But wait… Aren’t we too big to fail?
Several countries around the world are facing [national bankruptcy], the US among them, and one or several such defaults would make the corporate bankruptcies of 2008 look like fallen grass blades before falling redwoods.
In the case of the US, national debt held by corporations, foreign governments, individual investors, and institutions such as pension funds grew just last year from 41% of GDP to 53%. That led the Committee on the Fiscal Future of the United States to issue a warning last week that the US must rein in its deficit.
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I think everybody agrees that the US needs to cut its deficit, but it takes only a glance at the federal budget to see that doing so is politically out of the question. Consider that the five biggest gobblers of the US budget are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Department of Defense, and interest on the debt.
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Quietly, my circle of investors and geopolitical thinkers are wondering if a national bankruptcy is just what America needs to finally get corporate bloodsuckers off the taxpayer aorta. Given the political impossibility of reducing costs, will Democrats actually try raising taxes to retain US solvency? Imagine how that would go over as the bankers who caused the latest mess announce their record bonuses courtesy of taxpayer funds. The explosions to come may be the only way through the lobbyist choke-hold on Washington. Pick your poison: bankruptcy or bellicosity.














