While we were celebrating and drinking ourselves silly on New Year's Eve........

By Joe Ayer, exclusive.

While we were celebrating and drinking ourselves silly on New Year's Eve, our sleep-deprived political drama queens voted to kick the can over the fiscal cliff and into the quickly approaching debt ceiling wall, which will soon be jumped over in more dramatic theatrics. World wide jubilation erupts as stock markets soar, as so does the price of gold and silver and oil.

Why the hoopla - Well, the Fiscal cliff compromise, or grand bargain, with it's tax increases and budget cuts cover about two weeks of the Federal budget deficit for 2013. This "grand betrayal" preserves the corporate tax breaks and ability to offshore profits so they can't be taxed. All of us, actually should rejoice because the status quo of unsustainable deficits and unfunded entitlements to maintain the American lifestyle remain in place.

Hallelujah - We have free manna (money) from heaven to create paradise on earth. The mechanics that us mortals employ to create this prosperity of the gods is that the government (s) back the financial system with guarantees that covers the unprosecutable criminals running the global world casino. In exchange the global casino, which is the Central Banks, in the US it's the Federal Reserve Bank, creates credit from their greedy imaginations and hands out cheap debt to world governments. Everyone, you and I, are happy with this arrangement - right. We Americans can purchase imported digital gadgets and petroleum really cheap with our dollars that come from government debt.

The evil serpent in this paradisaical global financial arrangement is competing self-interest. Free money is being created by all the world governments to keep their citizens happy as a sunscreen salesman on a planet with increasing skin cancer. Unfortunately, there is a depleting finite amount of resources on planet earth and an imaginary infinite amount of dollars, euros, yen, yuan being created to gobble them up. 

In the future, there will be an escalating currency war amongst the competing exporting/importing governments. All governments will be manipulating their currencies to achieve a competitive edge. Presently, there are countries such as Europe and the US which are suffering from too much debt that can't ever be paid back because of lowering revenue producing productivity. This psychological stumbling block will be overcome with more cheap credit or Central Bank counterfeiting of what used to be called "capital". Zero interest credit/debt has replaced capital (real wealth) and gives the temporary illusion of prosperity.

How long this Lalaland paradise can be maintained is any one's guess. My guess, based on escalating conflicts of interest and the irrational international drama is not long enough for everyone to get what they want. What's your guess?
  

US debt ceiling: how big is it and how has it changed?

What is the US debt ceiling and how has it changed over time? Every raise and fall listed since 1940

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/15/us-debt-ceiling-historic