Archive for August, 2011
Prosperity By Decree
Exactly 40 years ago, the president of the United States turned the economic world upside down in a prime-time televised speech.
I vividly remember the events of Aug. 15, 1971. My family had a party that afternoon to celebrate my paternal grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary. We also marked my younger brother’s 11th birthday. Richard Nixon took over the airwaves at 9 p.m. Eastern time to drop multiple bombshell announcements: He froze all American wages and prices for 90 days; he slapped a 10 percent tariff on all imported goods, and he “temporarily” suspended the right of foreign central banks to exchange their dollar holdings for gold. That suspension proved to be permanent, ending the $35-an-ounce peg to gold that Franklin D. Roosevelt had established.
“As a result of these actions, the product of American labor will be more competitive, and the unfair edge that some of our foreign competition has will be removed,” the president assured us. (1) That slap against allegedly unfair foreign competition was one of many elements of Nixon’s speech that foreshadowed our current financial difficulties, though China, which was then in the midst of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, was not on anyone’s economic radar in 1971.
New Revised Tax Code Needed
According to IRS stats for the year 2009 47% of people working pay no federal income taxes whatsoever because their earnings were too little, or they had enough credit breaks to rid themselves of their liability. A Washington organization that does the research at the Tax Policy Center made that recent forecast. With all the recent hub bub in Washington over the debt ceiling and Congress not being able to come to the right conclusions over a straight up change no wonder nothing ever gets done with all these extra mouths feeding at the public trough.
Makes No Sense
The US Debt Crisis Will Give China A Massive Boost
When Nixon was president many years ago he probably would not have predicted what was happening in the great country of America right now. With the economy in tatters, the Federal reserve taking matters into their own hands, and a very poor fiscal policy Nixon would not be proud to see what is happening right now in the great country of America.
The amount of debt that now circulates America is is enormous. The debt has now accumulated and is now out of control. But as the American economy starts to falter is this really bad for countries like China. Over the last several years China has not been engrossing themselves in debt, and they are known for their healthy saving tactics, with around $1.2 trillion worth of U.S. debt.