that organic products are safer or more nutritious than milk, meat, fruits or vegetables produced by conventional or biotech methods.

* Various organic crops were developed using gamma rays, x-rays and potent chemicals like colchicine, to induce numerous (mostly unknown) mutations in seeds, in the hope that a few might be beneficial.

* Many organic farmers regularly spray live Bt spores and proteins, copper sulfate, petroleum oils and other insecticidal chemicals, to control crop pests. Some secretly use chemical herbicides and insecticides.

* Random testing has found that biotech corn meal has fumonisin levels well below the 500 parts per billion regulatory limit, whereas pure (non-blended) organic corn meal is often far above the limit – with some organic corn meal testing at 9,000 or even 16,000 ppb: 18-32 times above safety standards.

* Mad cow disease was first found on an English organic farm – and some organic dairy farmers continue milking cows infected with mastitis until the animals die, rather than treating them with antibiotics.

* The deadly spinach E. Coli outbreak several years ago was traced to a farm that was in transition from conventional to organic. Organic produce is always more susceptible to bacterial contamination, because the farmers rely on manure instead of chemical fertilizers (many derived from nitrogen in the air).

All these statements are true – but largely irrelevant. Thanks to regulations, inspections, and responsible practices by seed producers, farmers, processors and retailers, America’s food is generally very safe. The few occasional E. coli and salmonella outbreaks could be prevented by irradiating the most susceptible fruits, vegetables and meats – but anti-biotech activists also oppose irradiation. Go figure.

We’d all be better off if these ridiculous attacks on conventional and biotech (and organic) foods were simply thrown out with the garbage. Most critically, Third World farmers and families would suffer far less poverty, malnutrition, starvation, Vitamin A deficiency and deprivation, if anti-biotech activists (especially in Europe) would end their fanatical obsession about “potential” biotech “contamination” of conventional and organic foods (and flowers!) imported from Africa and other impoverished regions.

Meanwhile, let’s all congratulate Wal-Mart for taking a principled, ethical, scientific stand.

____________

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death (www.Eco-Imperialism.com)

Please don’t crash until after the election. Obama railed against deficits until he became radical record breaking big spender.

“Do people back home fully understand what I  just explained? That the Democrats in Washington that control the senate have not offered a budget in three and a half years, almost four years now. This government has spent close to $10 TRILLION dollars since the the budget was last passed by them” – Sen. Marco Rubio

For those who don’t like the Ryan budget for example, like the president, where’s their budget? Where is Harry Reid’s budget? Where is the Democrats in the senate’s budget?” – Sen. Marco Rubio  with Neil Cavuto

In 2004 Obama said the “monstrous” deficits were “an enormous problem” when the deficit was $413 billion. In 2008 he said increasing the debt would burden our children and was unpatriotic. Every year of his term deficits have been over a TRILLION dollars. By the end of his first term he will have increased the debt more than all other presidents combined. Can we afford four more years of two faced, self serving fiscal insanity?

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.” – Barack Obama

“Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, its time to try something new. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt.” – President Barack Obama on his Office of Management and Budget website.

“We’re spending twice as much money as we did in 2001. If you go back 15 years our deficit this year is bigger than what our entire budget was. That’s how out of control the federal government is. … There is a political reason we’re not having a budget. Everybody understands that. Nobody’s going to say it. .. because we don’t want to make the hard choices in an election year.” – Sen. Dr. Coburn

Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen said our national debt is our greatest threat to national security.

“We’re spending twice as much money as we did in 2001. If you go back 15 years our deficit this year is bigger than what our entire budget was. That’s how out of control the federal government is. … There is a political reason we’re not having a budget. Everybody understands that. Nobody’s going to say it. .. because we don’t want to make the hard choices in an election year.” – Sen. Dr. Coburn

Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen said our national debt is our greatest threat to national security.

“Whether one believes leaves in a large, very active government or something more limited, mathematically, the amount of debt we already have and the terrifying rate at which it is accumulating will lead to national ruin,” Gov. Mitch Daniels

“Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.” -Alan Greenspan

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.
If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds… [we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers… And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another]… till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery… And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.” – (Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.” -  Friedrich Hayek

“Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money,by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.” – Alan Greenspan

“A small debt produces a debtor; a large one, an enemy” – Publilius Syrus quotes (Roman author, 1st century B.C.)

“Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people” – Wendell Phillips quotes (American Abolitionist and Orator whose eloquence helped fire the antislavery cause during the period leading up to the American Civil War. 1811-1884)

“The fact is, we’ll never build a lasting economic recovery by going deeper into debt at a faster rate than we ever have before. It took this nation 166 years until the middle of World War II to finally accumulate a debt of $95 billion.” – Ronald Reagan

“I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy: it keeps interest rates lower than they otherwise would be and frees savings to finance increases in the capital stock, thereby boosting productivity and real incomes.” – Alan Greenspan

When asked why the markets haven’t reacted to the US being on the precipice of collapse, Erskine Bowles said its because the US economy is  “the best lookin’ horse in the glue factory.”

Alan Simpson (former senator from WY) and co-chair of Obama’s debt commission  said economic collapse will ‘be very swift and very dramatic’.

Former Treasury Secretary Rubin said the debt crisis could explode any minute.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations that our national debt is a national security risk echoing previous statements by Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen, head of U.S. intelligence – Dennis Blair, and all of America’s intelligence agencies.

“After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don’t have. But, instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt, unlike anything we have seen in the history of our country.” – Michele Bachmann

“Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.” – Herbert Hoover

“There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.” – Richard Feynman

“Many respected economists and statesmen believe our national debt is neither unwieldy nor a dangerous burden on the country. The trouble is that a vast majority of the American people think otherwise…. It violates basic American ideas of thrift and money management. These strong public feelings cannot be ignored forever.” – Morris K. Udall

“The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to be careful to prevent their growth in our own.” – John Adams

“All of the problems we’re facing with debt are manmade problems. We created them. It’s called fantasy economics. Fantasy economics only works in a fantasy world. It doesn’t work in reality.” – Michele Bachmann

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’. The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.” – Joe Biden

“Mr. Obama plans to boost federal spending 25 percent while nearly tripling the national debt over 10 years. Americans know that this kind of spending will have economic consequences, including new taxes being imposed by the new progressives.” – Karl Rove

“I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other.” -  James Madison

“A politician cannot spend one dime on any spending project without first taking that dime from the person who earned it. So, when a politician votes for a spending bill he is saying that he believes the government should spend that particular dollar rather than the individual who worked for it.” Neal Boortz.

“There is no such thing as government money – only taxpayer money.” William Weld, quoted in Readers Digest.

See your share of the debt and how fast it is rising.

By Joe Weisenthal  at Business Insider

EXCERPTS:

… the worry is on.

It’s interesting that people are talking so much about the fiscal cliff. In the very beginning of the year, it seemed like one of those things that econ/analyst-types were talking about, but which everyone figured would be ignored by most people until around the election, or after. But that obviously isn’t the case.

FULL ARTICLE

By Bruce Kasting

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall at the G8 summit at Camp David this weekend. The final communiqué from the global big shots talks about keeping Greece in the Euro and a shift away from austerity and a move towards growth oriented policies. Forget the Happy Talk, I want to know what they were really saying.

Obama must be praying for a miracle with the other members of the G8. If we get a “Grexit”, there will be months of turmoil in the global capital markets before the dust settles. The last thing the Big O wants to have is a recession in Europe that infects the USA with lower growth and higher unemployment when Americans are going to the polls in six months. For the same reason, Obama needs Japan to keep QEing and spending money it does not have.

Obama may be a slave to what happens outside of our borders during the period prior to the election, but those same foreign leaders are completely at the mercy of the USA and the next President after the election. It won’t matter what the UK, Germany, France or Japan does with stimulus in their countries; what’s on the table in the USA will overwhelm any of those efforts.

The USA is months (220 days) away from initiating fiscal policies that will trigger a recession in the US that will be at least as severe as that experienced in 2008. With the rest of the world already teetering on recession, America is set to push the global economy right into the tank. The non-US members of the G8 are well aware of these facts. They must be crapping in their pants at the prospects.

I think those concerns are completely justified. Any foreign leader who is banking on the hopes that America will end its political stalemate and put forward a credible economic plan that puts the US and global economies on a better footing is a fool. If you want proof of just how far away viable compromises are, consider some legislation put forward by Republican leaders this week.
House Representative “Buck” McKeon (R.Ca) runs the powerful Armed Services Committee. He has come up with a fiscal 2013 spending plan for the military. The CBO looked at H.R. 4310, so did the White House. It’s a joke.

