Washington Gridlock

I’m not really sensing that the Republicans are heeding the election results given the continuing saga of Washington gridlock.  The U.S. is due to raise taxes on 98% of the populous come January 1, 2013 yet the perpetual feet dragging remains.  The scuttle butt on Capitol Hill has everything to do the words of one diplomat on a Sunday talk show instead of a solution to this impending fiscal cliff.  I suggest that these overpaid bickering politicians get off their rusty dusty and start solving the nations financial affairs because as of this day every man, woman and child owes less than friendly nations something in the neighborhood of $55,000 and counting every single day.  Liberals will argue that this is sustainable.  Right wing radicals will complain that the slightest tax increase to those earning over $250,000 per year will be a curse to the trickle down economic theory as espoused by them to be the magic bullet which will ultimately relieve the nation of its fiscal woes.

The political establishment and its cronies which spend too much time giving an ear to corporate lobby groups and too little time drafting simple common sense legislation that works are now in a quandary because the legislative houses are still split down the middle again with too little power granted the President as a tie breaking convener of the people.  It’s ironic that every single U.S. politician I’ve ever witnessed who has commented on the founder’s intention and the mastery of the constitution has basked in the brilliance of the document but here sits a nation in financial peril with much blame assignable  to Washington’s dysfunction at the legislative level.

Could the United States of America go broke?  Is it already broke?  What are the consequences of default?  Is the monetary system as we know it going to collapse? There have been many bright alternative economic prognosticators who have been asking theses questions since the first noticeable uptick in the gold prices.  Now it appears that the mainstream economic think tanks are finally starting to give credit to those who have been beating the drum of fiscal responsibility for years even prior to the Iraq war.

I’m currently reading James Rickard’s Currency Wars.  This fellow had been retained by the CIA to conduct war games given the hypothesis of a destabilizing world monetary system.