Is The American Govt. Going To Default On Their Loans By Aug 2?

[Diapered Jason]

"Willing?", no but That is not up to me. It is already in the cards. Look at the alternative? more debt, which leads to the same place with a bigger load in your pants. Continued credit worthiness is premised on prediction based on the record. Also, your implied claim is that the Government = the country. If that is the case then totalitarianism is the current state of affairs

????

It is what Confucius said to Wei before they went to war and I thought it was kind of applicable. Two things could happen if we do not raise the debt ceiling for the nth time. The first one is a default on our nation's debt. The second is a freeze of all government spending so we can continue to pay interest on our debt. A freeze in government spending means no Social Security, no Medicare, no Medicaid, and no discretionary spending. Either way, our credit rating will down grade leading to higher interest rates. This will hurt you in more ways than you can imagine and is definitely something our country cannot afford right now. The only way to avoid this is to raise the debt ceiling with the intention of balancing the budget. If we raise the debt ceiling without balancing the budget, then you are right and we will face this problem again later only the snowball will be bigger then.

I will not debate totalitarianism with you, but I suggest you look up the definition.

[Diaper Mike 05]

Green technology is not truly green at all - it's just a way to make you feel better about where your sources of energy are coming from.

I was reading a design magazine recently, and combined with my experience, I can tell you that things that seem to be more green start off as making things worse. Chemicals for photovoltaic cells are toxic and have to be stored somewhere when their useful life has run out. Also, consider the following:

According to that article, workers in cement and steel mills can be considered as having green jobs despite the fact that cement contributes 5% to "greenhouse gases" and both are very energy intensive to get a product that is useable from.

Working in an active manufacturing facility, I see steel and iron cut every day. High amounts of oil-based lubricants are used to produce these products and steel is cut into chips. Many days, you see haze in the air as the coolant and microscopic chips splash up after hitting the guards around the machine.

Steel used for windmills will have to be heat treated and possibly carburized. The process of carburization is where you put a piece of steel (XX15/XX17/XX18/XX20 grade) in a furnace with some sort of atmosphere and an agent is released that, when heating the part, causes carbon to infuse into the part. This creates a hard case which makes the piece harder and more durable. At minimum, large energy pieces and pieces that will cause motion over great distances or repetitively will usually be hardened this way, or will be made with a grade that requires thru hardening (XX40/XX42/XX45/XX50 grades). Heat treating is done by making a furnace hard enough to change the properties of metal from one phase to another. This is a very energy intensive process and cannot be replaced or have a process exchanged for it.

So, according to the article, as long as you are producing goods that are used for green products, you have a green job. But is it really green at all?

Oh yeah, janitors, secretaries, etc. at places that manufacture green technology products are also considered to have green jobs.

And my new hope and change - I hope Obama's job status changes from President to unemployed in 2012.

[Diapered Jason]

Interesting Diaper Mike, but I already know. To me, green jobs is a political phase and outside of politics, it has no real meaning, especially to us engineers. We want to design systems that are more energy efficient and have less impact on the environment, but we do not want to break the bank or create safety issues. We also need to keep looking at new technologies, because if we are still burning coal for most of our power by the time I become 50 or so years old, I will be really pissed off.

On another note, I thought they used aluminum in wind mills rather than steel though. It is probably better to use a composite material instead of steel or aluminum.

The step you mentioned involving the carburization of steel will likely never change as steel is still a critical material for many products. The carburization of steel requires you to heat it to an austinetic phase for carbon diffusion, which is at minimum 1333 degrees F. Keep in mind the energy that was used to process the steel up to that point is even higher.

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

It is what Confucius said to Wei before they went to war and I thought it was kind of applicable. Two things could happen if we do not raise the debt ceiling for the nth time. The first one is a default on our nation's debt. The second is a freeze of all government spending so we can continue to pay interest on our debt. A freeze in government spending means no Social Security, no Medicare, no Medicaid, and no discretionary spending. Either way, our credit rating will down grade leading to higher interest rates. This will hurt you in more ways than you can imagine and is definitely something our country cannot afford right now. The only way to avoid this is to raise the debt ceiling with the intention of balancing the budget. If we raise the debt ceiling without balancing the budget, then you are right and we will face this problem again later only the snowball will be bigger then.

I will not debate totalitarianism with you, but I suggest you look up the definition.

