"Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government "

Take some comfort from the fact that people survived the Depression. This too shall pass.

Very true. But it does scare me that fewer shoulders will be carrying the debt of larger numbers. When this passes, what is going to be left? It's a fair question.

Big reset of living standards in the Western world (not just the U.S.) - I was reading Herbert's article on Detroit, and it's not just about keeping industrial jobs. Things have (finally) shifted - people have been talking about the Rust Belt, etc. since the early 70s - the economy has been living on borrowed money for 30+ years. People were yammering about energy dependence, trade deficits, etc. in the 70s.

Too many people are focused on preserving or returning to what was.

I feel very fortunate to have the ability to relocate.

For those of us whose relocation opportunities lie primarily within the US, it's not particularly comforting.

Who knew you couldn't fight 2 major wars, extend drug benefits to all the geezers and cut taxes at the same time? Time to pay the piper.

speaking of debt, did everyone see the SNL clip last night with Obama nd the president of China?

Nope. But honestly, people have been screaming about the same things for 30 years. I started reading the news in the late 70s. There is one (kinda) bright side - perhaps capital inflows will increase to the U.S. and other developed countries as developing countries choke on their growth. Could happen. Or we find something to rectify the trade deficit, pronto. It can be done. Opium War, anyone?

Maly: 1) cut the war, let the fire of Islamic fundamentalism burn out (or not) - engaging in Afghanistan/Iraq isn't going to make things better 2) health insurance for everyone, yes, there will be rationing, seniors will get a (little) shafted 3) increase taxes on non-earned income.

EV: I know someone who found an academic job in Australia, family relocated, extremely happy.

Nyc10023, I mostly agree with you. Now to find a politician to do it.

1. Cut the war.
2. Pull U.S. troops out of all foreign countries.
3. Cut all U.S. international aid.
4. Dismantle the Federal Reserve and allow our markets to be TRULY free.
5. Return to the gold standard and wean us off our worthless fiat currency.
6. Abolish the income tax. Believe it or not, abolishing the personal income tax would cut federal revenue by only 60% -- putting us on a federal budget that would take us all the way back to ... 1997. I'm sure we can handle going back to having a federal government the size it was back in 1997.

Now that's pretty ridiculous. Why not go back to the horse and buggy as well as default on the national debt? You do realize servicing the debt alone in 2009 is almost as big as the entire Federal budget was in 1997? Would you announce the abolition of Medicare first, or the wholesale cancellation of Veteran benefits?

Nutjob Ron Paul says:
1. Cut the war.
2. Pull U.S. troops out of all foreign countries.
3. Cut all U.S. international aid.
4. Dismantle the Federal Reserve and allow our markets to be TRULY free.
5. Return to the gold standard and wean us off our worthless fiat currency.
6. Abolish the income tax. Believe it or not, abolishing the personal income tax would cut federal revenue by only 60% -- putting us on a federal budget that would take us all the way back to ... 1997. I'm sure we can handle going back to having a federal government the size it was back in 1997.

"Now that's pretty ridiculous. Why not go back to the horse and buggy as well as default on the national debt? You do realize servicing the debt alone in 2009 is almost as big as the entire Federal budget was in 1997? Would you announce the abolition of Medicare first, or the wholesale cancellation of Veteran benefits?"

Um, we had Medicare and Veterans benefits back in 1997. I don't recall saying we should abolish any of these things.

Abolishing the income tax and forcing our federal government to live on its OTHER sources of revenue would bring us back to a federal budget that we had back in 1997.

Can you imagine the pollution if we went back to horse and buggy. The amount of dung on city streets would be unimaginable.

Their book "Americas bubble economy", among other things caused me to really pay attention to what was going on (a client gave it to me to read). It was one of the factors in getting out of the stockmarket before the s*it hit the fan.

Their new book is worth a look: http://seekingalpha.com/article/170137-the-aftershock-where-does-the-next-investment-opportunity-lie

"All things do pass", but not all things remain the same....history teaches us Empires are never to big to fail.

'Reagan proved deficits don't matter," Dick Cheney

Well, just for the record, it is a bit much to point to someone who predicted disaster X, and then say, they are now predicting disaster Y, and they have a good track record so it will happen. The problem is that there were legions of predictors predicting disasters and booms from a to z, and, just randomly, somebody had to be right.

NYCMatt: "forcing our federal government to live on its OTHER sources of revenue "

"Goldman Sachs’s Tax Rate Drops to 1%, or $14 Million"

"Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which got $10 billion and debt guarantees from the U.S. government in October, expects to pay $14 million in taxes worldwide for 2008 compared with $6 billion in 2007. "

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=a6bQVsZS2_18

Pulaski, that really wouldn't make a difference if the government went on a budgetary diet.

debt payments are NOT a problem facing the U.S:

Au contraire, says Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who argues today that "Most economists I talk to believe that the big risk to recovery comes from the inadequacy of government efforts: the stimulus was too small, and it will fade out next year, while high unemployment is undermining both consumer and business confidence."

Krugman cites a recent interview during which President Obama warned that "if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession."

Krugman's response: "What? Huh?"

[T]he concerns Mr. Obama expressed become comprehensible if you suppose that he's getting his views, directly or indirectly, from Wall Street.

Ever since the Great Recession began economic analysts at some (not all) major Wall Street firms have warned that efforts to fight the slump will produce even worse economic evils. In particular, they say, never mind the current ability of the U.S. government to borrow long term at remarkably low interest rates -- any day now, budget deficits will lead to a collapse in investor confidence, and rates will soar. [...]

A better model [for our current scenario], I'd argue, is Japan in the 1990s, which ran persistent large budget deficits, but also had a persistently depressed economy -- and saw long-term interest rates fall almost steadily. There's a good chance that officials are being terrorized by a phantom menace -- a threat that exists only in their minds.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/23/us-debt-a-phantom-menace_n_367489.html

Paul Krugman is an idiot, Nobel or not.