This is the guy Obama is buddying up to, sending Billions of US Taxpayer Money!

[Xavier_Onassis]

Is this debt never coming due?

===========================
The last time there was a surplus, when was that?

The last time the US had no national debt was in the Johnson Administration.

That was the ANDREW Johnson Administration, in 1836. This was done partly by seizing land from the Cherokees and selling it to people for plantations.

So, it looks like  the debt is unlikely to ever come due.

[Xavier_Onassis]

That is fixable , they ought to ask me , or some other student of history, how it has been done before.

 Part of our aid is military equipment , training and cash.

===================================================
I really do not believe that in times of drones and cruise missiles there is any way that Egypt could prevent just that one missile, bomb, rocket or whatever from taking out that one dam.

US companies make a profit on the military goods we sell the Egyptians: we lend them the money, and they get the weapons, except they never really see the money: it never actually leaves the US.

And CU4 is a racist colonialist who wants to exterminate Muslims. Nothing new there.

[Plane]

That is fixable , they ought to ask me , .......................................

===================================================
I really do not believe that in times of drones and cruise missiles there is any way that Egypt could prevent just that one missile, bomb, rocket or whatever from taking out that one dam.

It is so easily fixable that I am sure you can deduce it the same way I have , so I will not tell you and spoil your fun.

[Plane]

Is this debt never coming due?

===========================
The last time there was a surplus, when was that?

The last time the US had no national debt was in the Johnson Administration.

That was the ANDREW Johnson Administration, in 1836. This was done partly by seizing land from the Cherokees and selling it to people for plantations.

So, it looks like  the debt is unlikely to ever come due.

This strikes me as an unrealistic attitude.
It is not necessacery to completely eliminate debt.
But there is an intrest to be paid and if we move downwards in credit rating the cost of the intrest rises.

Would you buy bonds in any enterprise that didn't promise to repay?
Would you believe that promise if the intrest owed was nearly as large as the potential recipts availible?

There is a limit to the credit we can support, in my opinion we are getting near the breakover.
When the debt and the payments on intrest add up to more than a third of tax recipts.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Would you buy bonds in any enterprise that didn't promise to repay?

===================================================
Of course. I buy bond mutual funds. They pay interest,and when I want my principal and interest, all I have to do is ask, and they send it to me. It never takes more than 3 days.

DLBTX annualized income, 8.3%
DLFNX, annualized income7.47%
OSTIX, annualized income6.97%
PYEWX, annualized income16.37%
STHYX,  annualized income11.027%
STHBX, annualized income 5.37%
VWINX, annualized income 5.039%
TIHRX, annualized income 8.23%

When I cash out, the borrowers will still owe money.

It sure beats the CD's they are advertising that pay a huge 2% for a 5 year commitment, and without FDIC, either.

[Plane]

Ok , those bonds look reasonable.

Ever buy junk bonds?

[Christians4LessGvt]

And CU4 is a racist colonialist who wants to exterminate Muslims. Nothing new there.

And XO is a typical lying leftwing racist....nothing new there.

[Xavier_Onassis]

No, I never buy junk bonds, because with mutual bond funds, an expert selects the bonds, and every fund is composed of many bonds, so they are diversified.

The fee is under 2%, usually under 1% of the total.

[Plane]

There is good reason not to buy junk bonds.

Not everyone wants that kind of excitement.

If the US seems unlikely to repay its bonds , our treasury bonds will be junk.

When our debt is a large fraction of our GDP repayment will seem unlikely, oh look.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt#Measuring_debt_relative_to_gross_domestic_product

[Xavier_Onassis]

Treasury bonds will only be junk if the dollar itself is junk. In such a case, all dollar denominated funds would also be worthless. This won't happen. It didn't happen even in Argentina's worst meltdown.

The term "junk bonds" is too vague to mean anything specific. As a rule high yield bonds rarely meet with default, and the reason to buy bonds in a mutual fund is that the fund can hold hundreds of bonds of varying degrees of risk and interest rates, so the worst that can happen is a slight loss of capital. I have lost money on a high yield fund only once since 1985, and the loss was under 3%. On the other hand, the rest of the time, I have gotten a return of from 3 to 15%.

I use a mutual fund newsletter for advice, and it is well worth the subscription price of $179 per year.

[Plane]

So in your opinion, no debt level is too high?

If not so , what would be the mark of a national debt level that would be high enough to be ruinous?

What debt level would be a severe handicap?

What national debt level would be the maximal healthy level?

My opnion is that any debt level that makes the intrest payment higher than the taxes paid by the Agricultural industry is too high and calls for austerity programs untill the intrest payments are more managable.

There has to be some benchmark which all the persons in a discussion understand , elese all statements are adjusted by the reader more than they are by the writer.

[Xavier_Onassis]

If we had zero debt, that would be optimal, unless you would prefer we have a positive balance to take care of natural disasters. The San Francisco Earthquake and fire was largely responsible for the Panic of 1907, they say.

I am not an economist, and have never pretended to be. Interest rates at present are very close to zero, so the maximum debt limit (whatever that might be) is a lot higher than it would be if they were higher.

I observe that the debt is never an issue when the Republicans want to monger a war, or build some expensive weapons system, but when the government is actually using money to benefit ordinary citizens in distress, they can only scream bloody murder.

I know that treasury bonds will not be junk bonds. Most junk bonds are not junk bonds.
If Chrysler borrows ten million at 8.5% interest for a year, that would be called a "junk bond" by Wall Street. But if it pays back both the interest and the principal, when all is paid off, then in retrospect it was not a junk bond, it was a wise investment that paid seven times more than a CD.

Junk bonds, fiscal cliff, weapons gap and other terms they bandy about are more from the realm of advertising and propaganda than reality.

[sirs]

I am not an economist, ....I observe that the debt is never an issue when the Republicans want to monger a war, or build some expensive weapons system, but when the government is actually using money to benefit ordinary citizens in distress, they can only scream bloody murder.

You, as ususal, observe wrong.  the debt was ALWAYS a problem under Bush.  He was consistently criticized for acting Democrat-lite, in his spending and borrowing.  I know it's a knee jerk effort to try and justify the exponentially worse wreckless fiscal policies of Obama and the Dems, by trying to claim that when it was the GOP running things, there's wasn't some criticism of poor judgement and policies then. 

Your problem is, its WRONG.  He was, and the GOP was.  Pretending that there wasn't doesn't actually make it so.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The GOP and Juniorbush ran up a huge debt fighting at least one unnecessary war. President Obama has run up a dept because tax revenues are down and benefits paid out to the unemployed and those who chose early retirement due to a financial crisis caused by the policies of Juniorbush.

I suppose this is too complicated for you to understand.

You are pretending that dolts like Paul Ryan actually have a solution that is better than the problem, and you do not. The people of this country (many of them smarter than sirs) understood this and voted accordingly.

[sirs]

The GOP and Juniorbush ran up a huge debt

And the Democrats and Obama are running up an exponentially WORSE HUGE DEBT.  Yet not-so-surprisingly, the latter gets a pass by the likes hard core leftists.  Imagine that.............not

I suppose this is too complicated for you to understand.

Actually, it's quite simple.....its called math.  You can't spend 40+dollars for every $1 you get in taxes, and expect to bring down the debt.  Perhaps you should have spent some time taking economic lessons, or at least simple math, vs language.