U.S. Government Stages Fake Coup To Wipe Out National Debt
Showing posts with label Repudiate The Debt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Repudiate The Debt. Show all posts
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Action Item: The borrowing stops now!
Facebook group ... check!
Sample letter (as transmitted to US Representative Lacy Clay and US Senators Kit Bond and Claire McCaskill via their web contact forms -- go thou and do likewise!):
Dear (Congressman Clay, Senator Bond, Senator McCaskill),
Last week, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sent a letter to "top lawmakers" on Capitol Hill, requesting that Congress raise the federal government's "debt ceiling." Federal deficit spending is on track to bust that current "ceiling" of $12.1 trillion in October.
Congress's reply to Mr. Geithner's request should be an unequivocal "no."
Over the years I've heard a lot of guff out of Washington about "balancing the budget" and "reining in spending." The way you all carry on about it, you'd think it's rocket science or something.
It isn't. I can explain how to "balance the budget" and "rein in spending" to you in one sentence: Stop spending more money than you're taking in.
At this point, the ability of the federal government to continue taking its debt service out of my hide -- or my children's or grandchildren's hides -- is very much in question and will eventually be exposed as fantasy. Yet that is precisely the basis upon which you approach your would-be creditors, although you attempt to avoid the unpleasantness of the boast with euphemism ("the full faith and credit of the United States").
At some point in the not too distant future, you will face a choice: To repudiate the "national debt," or to pay it off yourselves. I'm not going to pay it off for you. Neither are my children or grandchildren. You took out the loans. They're your problem.
In preparation for that coming day of reckoning, the best piece of advice I can give you is the advice I'd give to a man in a hole who wants to get out: Stop digging. Tell Mr. Geithner that $12.1 trillion in debt is more than enough and that the borrowing stops now.
Best regards,
Thomas L. Knapp
Sample letter (as transmitted to US Representative Lacy Clay and US Senators Kit Bond and Claire McCaskill via their web contact forms -- go thou and do likewise!):
Dear (Congressman Clay, Senator Bond, Senator McCaskill),
Last week, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sent a letter to "top lawmakers" on Capitol Hill, requesting that Congress raise the federal government's "debt ceiling." Federal deficit spending is on track to bust that current "ceiling" of $12.1 trillion in October.
Congress's reply to Mr. Geithner's request should be an unequivocal "no."
Over the years I've heard a lot of guff out of Washington about "balancing the budget" and "reining in spending." The way you all carry on about it, you'd think it's rocket science or something.
It isn't. I can explain how to "balance the budget" and "rein in spending" to you in one sentence: Stop spending more money than you're taking in.
At this point, the ability of the federal government to continue taking its debt service out of my hide -- or my children's or grandchildren's hides -- is very much in question and will eventually be exposed as fantasy. Yet that is precisely the basis upon which you approach your would-be creditors, although you attempt to avoid the unpleasantness of the boast with euphemism ("the full faith and credit of the United States").
At some point in the not too distant future, you will face a choice: To repudiate the "national debt," or to pay it off yourselves. I'm not going to pay it off for you. Neither are my children or grandchildren. You took out the loans. They're your problem.
In preparation for that coming day of reckoning, the best piece of advice I can give you is the advice I'd give to a man in a hole who wants to get out: Stop digging. Tell Mr. Geithner that $12.1 trillion in debt is more than enough and that the borrowing stops now.
Best regards,
Thomas L. Knapp
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
"Your fair share?"
My latest over at Repudiate the Debt!
Tease:
Tease:
Coming up with an exact number for "your fair share" -- assuming there was such a thing -- of the US government’s asserted “national debt” would be a fool's errand. ... There is, however, a number being thrown around which assumes a more-or-less current number for the debt, a more-or-less current estimate of population, and an "equal share for everyone" distribution.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Repudiate the Debt! (Update)
Thanks to George Donnelly for getting up a decent-looking Repudiate the Debt! site.
By way of promotion, instead of crossposting my latest piece, I'll tease here ...
... and point there.
Other news:
- Repudiate the Debt! Facebook Group founded yesterday, 261 members already and growing. Related "cause" also.
- Follow Repudiate the Debt! on Twitter.
By way of promotion, instead of crossposting my latest piece, I'll tease here ...
Not content with their seizure of a large percentage of Americans' income year after year, our politicians and their corporate masters have built up a mountain of debt now exceeding $10 trillion and set to contiue growing at a future rate of more than $1 trillion per year according to the recently inaugurated President of the United States.
Helpless in the face of looming economic collapse, more and more Americans long to seize control of their own destinies but fear that they lack the means to do so.
That means, however, exists. It is the Achilles’ heel of the kleptocracy, and it is nothing more than a word:
"No."
... and point there.
Other news:
- Repudiate the Debt! Facebook Group founded yesterday, 261 members already and growing. Related "cause" also.
- Follow Repudiate the Debt! on Twitter.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
More on debt repudiation
This hobbyhorse isn't a new one with me -- I've been giving a lot of thought to it for the last couple of years.
From a libertarian standpoint, the justification for repudiating the debt is fairly obvious -- see Murray N. Rothbard's essay on the subject or listen to last night's episode of Free Talk Live (MP3), for example.
