Explaining the debt ceiling to a leftie, liberal or marxist - it is in cartoon format

[Selene]

What’s happening as the congress raises the debt ceiling explained in a very easy to understand and short video. Congress will consider rasing the debt ceiling on our borrowing streak for the 78th time in less than a hundred years and as the debt goes up so does the interest on the debt. No one in their right mind would do this, but Congress does because it’s not their personal money or debt and it allows them to continue to spend and remain in power.

Enjoy, well, at least try to enjoy...

[Selene]

Marxist Article on Debt Ceiling Priceless!

Political Affairs: Marxism. Fresh. Daily -

John Case is the writer of the article named "Debt Ceiling Showdown: Time to Look Deeper? - [i cannot get any information on his credentials]

Markets are

jittery

– and take note: there will be little warning before the exact moment a new

financial crisis

starts, and

jitters t

urn into an

avalanche

of selling US Treasuries. over a fundamental shift in confidence of foreign owners of US debt that they will ever be paid in full will create

panic

. Economists call it a ‘Minsky moment”, after Hyman Minsky

***

, who is back in vogue after being exorcised academically for decades for calling

capitalism “inherently unstable”.

What lies immediately ahead is

unknown

. Even if a deal is struck at the last minute,

or if the President invokes power under the 14th amendment to raise the debt ceiling on his own,

this controversy reveals a political system in serious need of repair, as system becoming increasingly

paralyzed.

A new financial crisis is a certainty if we go into default, but not unlikely even if we avoid technical default. Confidence in the United States is being shaken. The road to austerity is the only matter now being discussed – and that road leads to

national disaster

, in my opinion. The slightest externality – say, the unwinding of the Greek default beyond what the EU can handle – can

sink the ship.

OK! Now are you scared enough? All the fear words are in play.

Now does he give a solution...nope, but he does state:

The only regime capable of redressing this crisis is one AT LEAST as democratic, as progressive, as working class oriented, as Franklin Roosevelt’s. For many reasons, some likely personal style and philosophy but most rooted in different historical relations of forces, Obama, so far, is governing from a more centrist, friendlier-to-Wall Street position. This is seriously compromising a turn away from austerity politics. How do we shift the center leftward?

***The Economist article The Fed Discovers Minsky!

Major works of Minsky

Adam

Post script: It is clearly time for Directive 10-289 - see all eight (8) points beginning on page 499 in the 35th Anniversary Pocket edition of Atlas