This is why the US economic situation is a DISASTER waiting to happen!

What does it take for people to understand that the US and the western world as we know it is about to collapse under its own unsustainable and growing weight?

Ok, - allow me a shot at trying to explain this with some simple figures.

First, - would you agree that mathematical facts and figures are the same regardless of how many zeros you have in the figures you operate with?  With other words, if the annual costs of having and operating your hot-dog stand is US$10.000 and your net income is only $1.000 you WILL go out of business!  Period! End of story! 

And in the unlikely event you did not understand this, let me give you the reason:  You are $9.000 short even in the first year to pay your creditors.  Ok, if your creditors love your hot-dogs so very much that they will allow you to go on for a second year (just to make sure they can have access to your delicious hot-dogs) you may have a shot of running your hot-dog stand for another year.  However, when they realize that each hot-dog in fact is costing them almost $1.000 each, the day will for sure come when they will stop buying your hot-dogs, - and file the papers to send you into bankruptcy!

The analogy here is the fact that the Chinese for instance, who owns most of the US debt, allow the US to go on simply because they love the US market for the purpose of selling their products there.  But now they are starting to realize that the cost of being able to do this is way to high!

The US debt situation compared to a family home situation.

There is in particular TWO lessons you need to take into account in order to begin to fully understand how dead serious this situation is: 

Lesson # 1:

Here are the FACTS about the present US financial situation:

* U.S. Tax revenue: $ 2,170,000,000,000.00
* Fed budget: $ 3,820,000,000,000.00
* New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000.00
* National debt: $ 16,771,000,000,000.00
* Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000.00

Let's now remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget:

* Annual family income: $ 21,700.00
* Money the family spent: $ 38,200.00
* New debt on the credit card: $ 16,700.00
* Outstanding balance on the credit card: $ 162,710.00
* Total budget cuts so far: $ 38.50

Are you getting it now?????  OK now, let' s move on to lesson 2:

Lesson # 2:

Most people following the news should know about the term "Debt Ceiling" when reading about the US financial situation.   One would think that when the concept of a "Debt Ceiling" in the US first was introduced, it was an attempt by at least some politicians to put a stop to how much the US could borrow from foreign countries to keep their country going.  However, the truth is that over the years this has just been a regular "fight" in the congress over the question:  Should we INCREASE the Debt Ceiling or not?

And every time this "fight" takes place the entire world is watching like it was a boxing match, and every single time those who want to increase the debt ceiling wins the fight!  What a joke!  And this exact same fight has AGAIN taken place only a couple of weeks ago and as a result the official US debt took a record jump to MORE THAN 17 TRILLION DOLLARS!  (I am using the word "official" here as the real debt is at least more than FOUR TIMES MORE the astonishing amount of 17 trillion dollars!)

Here's another way to look at the Debt Ceiling:

Using the analogy of the "family home situation", - let's say the following:  You come home from work one day and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighborhood....and your home has sewage all the way up to your ceilings.

What do you think you should do ......Raise the ceilings, or remove the shit?

Seriously, what would ANY sane person do in this situation?  Obviously not calling the contractor and having him start the work to raise the ceiling!!  This is of course totally crazy, - but still, - this is more or less exactly what the crazy politicians in Washington in USA does!  Time after time, when their "shit" is about to hit the fan, - they are raising the ceiling to make more room for it!

Anyway, - in an effort to try to find something a little more humorous about this otherwise very serious and even (to the entire world) very dangerous situation, I found this video for you to enjoy: