** An American Promise **
● A Balanced-Budget Amendment to the Constitution, with appropriate exceptions for times of war and recession.
● A line-item veto, to give the President a fighting chance to eliminate pork and earmarks.
● A limitation on federal spending, to 20% of GDP.-
** About We Elected You **
** Building A Million Dollar Retirement Portfolio **
Remember that it's your money. If you live above your means, using borrowed money to do so, then the banks and money-lenders will own what should have been your retirement savings when you hit retirement age. This is especially true if you use borrowed money throughout your working years to purchase things that you want but do not necessarily need. Distinguish clearly between what you need and what you want. In the end, the fiscally prudent will own the fiscally profligate, and this applies equally to households, businesses and governments. If you think being a diligent saver will tank the economy, think again. The banks will lend money to those who spend it; investments in in mutual funds and individual stocks (i.e., publicly-held companies) will go back into the economy in the form of salaries, product development, plant expansion, and countless other ways. By saving or investing, your role has gone from being a direct consumer of goods and services to an indirect consumer. Unless you lock it in a vault or stuff it in a mattress, the money hasn't left the economy. .Topics
$1.6 trillion deficit American Promise Austerity Balanced Budget Amendment balance the budget bipartisan reform Buying Votes cbo compound interest Congressional Budget Office Constitutional Amendment Contract From America debt burden default economy entitlements fair tax system federal budget Federal debt Federal deficit federal spending fiscal respnsibility fiscal responsibility Fiscal Sanity government debt Greece growth of government interest rates Investing Judd Gregg limit on federal spending Line-Item Veto national debt Pledge of Fiscal Responsibility political platform Portugal Social Security Spending Cap Spending Limit Amendment Sustainable Government Tax Reform Tea Party Term Limits The Stock Market unsustainable fiscal policyHave Your Say!
- Jorge on “The Debt The Government Owes Itself For Raiding Social Security”
- Richard Larschan on Explaining the Tea Party
- Michael Smith on Solvency
- James Schaefer on Peter Treadway: Debt and Deflation . . . or Inflation?
- Michael S on Peter Treadway: Debt and Deflation . . . or Inflation?
- Michael S on WaPo columnists look at the national debt
- John Lumbard on WaPo columnists look at the national debt
- Hollis on Simulated budget battles deal blow to federal debt
- John Lumbard on Tales from the North Atlantic
- Michael Smith on The 20% Solution
Blogroll
fiscal responsibility Archive
Young In America
By John Lumbard, CFA.
According to The Daily Kos, 27% of recent college graduates (ages 21 to 24) are either unemployed or underemployed. The Democratic Underground says that recent college graduates earn $3,200 less than they did 13 years ago. Of course, it’s not just college graduates; low starting salaries and...
Read More On Taxes and Growth
By James Schaefer.
The U.K.'s Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, wrote an op-ed recently in the Wall Street Journal ("How Britain Returned to Growth", December 17, 2013), on Britain's changes to their tax rates and spending as a means of stimulating growth of the British economy. The results were dramatic.
They...
Read More Happy Days Are Here Again
By John Lumbard
. The economy is strengthening. Home prices have jumped 10% in the last twelve months alone, and home equity---the part of the home that the homeowner actually owns, is up an incredible 25%. Over the same period the stock market is up 20%, adding another $2.5 trillion to...
Read More The Pundit Wars
By John Lumbard.
The economy is accelerating. It’s been almost four years since the official end of the 2007-2009 recession, yet New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman is still calling for more stimulus spending! Maybe if we were to pave every road every year . . .
Last month the former...
Read More Land of the Setting Sun
By John Lumbard.
When news came that we had not, like lemmings, jumped over a Cliff, celebrations broke out across the nation. Nearly a million people jammed the streets around Times Square, and the party lasted well after dawn. As the sun rose---coincidentally the first day of a new year---revelers quietly...
Read More “Who ARE You People??!?”
By James Schaefer.
Outraged by partisan gridlock, corporate CEOs have become central players in the fiscal cliff negotiations -- and the far larger effort to tame the nation's deficits and debt.
Friday's Wall Street Journal ("Honeywell CEO in the Middle of Cliff Standoff", Monica Langley, December 14, 2012) gave a behind-closed-doors look at...
Read More The Bipartisan Debt Machine
By John Lumbard.
Below you'll find the text of a speech that Senator Barack Obama gave in the Senate in March of 2006 (you want page S2237, if you'd rather read it there) regarding our debt and deficits---which at the time were growing rapidly under President Bush. Now they're growing rapidly...
Read More On Savings and Debt
By James Schaefer.
Some years back, at an annual company off-site retreat, a presenter was elaborating on money. He gave many definitions, then asked us to think of money in a slightly different way. Rather than thinking of it as a medium of exchange, he asked us to think of money as...
Read More Another Path To Solvency
By John Lumbard.
The legislatures of seventeen states have recently passed a bill calling for a constitutional convention that would be focused solely on the drafting of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Each of these bills explicitly states that it will be declared null and void if the Supreme...
Read More