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justellus
Joined: 22 Jan 2009
Posts: 209
Location: World Wide
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 Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 8:43 pm Post subject: Obama & German Chancellor Merkel:The Age of Hyper-inflat |
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Obama & German Chancellor Merkel: The Age of Hyper-inflation?
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/06/26/business/econwatch/entry5117136.shtml
Germany has already learned a lesson, living through an intense period of hyper-inflation in the past and now apparently is balking at increasing huge government spending so as to prevent the dreadful scenario of mega inflation from returning.
The US, on the other hand, has lived with extremely low inflation in the last number of years. But this is about to change. Now, the government has accumulated debt at an alarming rate and we are on the brink of reaching a point of no return, where the amount of debt exceeds our net worth. Perhaps we have already reached this point.
Some blame Bush for a deficit when they don't realize what Bush did was small in comparison to the amount of deficit, government spending and government debt that Obama is taking on. This amount of debt is alarming, and future generations are going to pay for this dearly.
All the hype created by the scenario of disaster instigated Congress and the public to pass massive spending bills, unheard of before in history. Now, the amount of government debt and spending, and the exploding deficit is beginning to catch up with us. It is already outrunning our capacity to keep it in line and has gotten completely out of control.
This massive spending and debt can only signal one pathway for America - the pathway of inflation and loss of monetary value. The dollar has already been shaking against major global currencies recently and this trend will only continue.
America in it's complacency has not had the experience of Germany and has yet to understand the dangers of hyper-inflation. Sooner or later it is going to catch up with us. The amount of dollar printing and increasing debt and deficits have only one road to lead us. Sooner or later inflation is going to catch up with our spending and there will be nothing to stop the devaluation of net worth. America thus has not learned it's lesson and future generations are in for a big shock when inflation begins to increase in the near future. This the price we will have to pay for allowing the leadership of our country to balloon the deficit spending and national debt as well.
What are your opinions on this subject matter?
Is hyper-inflation an unlikely scenario for our modern economy, given the completely different nature and structure of our modern world as compared to the Welmar Republic era?
How long will it take before inflation starts to catch up with us?
Is America truly concerned for future generations or is this only a reflection of the mentality "spend today, worry about how to pay it tomorrow?"
Why have we allowed our leaders to dupe us into massive spending, and listened to their stories of either spend or drown? Could it not be that it was never this way in the first place, but only a scenario created by those who would get us forever indebted as a nation so that the lending and banking institutions may profit from us for generations to come?
Has not Germany taken a wiser path of controlled spending? |
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justellus
Joined: 22 Jan 2009
Posts: 209
Location: World Wide
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| Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 9:17 pm Post subject: |
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And here are what a few participants had to say on the discussion page for this link:
| Quote: | by d7767w June 26, 2009 1:25 PM PDT
When are you liberal idiots going to stop blaming Bush for what Obumba is doing? the Banks are recovering because of the Bush stimulus package. The Obumba package has not even been spent, two weeks ago only 48 billion of the 787 billion he just had to get approved or the world would collapse.
Everyone talks about the Bush deficit, when only a 600+ billion deficit was incurred from George Washington to Bush and Obumba wants to quadruple that so don't talk about Bush and the deficit.
When are you people going to wake up to what this man wants to do to this country? |
That is the way it was passed in Congress. The story was, pass it or else the world will collapse. Now it has been passed, only a fraction dispersed, and the world has not collapsed. So this proves the reason for getting it passed in the first place was most likely false and even unjustifiable. So we have been dubbed into approving a 787 billion not needed? The world was not going to collapse in the first place. The result? We are only making a few banks richer in the process by increasing our debt this way - those who are granting our government the credit under the current system.
| Quote: | Please don't confuse YOURSELF, Bush stepped into the White House with Clinton's $5.7 TRILLION dollar debt handed to him on a platter along with Clinton's two year recession and the burst bubbles from the Technology bust and the housing markets going bust.
By the way Ubrew...when you have a $5.7 TILLION DEBT with an income of $2 trillion dollars per year...YOU ARE BANKRUPT! PERIOD!
Bush and the republicans managed to keep from increasing that debt to an increase of $1.9 trillion...that is until The New Party commies came into office in 2007 and everything went to hell in a handbasket.
Obama's already run up $3 TRILLION in debt in less than 200 days...and has plans for $42 TRILLION more in spending in less than a decade...
DO THE MATH!!!
It's simple. When your checkbook is empty, when you have a debt of $11 TRILLION...$42 TRILLION more in spending just ain't too smart...as a matter of fact it's stupid and ridiculous! |
The fact that Obama has run up $3 trillion in debt in less then 200 days is really outrageous. This explosion of debt is what is going to spell hyper-inflation and means we as a nation are now forever indebted to the same bankers. Truly Congress and the nation was fooled into massive spending to avoid a crisis which could have been averted by alternate more creative means. Much was already suggested in the other discussion on new out of the box ideas to solve the financial crisis, and many of them indeed were implemented, but not in the way intended. They were implemented to favor the existing Fed system and not in a way which would have been truly beneficial to the public.
| Quote: | y burneb
We should expect Germany to take a less aggressive approach to battling the global recession. Merkel inherited a huge trade SURPLUS and serious banking and credit crisis. Obama inherited a gargantuan trade DEFICIT and nearly overwhelming banking and credit crisis.
