Thursday, August 21, 2008

Over the last few years, millions of homeowners borrowed more money than they could repay. They were living beyond their means, hoping that sometime in the future, something would come along to bail them out.

They’re now paying for that lack of responsibility. In the second quarter of 2008 alone, more than 700,000 homes went into foreclosure, driving housing values lower and gutting the nation’s construction industry.

There’s an important lesson in that tragedy, not just for Americans as individuals but as citizens of the United States of America . As a nation, we are living well beyond our means and behaving just as irresponsibly as those individual homeowners who mortgaged their family’s future for a plasma TV or European vacation. Our national debt — the accumulation of year after year of deficit spending by our government — is approaching $10 trillion and growing, with almost 45 percent of it owed to foreigners.

And just as overextended homeowners lost their homes, we Americans may lose our country, or at least the prosperous, powerful country as we’ve known it. The debt is growing so large that last month alone, interest payments totaled $24 billion. Again, that’s a single month.

To see where that will inevitably lead, “we only need to look at the fate of other countries who have lived beyond their means for a long time,” warns former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, who was fired from his Cabinet post by President Bush for daring to insist that deficits matter. “When you get extended to the point you can’t service your debt, you’re finished.”

O’Neill issues that warning in “I.O.U.S.A.,” a documentary about our nation’s pending fiscal crisis that opens tonight, for one night only, in 400 movie theaters around the country, including eight in metro Atlanta . (For a list of theaters, go to www.iousathemovie.com).

As the movie points out, a country deep in debt to the rest of the world loses control over its own future. Most of our foreign-held debt is owned by Japan , China and the oil-exporting countries, giving them enormous potential leverage not just over our foreign policy but over our domestic economic policies as well.

In addition to O’Neill, the movie features financier Warren Buffett, former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and others. But its two stars are David Walker, until recently head of the Government Accountability Office, and Robert Bixby, head of the Concord Coalition, who have been traveling the nation trying to stir up grass-roots concern about the problem.

The Concord Coalition, founded in 1992 by a Democrat and two Republicans, has been studiously nonpartisan. As Walker puts it, “The facts aren’t Democrat or Republican. The facts aren’t liberal or conservative. The facts are the facts.”

But facts being facts, two presidents in particular come in for pointed criticism. In one clip, Ronald Reagan is seen pointing out correctly that “for decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children’s future, for the temporary convenience of the present.”

But as he speaks, graphics point out that in Reagan’s eight years as president, our national debt almost tripled, from $909 billion to $2.6 trillion.

The current President Bush is given similar treatment. In a press conference, he is seen proudly awarding himself “an A for keeping taxes low and being fiscally responsible with the people’s money.” But as graphics demonstrate, our national debt was $5.7 trillion when Bush took office; it will be almost twice that when he leaves. There is no curve in the world on which that performance merits an “A.”

The film does not offer a detailed solution, but it does express restrained outrage at the immorality of one generation of Americans — you and I — willing to mortgage the futures of our children and grandchildren to satisfy our own selfishness.

It’s the scariest movie you are likely to see this summer, not least because we play the villains.

For the source click on:

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/bookman/stories/2008/08/21/bookmaned_0821.html

U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCKThe Outstanding Public Debt as of 22 Aug 2008 at 12:00:08 PM GMT is:

The estimated population of the United States is 304,587,535
so each citizen’s share of this debt is $31,554.95.The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$1.84 billion per day since September 28, 2007!
Concerned? Then tell Congress and the White House!

For update and much more info click on: http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock