Dark Brightness

I like Bloomberg. Like most financial papers, it has to give figures. Businesses need ‘em. From today.

President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.

“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”

Holders of U.S. debt will eventually “get tired” of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. “It will have a dampening effect on our economy.”

Mate, It’s happening. I cashed up three years ago to fund a new house and gaining adequate care for my children after my marriage broke up. If and when I have cash again, I want it to be in a country with a strong currency (not the US) rule of law (not the US under the current administration) and where there will be social mobility (not the US, where there is now a functional nomenkultura)

The president pledged to work with Congress to shore up entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare and said he was confident that the House and Senate would pass health-care overhaul bills by August.

“Most of what is driving us into debt is health care, so we have to drive down costs,” he said.

If you cut health care you will either non fund the rare and costly –  or not fund the new. If you don’t fund innovation you will NOT get new cures. People will die and they will protest. It is very hard to deal with a cute kid who is dying becuase you won’t dunf a new drug… and this happens. In New Zealand, where there is a monopoly drug purchaser run by suits who only care about getting under budget, it happens frequently. If you don’t beleive the NZ experience, I suggest you look at the good Dr Crippen, who documents how the UK NHS is now run by a bunch of retarded monkeys.

The trainwreck is coming. But printing money and calling it a stimulus just greases the tracks. The US desperately needs a few people who will think this through advising a president who is grossly inexperienced, if not frankly dumb.

via Obama Says U.S. Long-Term Debt Load ‘Unsustainable’ (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.