You just struck out on 3 swings

The first option is not the default as you say. That is not even in the cards. A default occrs when you cannot service your debt. As you see, that can still be done Unless people panic from watching too much television and believing what the crackers are saying, the"freeze". A defualt would be perceived as messy and people don't like messy, they try to keep things going as before so they adapt. Actually there would be not much of anything, only that the Treasury bond rating would go from AAA to AA: Big F**king Deal: That is nowhere near default territory but it is a wake-up call about getting the house in order which is the exact opposite of raising the debt limit: That is just saying I am going to writhe myself a bigger credit card and be a bigger spendtrrift and go deeper in the hole, as I already told you. You watch too much television without the world experience to put it in perspective. The first thing my Economics instructor told me was that economists have a miserable record of prediction

Social Security etc will be paid. That is already in the cards. So you are wrong there

If you "won't debate totalitarianism " with me. Why should I look up the definitiion? Besides whihch I know it 100 times better than you. I lived through the era in history where a major totalitarian power existed and shortly after two others were beaten in a war. Comparative Government was a course taught in hight school. If you wan to tryt to lecture me, my little finger knows more than you do right now; and I know a thing or two about economics. I lived through the 1970's. Ask people who have been there and done that about those times. If ever there was a scenario leading to Armeggedon that was it. Now there were three big things there; inflation, unemployment and recession. What you are not being told is that the inflation rate is pretty high now. This is not mentioned because food and energy costs are no longer counted in the statistic like it used to be so with the price of housing being depressed it does not looki like it is there. Now THAT could lead to Mad Max because THAT touches on your everyday world. They took "market basket" itemsout of the equation 31 years ago because it told them things that they did not want people to know and dressed it up in $50 lingo so that people didn't know that they were being punked

If this goes on as it has for the last 40+ years, it will break. When it does, I will probably be dead and gone but you will be somewhere between you middle thirties to around fifty and in no condition to deal with it

[Diapered Jason]

You just struck out on 3 swings

The first option is not the default as you say. That is not even in the cards. A default occrs when you cannot service your debt. As you see, that can still be done Unless people panic from watching too much television and believing what the crackers are saying, the"freeze". A defualt would be perceived as messy and people don't like messy, they try to keep things going as before so they adapt. Actually there would be not much of anything, only that the Treasury bond rating would go from AAA to AA: Big F**king Deal: That is nowhere near default territory but it is a wake-up call about getting the house in order which is the exact opposite of raising the debt limit: That is just saying I am going to writhe myself a bigger credit card and be a bigger spendtrrift and go deeper in the hole, as I already told you. You watch too much television without the world experience to put it in perspective. The first thing my Economics instructor told me was that economists have a miserable record of prediction

Social Security etc will be paid. That is already in the cards. So you are wrong there

Um, so why not raise the debt ceiling then take more time to balance the budget and avoid that whole mess? I think if the government does not raise the debt ceiling, there will be quite a bit of emotional distress. Stocks would probably drop significantly. The possibility of the government defaulting still exists, because there may not be enough time to put a stop to expenditures. There is no quick on/off switch for government spending. Due to the size of the system, it may kill itself due to starvation. I think it is better we put it on a diet to slowly curb spending down so we do not shock the economy. Large instant cuts to the government would have a large negative impact on our fragile economy right now, and without raising the debt ceiling, that would be the best case scenario.

Social Security is not already in the cards, because the money they collect from your pay check for Social Security gets thrown in with the rest of the money where the government can spend it any way it wants to. It does not have its own bank account.

Last, but no least, you are pathetic for calling me out on my age. You should know that wisdom does not come with experience, it comes with knowledge as it depends on how you interpret that experience. Now, I will not even pretend to know the details as you think you know them all, but you do not have to be an economist to talk about the economy. Comon dude, I mean WTF! It is just a difference of opinion that we are debating. Treat it as such!

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

Rasing the debt ceiling and taking more time is just what they've been doing for, with very rare exception, the last 40+ years. It is called "kicking the can down the road" which is what they say the are not doing. That is plain and simple If for two generation, they have been going deeper in the hole, then writing themsleves bigger credit cards and going deeper in the hole, if thye are allowed to write a bigger credit card, what do you think they well do? play tiddly-winks

When I said Social Security payments are in the cards, I meant that they will have the money for that and other things, but they will need to cut and eliminate other things, which should not have been started anyway and become more efficient. In 1980 they were 32% efficent on average, in 95 it had dropped to 28%; efficiency being the %age of dollars that actually reach the target. They can also sell off assets; in the west, the feds own up to 73% of the land in sme states like Navada; the last I heard in 93 or so, the assets figure was 52 trillion Also look at the growth of debt over the last 30 years and when it rose more steeply It went up form 900 billion to 14.3 trillion. Unfunded liabilities over the next 20 years will reach 65 trillion. Talk about the Asteroid that can end it all

Last I am not calling you out because of your age but because of your behavior. There is no equality, more correctly, peerage, between us. I have nearly 3 times your wold experience. That is unavoidable. I have been 23, Have you been 63? Have you been 45? Have you been 33? What I said about your age and its attendent lack of experience is a fact. Plus, in about 2-4 years something is going to happen to you the like of which you have no idea. Your brain will finish internal growth and your thinking will be so expanded that it will be like you got bigger in the universe; like going fron interplanetary to interstellar travel. Also when I was 10, 15, etc, the education was 5 times better than it is now in terms of content. It is my generation's fault that you were cheated. The point is that you tried in a sneaky way to lecture me. I know that becauxe, like Gagool, "I have seen this before". That is plain disrespect and It is you who are pathetic for thinking you can get away with it NOW I am calling you out for adding to it.

[Diapered Jason]

Ok, you believe that you know me and you clearly don't. I think we better take a break, because this conversation is going no where.

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

AGREED!!!