Germany already has a well-established and respected national health care system, and a reasonably up-to-date national infrastructure. We are some 2-3 trillion dollars behind in maintenance and upgrades on roads, dams, levees, landfills, and other civil engineering projects. Their needs and incentives for related stimulus spending are much less.
Still, the hyperinflation of the Weimar era is highly unlikely for either Germany or the U.S., and Merkel's political conservatism may earn them a "lost decade" like Japan's. Remember when Japan seemed to be doing so much better than the U.S.? |
Certainly the situation in Germany at that time was different and we cannot make a direct comparison to our economy today. And as noted above, the standing of Germany today is different with respect to their trade surplus, national health system and infra-structure. So some reason in their mind that a huge amount of spending is not needed in Germany. Yet this argument brakes down when we consider that in order to get there, we are spending exactly at a time when we don't have the money to spend in the first place. We should be spending on these items at a time when we do have the money, not the contrary.
| Quote: | by uswarrior June 27, 2009 10:31 AM PDT
Ms Merkel and crew have it right. If you want to know what to do, study history. Why the heck have we rewarded CEO's who have run their businesses into the ground either through criminal behaviour, incompetence, or, at best, inability to compete? What future is there in artificially extending the life of corporations that have not been able to survive on their own? None. Billions of tax dollars that should have gone into rebuilding roads, bridges and schools have instead went into the pockets of vampiric business leaders and corrupt politicians. Bail-out money should have went to individuals for re-training for new careers. It should have been allocated to retirement funds and unemployment insurance accounts that faltered. We could have employed millions by letting-out contracts to rebuild our transportation infrastructure. How many of you know of a road that needs to be resurfaced or widened? Why didn't the bail-out money go towards empowering new companies who want to build way-too-needed mass transit systems? Our National leaders in business and politics need to be fired. Let banks, markets and corporations who can't survive on their own efforts die. New growth will replace them and flourish. Its happened before and the new industries that popped-up brought our Nation greatly increased prosperity. |
Exactly. Rewarding banks and CEO's is truly an absolute shame. We could have fed the hungry around the world for eons to come, just with the amount of aid that has been given to banks recently. And the mentality of a bank or corporation being to big to fail is partially correct on the one hand, but when given the improper twist, and financial institutions are being bailed out, it becomes a very bad thing, particularly when it is the same institutions that created much of the mess in the first place. So this is only rewarding them for their serious crimes against our economy.
| Quote: | y thomas.wingenfeld--2008 July 2, 2009 12:52 PM PDT
There might be another point: Merkel grew up in the Eastern part of Germany, the German Democratic Republic which had to surrender to the Western Republic of Germany because of bankruptcy. All Germans still pay the bill for this history and don't want to add another huge deficit on top of it. It needed and still needs a lot of time and money to work yourself out of a situation where 18 million people without earnings, without any funds, with old fashioned infrastructure etc. need to be integrated almost immediatelly. |
Certainly the situation in Germany during the Weimar Republic, during the re-joining of East and West, and the current situation today as well is very different from that in America, but we stand to learn a lesson from their more frugal attitude towards spending and inflation.
| Quote: | by ibsteve2u July 2, 2009 1:45 PM PDT
"...but the period of hyperinflation is considered a significant factor in the emergence of the National Socialist German Workers? Party ? the Nazis. Germans are thus particularly attuned to the dangers of inflation ? and particularly wary of fiscal policy that they fear could bring it about."
Net-net, however, method doesn't matter: Fanaticism takes root when the masses see no future in their current form of government.
I submit that the greed of the Republicans poses as big a threat to democracy in America as the Weimar Republic faced as a consequence of their own policies.
The Republicans attempted to satiate their greed with their policies of "trickle-down" economics, inequitable free trade, and an energy policy that reflected the protection of Big Oil's profits rather than the national interest - all of which served to divert masses of dollars into either their own holdings or out of the country.
The functional result has been three decades of attacks on America's working poor and middle class, the consequences of which can easily seen in our inequality curve's movement back to the same shape it held in 1929.
Democracies are susceptible to excessive greed on the part of the few because that greed brings inequality and the slipping away of the hope for a better future; that is an oft repeated lesson throughout human history. Sadly, another lesson of history is that it is the masses who inevitably "enjoy" the bulk of the consequences of that greed.
That is what I hope of Obama - that he do his best to shield America's masses from the consequences of the greed of the few - that few who control the Republican Party.
Oh, how I despise the right for what they have done to my country, for they have placed it at risk. Democracies are born through common agreement - but they die from common disappointment. |
None of the politicians, whether Democrat or Republicans will be able to save us from a climate of greed caused by the special interest groups, massive contracts and control wielded by the lobbying of large corporate groups, family lines and institutions which really call the shots in America. We are no different in a sense from other countries where the underlying power structure is held by a less visible group, while the leaders and figure heads appearing on the media are only puppets of much larger background groups which run the basic workings of the machine of politics and under lying economic interests which ultimately determine the fate and direction the figure head leaders will take. |
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