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Surprise! Huge US Budget Surplus Shatters Record

Which?



No but it is there, unlike the average Joe who can loose his job and then have no income what so ever.

Not all households are "Average Joe" households. The threat of job loss is no different for a household than the threat of recession is for a nation. In fact, a job loss can be a lot easier to fix than a recession and the loss of income can be, proportionally, a lot less because of that. No, you've got to find other reasons to disassociate a "household budget" with a government budget if you want to assert there is no analogy that is meaningful.
 
Wait for a trend if you want to have a solid argument about that. One month isn't a trend and cutting the deficit in half still leaves us with a huge deficit.

Some fun analysis!

U.S. budget deficits since Obama has been in office (giving him all of January, 2009) in millions of dollars:

2009$1,471,297
20101,240,497
20111,249,569
20121,060,756
2013*216,528*

* denotes January through June

Now. If we are to weight the first 6 months of the year throughout Obama's tenure, they would constitute 51% of the January-December budget deficit.

Applying this estimation for the remaining 6 months of 2013 (49%), the U.S. budget projects to be $424,565 million. A 71% decrease since Obama has been in office.

The data used for the calculations can be obtained here.
 
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Obama isn't black, either.

according to how we've constructed race in this country, he is ... for most of our history one drop has been enough ... Have you seen photos of Homer Plessey (Plessey v. Ferguson, 1896)? You'd assume he was white, yet that case gave constitutional cover to racial segregation until 1954.
 
I don't think the "woman vote" is a big deal, either. Those fire-breathing feminazis that would vote based on gender are already hardcore democrats. I doubt any woman that would otherwise vote "republican" would be swayed by a female democrat. Republican woman are either pro-lifers or at the very least apathetic to the whole "women's rights" schtick. There's not that much upside due to that, in my opinion. Women who "feel oppressed" and would vote for a woman president based on the fact that she's a woman - and vote cross-party to do it..... not many of those, I think.

Then you have to deal with the fact that misogyny is absolutely not a "white thing" and democrats may find they'll lose votes from other races because of those individuals that would never vote for a woman. I have a hunch there are some of those in the black and hispanic communities; having lived in both.


fire-breathing feminazis....Sorry I had to laugh at that one because it reminded me of the show married with children. For some reason I vision you being like Al Bundy

nomaam.jpg

Now all kidding aside, I don't think you guys can afford to underestimate the woman's vote. You mentioned the republican women not crossing party lines but you forgot about the independent woman vote. All I'm saying is why chance it?
 
Yes yes of-course.

It's the twisted reality of modern day liberal driven Fiscal rationalization.

Any news no matter how contrived is good news.

WTF are you talking about? It is simply fact! Accumulated deficits are only a subset of debt.
 
Applying this estimation for the remaining 6 months of 2013 (49%), the U.S. budget projects to be $424,565 million. A 71% decrease since Obama has been in office.

The data used for the calculations can be obtained here.

More fun analysis. Compare that to the budget deficit in 2007: 163 billion.

Granted, a 423 billion dollar deficit is better than his 1471 billion dollar deficit, but we are a long, LONG way from getting back to anything we've ever considered "normal". What we're seeing with the deficit is that we're still racking up a whopper of a debt and still going backwards but we're not going backwards as fast as we were a few years ago. Maybe it's reason to be a little less concerned, but it's not a reason to celebrate.
 
fire-breathing feminazis....Sorry I had to laugh at that one because it reminded me of the show married with children. For some reason I vision you being like Al Bundy.

What's wrong with that? :D

Now all kidding aside, I don't think you guys can afford to underestimate the woman's vote. You mentioned the republican women not crossing party lines but you forgot about the independent woman vote. All I'm saying is why chance it?

I think the abortion issue shot republicans in the arse for any woman that would likely vote based on gender. That's all I'm saying. I think Roe v. Wade is settled law and republicans have nothing to gain and everything to lose by keeping on keeping on as though they're going to fix that. All that does is make it harder for them to get a chance to do what they rightfully should be doing; aggressively working toward fixing economic issues.
 
One thing about #1....didn't Republicans call it "Obama's sequester" a couple of months ago when it went into effect? Wasn't it "Obama's failure" that led to it being implemented. Wasn't it a "White House plan" when Republicans were running from their failure to make cuts so that it wouldn't go into effect?

Keep in mind...sequestration was in lieu of other supposed cuts. The method was sequestration because Congress couldn't decide on what they would specifically cut. Both parties had agreed to cut how it was cut is the reason sequestration kicked in.

Sequestration was Obamas idea, though everyone eventually supported it.
 
More fun analysis. Compare that to the budget deficit in 2007: 163 billion.

Granted, a 423 billion dollar deficit is better than his 1471 billion dollar deficit, but we are a long, LONG way from getting back to anything we've ever considered "normal". What we're seeing with the deficit is that we're still racking up a whopper of a debt and still going backwards but we're not going backwards as fast as we were a few years ago. Maybe it's reason to be a little less concerned, but it's not a reason to celebrate.


Let use your personal budget as an example. Let say your household has been in red every month for the the last 6-10 years. Then one month you are working on your budget and you finally get a surplus. You are going to tell me that you wouldn't be excited about that? Not sayinf that you are out of debt, but atleast the meteor has alter its course.
 
Sequestration was Obamas idea, though everyone eventually supported it.

sequestration was supposed to be the doomsday scenario used as a penalty if no deal on the debt ceiling was made. everyone thought that the threat of sequestor would bring both parties to the negotiating table and hammer out a plan to prevent it, because no one believed that congress would allow something as bad as sequester to happen.

congress could not get its act together so we in the end got the sequester cuts.
 
More fun analysis. Compare that to the budget deficit in 2007: 163 billion.

Actually, it is $187,090 million (you have to tell excel to include the revision).

Yet in 2008, it moved to more than $680 billion.

Granted, a 423 billion dollar deficit is better than his 1471 billion dollar deficit, but we are a long, LONG way from getting back to anything we've ever considered "normal". What we're seeing with the deficit is that we're still racking up a whopper of a debt and still going backwards but we're not going backwards as fast as we were a few years ago. Maybe it's reason to be a little less concerned, but it's not a reason to celebrate.

We are racking up debt with record low interest rates. The cost of financing has increased by what, close to 50% since the beginning of 2013? Which means economic gains have a strong probability to be revised up.
 
Let use your personal budget as an example. Let say your household has been in red every month for the the last 6-10 years. Then one month you are working on your budget and you finally get a surplus. You are going to tell me that you wouldn't be excited about that? Not sayinf that you are out of debt, but atleast the meteor has alter its course.

If you plan to spend 200% of what you take in but you end up spending only 180% of what you take in, you're not REALLY in the black. Sequestration FORCED spending cuts. It guaranteed a "surplus" if you compare what the government PLANNED to spend vs. what the government ended up spending after the forced cuts kicked in.

The real problem isn't that the government is spending more than it budgets. The real problem is that the budget is ALWAYS more than the revenue. Run a household that way for 6-10 years and you won't feel all giddy just because you didn't add as much to your debt this month as you did last month.
 
We are racking up debt with record low interest rates.

This is the problem. The first five words are the real crux of the mater. We are racking up debt. Sooner or later, that's got to stop. You can't borrow exponentially.
 
Run a household that way for 6-10 years and you won't feel all giddy just because you didn't add as much to your debt this month as you did last month.

The idea that government should be "ran like a household" is ridiculous.
 
Not all households are "Average Joe" households. The threat of job loss is no different for a household than the threat of recession is for a nation. In fact, a job loss can be a lot easier to fix than a recession and the loss of income can be, proportionally, a lot less because of that. No, you've got to find other reasons to disassociate a "household budget" with a government budget if you want to assert there is no analogy that is meaningful.

No, but we are not talking about the uber rich.

We are talking about comparing the economy of a household/company to a sovereign nation. Fact is the only way a sovereign nation can loose all its income is by becoming Somalia. Now on the flipside it is pretty easy for a household/company to loose all its income... due to sickness, jail, or a multitude of reasons.

It always amazes me that in the last 5-7 years of kitchen household economics spreading from the US right, that they actually get away with this lunacy. For example... average Joe, who has a mortgage and a job, has a debt vs income ratio in the many hundreds of %... but a sovereign nation hitting 100%.. panic, the world is ending.. Brain dead economic theory I say.

Fact is, and always has been, the economics of a sovereign nation are far far different than your average household/company. In no way could a household/company go with 40+ years of deficits like the US has.. and quite a few other countries... but a country can.
 
We are racking up debt.

Unemployment is still high.

Sooner or later, that's got to stop.

Say's who? The U.S. government is a perpetual entity with unlimited funding capabilities.


You can't borrow exponentially.

You certainly can if you are repaying in inflated dollars. The key is to ensure (periods where economic growth > deficit growth) ≥ (periods where economic growth < deficit growth) is the long term average.
 
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No, but we are not talking about the uber rich.

We are talking about comparing the economy of a household/company to a sovereign nation. Fact is the only way a sovereign nation can loose all its income is by becoming Somalia. Now on the flipside it is pretty easy for a household/company to loose all its income... due to sickness, jail, or a multitude of reasons.

It always amazes me that in the last 5-7 years of kitchen household economics spreading from the US right, that they actually get away with this lunacy. For example... average Joe, who has a mortgage and a job, has a debt vs income ratio in the many hundreds of %... but a sovereign nation hitting 100%.. panic, the world is ending.. Brain dead economic theory I say.

Fact is, and always has been, the economics of a sovereign nation are far far different than your average household/company. In no way could a household/company go with 40+ years of deficits like the US has.. and quite a few other countries... but a country can.

Debt vs. income ratio is as important to countries as it is to the average Joe. A nation's credit depends on them keeping a reasonable debt to income ratio. Ours keeps growing the wrong direction. That's not a good thing for us any more than it would be for a household. Of course, with a household, it's actually the debt to ASSET ratio that's truly critical. Having a debt to income ration of 2:1 isn't a big deal if we're talking about a house and car. It's a HUGE deal if it's just debt with no assets to show for it and that's what our government's deficit spending is like. We can't just sell the asset behind that debt and BAM, we're all squeaky clean again. No, it's more like credit card debt except the interest rate is a lot beter.
 
Unemployment is still high.



Say's who? The U.S. government is a perpetual entity with unlimited funding capabilities.




You certainly can if you are repaying in inflated dollars. The key is to ensure (periods where economic growth > deficit growth) ≥ (periods where economic growth < deficit growth) is the long term average.

Just checked. The market is so impressed with this record budget surplus news that the DOW is down 41 points right now.
 
Debt vs. income ratio is as important to countries as it is to the average Joe. A nation's credit depends on them keeping a reasonable debt to income ratio. Ours keeps growing the wrong direction. That's not a good thing for us any more than it would be for a household. Of course, with a household, it's actually the debt to ASSET ratio that's truly critical. Having a debt to income ration of 2:1 isn't a big deal if we're talking about a house and car. It's a HUGE deal if it's just debt with no assets to show for it and that's what our government's deficit spending is like. We can't just sell the asset behind that debt and BAM, we're all squeaky clean again. No, it's more like credit card debt except the interest rate is a lot beter.

Well when the economy improves spending will go down (less need for safety nets) and revenue will increase (greater economic activity). So using a household debt situation (which I hate doing) it's no different than someone that has a seasonally dependent job borrowing offseason and paying it down during the busy time. Like a waiter in some beach town or something.
 
Just checked. The market is so impressed with this record budget surplus news that the DOW is down 41 points right now.

Stronger economic expectations have been factored in months ago. I know it isn't ideologically convenient at this point, but hey. Can't argue with the fact that the U.S. market capitalization reached an all-time high in May 2013, bounced, and now is back.

djia.jpg
 
Well when the economy improves spending will go down (less need for safety nets) and revenue will increase (greater economic activity). So using a household debt situation (which I hate doing) it's no different than someone that has a seasonally dependent job borrowing offseason and paying it down during the busy time. Like a waiter in some beach town or something.

All except that there's no "paying it down". What it's like is ALWAYS spending more than you take in but celebrating because your overspending isn't quite as bad as the record overspending you've been doing for the last 4 years.
 
Stronger economic expectations have been factored in months ago. I know it isn't ideologically convenient at this point, but hey. Can't argue with the fact that the U.S. market capitalization reached an all-time high in May 2013.

Just sayin' that this "surprise surplus" isn't real economic news. It's not "a sign". It didn't have any positive impact on the markets at all. What was it really? A manufactured talking point for a presidency that is racked with scandal.
 
You maybe right that the black turnout will
not be as high if the candidate was any other candidate but Hilary. We love the Clintons. If Obama didn't run I think Hilary would have still won because of the woman's vote.

A little advice to the GOP. If you want to dilute the black vote, stop ***king around with voting rights. We still have a bitter taste in our mouth from the 50s and that is a very sensitive subject. Honestly, I think that is what hurt you guys in the 2012 election. It was a self inflicted womb because you fire up the base.

Personally I am still shock that you guys are messing with women's right when you know the democrats are putting up the first woman presidential nominee in 2016 who is a very strong candidate. If Hilary is the democratic candidate, then you guys are going to destroyed with the women vote.

WOW....

No what hurt us in 2012 was Cons stayed home.

The voting rights act was FILLIBUSTERED by the Democrats in 1964 and the latest decision by SCOTUS was long over due.

Hillary, the person so incompetent she couldn't defend a New American Embassy in a ever increasing terrorist ridden Benghazi.

Hillary, so lacking of a fundamental moral core she would lie to the face of the Father who lost his Son in Benghazi. " We'll arrest the man who made that video ".

The first time she opens here shrill lieing mouth she'll lose supporters.

The womans issue ? The " War on Women " ? A false narrative drummed up by Democrats for idiots easily suscepatble to attitudes and empty charges and low information voters.

I hope they run Hillary, and I hope she wins because once Obama's done with this economy it won't be salvagable.

The next President needs to be of the same corrupt ideology that got us where were at right now.
 
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