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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>>…</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> <b>On Behalf Of </b>John Clark<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine"<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal>On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 3:23 PM, spike <<a href="mailto:spike66@att.net" target="_blank">spike66@att.net</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in'><div><div><div><div><div><blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in'><blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in'><p class=MsoNormal>>… I have never observed more irresponsible behavior by a American politician than what I observed from the Tea Party Republicans on Wednesday night…<o:p></o:p></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in'><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></blockquote><blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in'><p class=MsoNormal> Indeed? The persistent deficit spending for the past 14 years doesn’t qualify?<o:p></o:p></p></blockquote></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span>No that doesn't qualify and doesn't even come close to the level of irresponsibility and just raw stupidity that I observed on Wednesday; only one congressional vote in the last 14 years, or in my lifetime for that matter, threatened to destroy the economic world in the next 90 minutes<span style='color:#1F497D'>…<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>John, clearly you have bought into the flaming rhetoric that was fed to us by some in the mainstream press. Not only is that idea wrong, it is pi radians wrong. The ninety minutes to flaming apocalypse scenario wasn’t threatening the end of the world’s economies; in fact I am surprised they didn’t run it closer than that for a nice melodramatic climax. Perhaps the senators wanted to go home and go to bed.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>They had to make this whole thing appear dramatic, but it was all for show. They need to do things like this in order to support the value of the dollar, rather than threaten it. Reasoning: think of the opposite scenario, where there is no one in government opposed to more borrow and overspend, borrow and print more money. What if they just rubber stamped the debt limits? Then the government has open ended permission to print as much currency as it needs or wants, for anything it needs or wants. How would foreign debt holders see that?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>If we just borrowed and overspent with no controls, that is what would tank the dollar, not the opposite, where we are doing at least show struggles, to pretend some in government will fight and try to hold overspending in check.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>That’s all it is John, and here’s how you will know I am right: we will have something like a repeat of this whole thing in December, a phony “shutdown” which is really just a needed government slimdown, the treasury secretary will start doing “extraordinary measures” to handle the borrowing until the real deadline arrives, just as before. This time of course it will not be as extraordinary. I doubt they will call it ordinary measures, because they need to keep up the show. I don’t know if they will go all the way to 2230 this time, or just go ahead and make it a normal working day, or call it around 2100. They might take it all the way to nearly midnight, but I doubt it. We are not buying this time. Most of us didn’t buy it last time. We know what they are doing.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>In any case, these lawmakers are not terrorists. Terrorists are terrorists. Guys with bombs and guys who shoot up shopping malls are terrorists. The lawmakers are not threatening to destroy the world. The armed governments simultaneously launching every nuke they have would destroy the world. But lawmakers pretending to control the overspending will not destroy the world.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>Brits, did you feel worried last Wednesday that the US was about to utterly destroy the planet? Germans, Italians, did you have a nail biter that day? Neither did I.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>My contention is that the US federal government could find ways to operate on about three quarters of what it is now spending, which is what it is taking in. Keep federal tax structure as is, at the current level. They would hand the National Parks down to the state governments. They would call in the troops everywhere and cut armed forces in half, for starters. They would come up with one of their phony inflation numbers to adjust pensions. Keep the ACA but put no federal government money into it; rather they would take whatever tax funds are collected from the opt-outs and use that to subsidize the poor, at the state level. Set up state government-run clinics funded by the opt-outs, and staff them with nurses as well as full doctors. Run all these at the state level, with the feds out of the picture completely: the feds don’t have the authority that states have. Import all foreign doctors who apply for immigration, all of them. Let the foreign doctors prove themselves in the free clinics. Scale back Medicare part D and put its administration at the state level. Give all current federal government workers an across the board pay cut.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>Note that none of this requires knowledge of evolution, just a little common sense. These steps would not destroy the world, but they would support the dollar and save the world, for it would establish that we recognize we have a serious problem. The previous paragraph would demonstrate that we also have some serious solutions to go with the serious problem. We would then be past the denial and anger stages John, and on to bargaining and depression, with some of us already into the acceptance stage.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>spike </span><o:p></o:p></p></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>