Explaining the actions of Congress and US Politicans.

An interesting comment that was posted on an MSNBC article by one of the readers in response to another
commentator.  I can take no credit for this article. If you know who was the original author then please let me know and I’ll happily credit the individuals

The U.S. Congress sets a
federal budget every year in the trillions of dollars. Few people know how much
money that is so we created a breakdown of federal spending in simple terms.
Let’s put the 2011 federal budget into perspective:

U.S. income: $2,170,000,000,000

Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000

New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000

National debt: $14,271,000,000,000

Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000 (about 1 percent of the budget)

It helps to think about
these numbers in terms that we can relate to. Let’s remove eight zeros from
these numbers and pretend this is the household budget for the fictitious Jones
family.

Total annual income for the Jones family: $21,700

Amount of money the Jones family spends: $38,200

Amount of new debt added to the credit card: $16,500

Outstanding current balance on the credit card: $142,710

Amount cut from the current budget: $385

So in effect last month
Congress, or in this example the Jones family, sat down at the kitchen table
and agreed to cut $385 from its annual budget. Cut $385 of spending in order to
solve $16,500 in deficit spending? Will this work? Hmmmmmmm!

It is a start, although hardly a solution.

Now after years of this,
the Jones family owes $142,710 of debt on its credit card, and can barely pay
the interest each month.

You would think the Jones family would recognize and address this situation,
but it does not! …………… Neither does Congress.

The root of the debt problem is that the voters typically do not send people to
Congress to save money. They are sent there to “bring home the bacon”
to their own home state. Sort of like the “Gimmee Tribe”.

To effect budget
change, we need to change their job description and give Congress new marching
orders.

It is awfully hard (but not impossible) to reverse course and tell the
government to stop borrowing money from our children and spending it now.

In effect, what we have is a reverse mortgage on the country. The problem is
that the voters have become addicted to the money. Moreover, the American
voters are still in the denial stage, and do not want to face the possibility
of going into rehab.

I hope you enjoyed that perspective on the trouble in the US at the moment.

Until next time, trade well.

FXTraderPaul