Howdy, Surfer, He makes a good point. In spite of how badly I hate to pay taxes, the macro impact of the deficit and how we're spending ourselves into national insolvency is probably worse. The issue is still the unfunded liabilities estimated to be somewhere between $70T and $105Trillion freakin dollars. These are social security, medicare,aid, the trust funds, debt service, etc. It's not politically feasible to reduce or eliminate these programs sufficiently to cover this tab, NOR are the able to raise taxes sufficiently. This leaves them with the option of monetization and that carries the risk of nasty inflation if not hyper. What they're trying to do is a combination of actions. They'll reduce benefits and raise taxes as much as they can and they'll monetize the rest and hope for the best. I read where they need to halve the value of the dollar over the next decade just to get within sniffing distance of solving the debt problem with the other measures. They also want to lower the value of the dollar to boost exports and stimulate the economy - but every other country in the world is attempting to do the same thing in this fiat currency race to the bottom contest. I'm still following a quote I read a few years back from the elder Baron Rothschild saying that you should have 1/3 of your wealth in securities, 1/3 in real estate and 1/3 in 'rare art'. When I first read this I did the math and was 90/8/2. I blew chunks all over my monitor. Now we're about 60/25/15 and I think I can get to ~50/30/20. Note substitute whatever for Rare Art. peace, rono
