Every couple of years, the Democrats and the Republicans engage in this stupid play. The plot is always the same: The country has borrowed to its supposed “debt ceiling,” and the Democrats want to raise it. The Republicans “refuse” to do so unless they get some concessions. The government gets “shut down” while they argue about it, until the Democrats eventually make some sort of deal, then the Republicans declare victory, raise the debt ceiling, and everyone pats themselves on the back.

Except the debt ceiling, concessions, the shut down, refusal, all of it, is fake. None of it actually exists, nor did anything actually change. It’s all theater.

Categories: Economy

5 Comments

Bob · September 28, 2021 at 7:33 am

Sooner or later the debt ceiling will collapse. When it does, we’ll go into a depression that will make 1929 look like a walk in the park.

    Hightecrebel · September 28, 2021 at 8:43 am

    I doubt we’ll make it to the debt ceiling collapsing. We’re going to collapse under the liabilities that debt is funding well before then. And it’s going to be ugly. I mean a make-the-Balkans-look-like-a-high-school-debate level of ugly

SiG · September 28, 2021 at 10:45 am

If you look at the history of the debt ceiling, you’ll quickly conclude we don’t actually have a debt ceiling. It has never been enforced. There have been a few shutdowns, which simply end up being paid vacations for swamp dwellers. Every Single Time it has ended with the debt ceiling being raised.

They just drag it out so they can look like heroes for saving us from the debt ceiling. It’s absolutely kabuki theater.

Big Ruckus D · September 28, 2021 at 12:24 pm

Oh, we have a debt ceiling. It isn’t set by any stupid wankers in “our” govt though. It is realized at the point where other world powers of economic significance finally say “you profligate mothafuckas are cut off now. We have watched you spend many multiples of worldwide GDP for decades and we can clearly see you have no intention of making good on what you owe. No more exports of cheap consumer shite to fill your garages, basements and rent-a-storage lockers, and no longer will we fund your fat, tacky debt junkies existence by buying your treasury bonds. Now have fun starving to death!”. Likely to be followed by attempts to seize tangible assets here like some sort of international repo man.

Honestly I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already, but then if we go down, most everyone else does, too. So I suppose theyve opted to keep the music playing even though there are far too few chairs for everyone to sit in when the music stops abruptly because a Texas ice storm knocked out the grid and the boombox just went dark.

Don Curton · September 28, 2021 at 4:05 pm

Yup, theater. If you’ve been around for a while, you start to notice these things. The foreign screw-up distracted by the domestic scandal distracted by the manufactured outrage distracted by (pick from column A) which is superseded by (pick from column B). Over and over.

I used to get worked up by the national debt, until I released I don’t have a retirement. Never will. I’m getting close to that age and figuring any minute now that all the money I saved will simply evaporate. I’ll work until I die. So the national debt theater no longer holds an interest. We lost that battle so long ago that nothing now makes a difference.

Comments are closed.