$637 billion! That’s a lot of loot for a country that’s tapped out. This is not a compromise. This is an insult. The following chart shows that the 2013-spending plan proposed by Republicans has no reduction from the historic highs of the past few years.

What does the White House have to say about H.R. 4310?

When it comes to military spending, the Republicans want to bust the law that led to the increase in the debt limit. They propose legislation that would renege on the deal that they fought for last summer. The fight over the debt limit brought the economy and the markets to its knees. It cost the USA its AAA. And now the Republicans propose to kiss it away.

Obama had lunch with House Speaker Boehner last week to discuss the political impasse and the critical issues the country faces. To make it look like B&O are just a couple of regular guys they went for a bite to a local sandwich shop. I’m thinking there must have been 300 Secret Service types outside. There is nothing regular about these guys.

Did the “deciders” at the hoagie shop agree on anything? Not a chance.

There is a near zero chance for America to address the fiscal cliff that is coming on Jan 1 before the election. I think there is also a zero chance that it will get resolved in the six-weeks following the vote. Those G8 leaders have every reason to be worried. So should the markets.

Bruce Krasting

Westchester, NY, United States

I worked on Wall Street for twenty five years. This blog is my take on the financial issues of the day. I was an FX trader during the early days of the ‘snake’ and the EMS. Derivatives on currencies were new then. I was part of that. That was with Citi. Later I worked for Drexel and got to understand a bit about balance sheet structure and corporate bonds from Mike Milken. I was involved with a Macro hedge fund later. That worked out all right, but it is not an easy road. There was one tough week and I thought, “Maybe I should do something else for a year or two.” That was fifteen years ago. I love the markets. How they weave together. For twenty five years I woke up thinking, “What am I going to do today to make some money in the market”. I don’t do that any longer. But I miss it. View my complete profile

Mark J. Perry at Carpe Diem has the story:

 
On behalf of American consumers, a slightly edited version of this afternoon’s NY Times article “U.S. Slaps High Tariffs on Chinese Solar Panels” Americans Who Purchase Solar Panels Made in China”:”The United States Commerce Department said Thursday that it has decided to impose tariffs (taxes) of more than 31 percent on Americans who purchase solar panels imported from China, after concluding that Chinese producers had generously “dumped” lowered the prices of solar panels on the American market for to less than it costs to manufacture and ship them, saving Americans millions of dollars. 
 
The tariffs, which are retroactive to 90 days before the decision, are in addition to anti-subsidy tariffs (taxes) of 2.9 percent to 4.73 percent that the department imposed on American consumers in March. Since Chinese panels make up a large portion of the American market, the combined anti-dumping and anti-subsidy tariffs are likely to mean a substantial increase in the price of solar panels here for American consumers.
 
SolarWorld Industries America, which led the coalition special interest cartel of domestic solar manufacturers that filed the solar dumping case, welcomed the department’s ruling. The anti-consumer decision “is a very positive step in the process. It’s also in line with what we expected as a special interest group of domestic producers seeking protection from global competition,” said Ben Santarris, a company spokesman. “We consider this a bellwether case of the government protecting the self-interest of domestic producers seeking protection against foreign competitors. It underscores the importance of manufacturing special interest groups to the U.S. economy Congress seeking to increase political power, votes and support by catering to concentrated special interests.”
 
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.  He blogs at Carpe Diem.
 
 

And consider this:

Brightsource DOE Funding Exposes Obama Cronyism

By Romina Boccia at The Foundry

A congressional hearing on May 16 exposed further details on just the kind of political maneuvering that was going on between the Obama Administration and beneficiaries of Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantees. Emails revealed during the hearing are the tip of the iceberg in a corrupt federal funding process that first came under congressional scrutiny with the failure of Solyndra.

Solar company BrightSource Energy received an even bigger loan guarantee from DOE than Solyndra did. In April 2011, the company received $1.6 billion for its Ivanpah project in California—more than triple the size of Solyndra’s loan guarantee of $535 million! BrightSource’s CEO, John Woolard, claims that at its peak, the project would create 1,400 jobs. That would amount to $1.43 million for every job created.

John McArdle reports that in an email sent 15 months before the BrightSource loan was finalized, Woolard wrote an email to Matt Rogers, then DOE’s top adviser on the administration of stimulus funds. Woolard wrote, according to Greenwire:

…that Peter Darbee, head of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., “talked directly to Obama about the program’s challenges and the bad situation it puts him in. DOE credibility is thin and I am currently trying to put off [communication] with the Hill until we talk.” Rogers replied that he appreciated the heads-up and was “working it on this end.”

Merely a month before the BrightSource loan came through, another email exchange occurred between then-BrightSource Chairman John Bryson (who was nominated by President Obama to serve as Commerce Secretary in May 2011 and was confirmed to the post last October) and Jonathan Silver, who was in charge of the DOE loan program. The email was addressed to then-White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley but was never sent to him, over concerns that it might not be appropriate.

“The White House needs to focus on finalizing the loan guarantee for what would be the largest solar thermal project in the world,” Bryson wrote in the draft.

“We need a commitment from the [White House] to quarterback loan closure between [the Office of Management and Budget] and DOE by March 18 to avoid having our project jeopardized by larger budget politics.”

Even before these emails appeared, BrightSource became known as heavily politically connected. In his new book, Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer reported that Sanjay Wagle, a major player in BrightSource’s largest shareholder, Vantage Point, and an Obama fundraiser, “was installed at the Department of Energy (DOE), advising on energy grants.”

These revelations demonstrate that federal processes to supply loan guarantees and other subsidies are steeped in political favoritism. The only solution to get this cronyism out of government is to get government out of the business of picking market winners among its political friends. This can be done by ending all energy subsidies and freeing up energy markets for companies to compete to create the most value for consumers.

And this:

Emails show the White House adamantly kept the GSA away from Solyndra right before it illegally restructured the failed loan to protect a big Obama campaign donor leaving taxpayers on the hook for over $500 million.

And this from AFP:

The nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill that President Obama pushed after taking office was supposed to revive the economy, but it was really all about installing the Left’s vision to transform America. A major part of the transformation is an attempt to defy the laws of economics and have politically-connected campaign donors and Washington central planners decide what kind of energy the country should use. The stimulus was packed with giveaways that allowed dozens of so-called “green” energy projects to sap taxpayer funds to advance Obama’s vision. However,they could only ignore market economics for so long and now the projects are starting to collapse. Who’s left holding the bill? Taxpayers.

SOLYNDRA - $535 Million, Bankrupt

The California solar panel manufacturer received the very first stimulus green energy loan guarantee on September 4, 2009. Despite repeated warnings by Obama administration career and political staff that the company was not sound, the loan guarantee was rushed out the door.Two years later the company closed its doors, laid off 1,100 employees, and filed for bankruptcy.Two days after that, agents from the FBI raided the company’s headquarters. Solyndra CEO George Kaiser and other executives bundled more than $100,000 in Obama campaign donations;they also visited the White House over 20 times while the loan was being reviewed.

BEACON POWER – $43 million, bankrupt

The Massachusetts-based company received a $43 million loan guarantee to build a 20-megawattflywheel energy storage plant in Stephen town, New York. Beacon was one of the first three recipients of federal backing. Despite the steep price-tag Obama administration officials estimated that it would “create or save” just 14 permanent jobs and create 20 temporary construction jobs. Citing the “current economic and political climate,” the onerous terms of the federal loan guarantee, and the company’s inability to obtain equity financing due to its recent delisting from the NASDAQ stock exchange, the company filed for bankruptcy on October 30.The company also got $29 billion in federal and Pennsylvania state grants for a 20-megawattplant in the Keystone State.

FISKER – $529 million stimulus for Finland

Collapsing companies aren’t the only green stimulus scandal. The Obama administration has also approved a plan by electric car company Fisker to use part of its $529 million federal stimulus loan guarantee to build its manufacturing facility, and the 500 jobs it supports, in Finland. The company is more than a year behind schedule to roll out its $97,000 luxury electric car, Karma. There have also been questions about the energy savings that Fisker says its electric car would bring. In a free market, companies should seek out the best place to produce their products. However, once politicians start handing out taxpayer dollars to support projects they prefer, sending our money to Finland to support manufacturing jobs is highly suspect.

SEVERSTAL – $730 million, under investigation

In an October 20thletter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa questioned why Severstal North America, a subsidiary of a leading Russian steel and mining company owned by wealthy business tycoon Alexei Mordashov, received a $730 million loan guarantee from the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program. The loan supports improvements to the company’s advanced high strength steel plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Issa questioned the necessity of the loan given the company’s ample ability to self-finance. He also questioned whether it was appropriate to support the project under a program designed to advance clean-energy vehicles, especially given the strong supply of high quality steel already available in the U.S

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For those who don’t like the Ryan budget for example, like the president, where’s their budget? Where is Harry Reid’s budget? Where is the Democrats in the senate’s budget?” – Sen. Marco Rubio  with Neil Cavuto

In 2004 Obama said the “monstrous” deficits were “an enormous problem” when the deficit was $413 billion. In 2008 he said increasing the debt would burden our children and was unpatriotic. Every year of his term deficits have been over a TRILLION dollars. By the end of his first term he will have increased the debt more than all other presidents combined. Can we afford four more years of two faced, self serving fiscal insanity?

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.” – Barack Obama

“Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, its time to try something new. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt.” – President Barack Obama on his Office of Management and Budget website.

“We’re spending twice as much money as we did in 2001. If you go back 15 years our deficit this year is bigger than what our entire budget was. That’s how out of control the federal government is. … There is a political reason we’re not having a budget. Everybody understands that. Nobody’s going to say it. .. because we don’t want to make the hard choices in an election year.” – Sen. Dr. Coburn

Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen said our national debt is our greatest threat to national security.

“Whether one believes leaves in a large, very active government or something more limited, mathematically, the amount of debt we already have and the terrifying rate at which it is accumulating will lead to national ruin,” Gov. Mitch Daniels

“Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.” -Alan Greenspan

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.
If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds… [we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers… And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another]… till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery… And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.” – (Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.” -  Friedrich Hayek

“Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money,by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.” – Alan Greenspan

“A small debt produces a debtor; a large one, an enemy” – Publilius Syrus quotes (Roman author, 1st century B.C.)

“Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people” – Wendell Phillips quotes (American Abolitionist and Orator whose eloquence helped fire the antislavery cause during the period leading up to the American Civil War. 1811-1884)

“The fact is, we’ll never build a lasting economic recovery by going deeper into debt at a faster rate than we ever have before. It took this nation 166 years until the middle of World War II to finally accumulate a debt of $95 billion.” – Ronald Reagan

“I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy: it keeps interest rates lower than they otherwise would be and frees savings to finance increases in the capital stock, thereby boosting productivity and real incomes.” – Alan Greenspan

When asked why the markets haven’t reacted to the US being on the precipice of collapse, Erskine Bowles said its because the US economy is  “the best lookin’ horse in the glue factory.”

Alan Simpson (former senator from WY) and co-chair of Obama’s debt commission  said economic collapse will ‘be very swift and very dramatic’.

Former Treasury Secretary Rubin said the debt crisis could explode any minute.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations that our national debt is a national security risk echoing previous statements by Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen, head of U.S. intelligence – Dennis Blair, and all of America’s intelligence agencies.

“After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don’t have. But, instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt, unlike anything we have seen in the history of our country.” – Michele Bachmann

“Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.” – Herbert Hoover

“There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.” – Richard Feynman

“Many respected economists and statesmen believe our national debt is neither unwieldy nor a dangerous burden on the country. The trouble is that a vast majority of the American people think otherwise…. It violates basic American ideas of thrift and money management. These strong public feelings cannot be ignored forever.” – Morris K. Udall

“The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to be careful to prevent their growth in our own.” – John Adams

“All of the problems we’re facing with debt are manmade problems. We created them. It’s called fantasy economics. Fantasy economics only works in a fantasy world. It doesn’t work in reality.” – Michele Bachmann

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’. The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.” – Joe Biden

“Mr. Obama plans to boost federal spending 25 percent while nearly tripling the national debt over 10 years. Americans know that this kind of spending will have economic consequences, including new taxes being imposed by the new progressives.” – Karl Rove

“I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other.” -  James Madison

“A politician cannot spend one dime on any spending project without first taking that dime from the person who earned it. So, when a politician votes for a spending bill he is saying that he believes the government should spend that particular dollar rather than the individual who worked for it.” Neal Boortz.

“There is no such thing as government money – only taxpayer money.” William Weld, quoted in Readers Digest.

See your share of the debt and how fast it is rising.