In terms of visceral, gut-wrenching populist appeal, debt repudiation has a lot of potential, too, and it's nice to see that appeal exploited. For a good example, see the YouTube campaign of kids (correctly) asserting "it's not MY debt."
Conveying the basic injustice of expecting someone else (especially a bunch of kids) to pick up the tab for spending that they had no part in is easy and effective, and the knotheads in Washington just keep making it easier with their bailouts, projections of future $1 trillion deficits, etc.
The case makes itself. What it needs to succeed is a popular grassroots movement to promote it.
Popular grassroots movements don't always win. One need look no further back than last year's "bailout" fiascoes to see that. The vast majority of Americans said "no bailouts" -- and they happened anyway, because politicians believe (usually correctly) that they can do anything they want and then talk their way out of the consequences later.
A popular grassroots movement for debt repudiation, however, would not depend entirely upon the politicians' cooperation for success. There's another class of actors involved, and those actors are much more sensitive to what's going on around them. I'm speaking of course, of those who speculate in US government debt -- the people and organizations who buy US government bonds.
The value of those bonds is dependent entirely upon the buyer's perception that "the full faith and credit of the United States" is bankable ... that the investment is, for all intents and purposes, risk-free. The perceived profitability of lending money to the US government rests on the notion that all us serfs are either willing, or can be forced, to pick up the check. Dispel that notion and the perception of profitability evaporates with it.
Take away that perception -- stir, in the buyer's mind, the possibility that those bonds may at some point in the near future become mere paper of no value whatsoever -- and that buyer is going to either stop buying or at the very least demand a much larger return for the risk.
And that is how we get at the politicians. They can always vote themselves the power to borrow money and try to stick the rest of us with the debt, but that power is meaningless if nobody's willing to lend it to them.
That's not to say that the politicians wouldn't have other options and evasions open to them ("paying off" the debt in worthless inflated currency while retaining the theoretical power to borrow in the future, for example), but in practical terms, they'd be forced to balance their books -- a creditor "paid" with worthless "money" is no more likely to lend again than one told to go pound sand. And a population aroused to the point of this kind of accomplishment would likely retain the initiative when the discussion turned to just how much of an allowance they're willing to give the politicians they just spanked.
From a libertarian standpoint, the justification for repudiating the debt is fairly obvious -- see Murray N. Rothbard's essay on the subject or listen to last night's episode of Free Talk Live (MP3), for example.
In terms of visceral, gut-wrenching populist appeal, debt repudiation has a lot of potential, too, and it's nice to see that appeal exploited. For a good example, see the YouTube campaign of kids (correctly) asserting "it's not MY debt."
Conveying the basic injustice of expecting someone else (especially a bunch of kids) to pick up the tab for spending that they had no part in is easy and effective, and the knotheads in Washington just keep making it easier with their bailouts, projections of future $1 trillion deficits, etc.
The case makes itself. What it needs to succeed is a popular grassroots movement to promote it.
Popular grassroots movements don't always win. One need look no further back than last year's "bailout" fiascoes to see that. The vast majority of Americans said "no bailouts" -- and they happened anyway, because politicians believe (usually correctly) that they can do anything they want and then talk their way out of the consequences later.
A popular grassroots movement for debt repudiation, however, would not depend entirely upon the politicians' cooperation for success. There's another class of actors involved, and those actors are much more sensitive to what's going on around them. I'm speaking of course, of those who speculate in US government debt -- the people and organizations who buy US government bonds.
The value of those bonds is dependent entirely upon the buyer's perception that "the full faith and credit of the United States" is bankable ... that the investment is, for all intents and purposes, risk-free. The perceived profitability of lending money to the US government rests on the notion that all us serfs are either willing, or can be forced, to pick up the check. Dispel that notion and the perception of profitability evaporates with it.
Take away that perception -- stir, in the buyer's mind, the possibility that those bonds may at some point in the near future become mere paper of no value whatsoever -- and that buyer is going to either stop buying or at the very least demand a much larger return for the risk.
And that is how we get at the politicians. They can always vote themselves the power to borrow money and try to stick the rest of us with the debt, but that power is meaningless if nobody's willing to lend it to them.
That's not to say that the politicians wouldn't have other options and evasions open to them ("paying off" the debt in worthless inflated currency while retaining the theoretical power to borrow in the future, for example), but in practical terms, they'd be forced to balance their books -- a creditor "paid" with worthless "money" is no more likely to lend again than one told to go pound sand. And a population aroused to the point of this kind of accomplishment would likely retain the initiative when the discussion turned to just how much of an allowance they're willing to give the politicians they just spanked.
A fourth thing ...
... (read the first three here):
Agree? Sign here -- and spread the word.
We, the undersigned Americans, hereby call upon both houses of the US Congress to promptly pass, and upon the state legislatures to ratify, a constitutional amendment repealing section 4 of the 14th amendment, prohibiting future indebtedness and deficit spending on the part of the federal government, and repudiating all federal government debt and debt service obligations accrued prior to the ratification of said amendment.
Agree? Sign here -- and spread the word.
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