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[-] ihaveibs@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 1 year ago

Is there a bigger sign of the desperation of the US than the fact that they have resorted to just simply saying they have a "strong economy" over and over again despite the fact anyone with a brain can clearly see how false that is? Like, they don't even proffer evidence, they just regurgitate until people accept it as the Truth™️

[-] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 1 year ago

The strategy is clearly to just keep repeating this over and over and hope people still believe it. I guess the other aspect of it is cooking numbers and doing creative accounting the way they did to pretend US isn't in a recession now.

[-] Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 1 year ago

I mean, they have world's largest, most pervasive and advanced propaganda machine in history. Why not give it a go? It worked before

[-] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 1 year ago

Clearly it's doing its job so far.

[-] Mana@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 1 year ago

Dude it works. Had briefly mentioned to my parents that the economy is shit and they responded with "is it?". I was totally caught off guard that anybody would think the housing crisis, inflation, and shitty infrastructure, is a sign of a good economy.

[-] sovietknuckles@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

US deficit

WaPo opinion discarded

[-] Avnar@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 year ago

The US Goverment can print USD, the deficit is a meaningless number.

[-] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 1 year ago

What allows US to print money is the fact that the dollar is the global reserve and there is constant demand for it. The dollar economy is now shrinking because countries are increasingly starting to trade outside the dollar.

[-] Avnar@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago

The Yen is not the World reserve Currency and look at Japans Dept to GDP Ratio. Governments give Fiat currency its Value by simply making it official and taxing it. The US also has the World reserve Bonus. But taking that away wont really stop them from printing more money.

[-] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Japanese economy is also in the gutter though. So, you can create currency by fiat, but there are consequences to doing that. The whole MMT idea is deeply flawed in my opinion.

[-] Avnar@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago

What problems are caused by to much Dept/Printing? I dont see the consequences. Its not Inflation Japan has the Highes Dept/GDP and can bearly get out of deflation.

[-] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I agree with Michael Hudson's take on the issue

But if we take a look at the national debt, for example, the US federal government budget deficit hit $1.1 trillion in the first half of this fiscal year. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that this problem is only going to get worse over the next decade as interest rates go up. I guess this begs the question: how sustainable is the US federal deficit and how much longer can the US keep up the seemingly unlimited spending that we’ve become accustomed to?

To an infinite amount as long as the debt is in its own currency, and as long as you print the currency, you can print however much you want. You’ll never default because you can just create the credit. That’s what the Federal Reserve did with its zero interest rate policy. It distorts the economy, and the economy can shrink and be torn apart, but the government can always pay its debt by simply printing the money. The problem that is tearing the American economy apart is not the government debt — it’s the private debt that is leading to a default. When you default on your debt, you forfeit you property to the creditors. So, what you’re seeing now is a large scale transfer of property, a transfer of real estate, a transfer of cars that people had bought, but couldn’t keep up the payments on, a transfer of income from the 90% to the 10%. That’s private debt. That’s where the real problem is. And as long as the television programs can keep talking about the government debt, not the private debt, people are somehow not going to see that the problem that is tearing their own personal life apart is actually the problem that’s tearing the whole American economy apart.

So would you say that the government debt is not a problem and that Americans shouldn’t really worry about that?

That’s right. It’s all just a made up. When they talk about cutting back the government debt, what they mean is cutting back social services. They would like to do what Biden and Obama wanted to do after 2009. They want to cut back Social Security. They want to privatize it as if that will somehow solve the problem. They want to cut back medical care. They want to cut back most social programs so that the money that the government does spend will be exclusively to support the financial sector, the military sector, the insurance sector, and the real estate sector. That’s where the property owning classes, the ‘rentier economy’, the rent recipients who make money from stocks and bonds and real estate and monopolies. The government will help the top 1% at the cost of the 99%, but it need to pretend that it’s forced to do this because there’s a government deficit. The only government spending they really want to cut back of the spending on the 90%. They want to cut back Social Security, Medicare, local social spending, support for local cities and states. Everything that made America more democratic and strong in the past.

But how much longer can the US just keep printing money in order to service this government deficits? Is this really sustainable indefinitely?

Well, what usually stops a situation like that is a political revolution. The answer is it’s sustainable until people fight back, until there is a revolution. But as long as you have a political system where you have only two parties that are really the same party, and as long as you have the Democrats as the only alternative to the Republican Party, it can go on indefinitely because people will not have a political alternative to vote for. There is no alternative. You’re going to have elections bouncing back and forth, from Republicans to Democrats to back. And yet neither of them are an alternative to the whole financialization of the economy that’s been taking place really since World War Two and especially since the 1980s. So, America is ending up looking like England under Margaret Thatcher and even worse, Labor Party that followed her.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/06/michael-hudson-on-the-us-economy-surprisingly-resilient-or-potemkin-village.html

this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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