Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

WASHINGTON—The Senate voted to defeat a resolution that, if successful, would have held up an increase in the country's statutory borrowing limit. The vote triggers a $1.2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling on Friday. The increase brings the total federal government borrowing limit to $16.4 trillion, enough to support Treasury borrowing until past the November elections, but likely not through the end of the year. That could mean that after the elections, a lame-duck session of Congress would have to deal with another increase in the borrowing limit as well as the litany of other divisive issues that will need to be resolved including the question of whether to extend the Bush-era lower tax rates. If you ever doubted that debt is related to the value of the dollar, have a look at this chart (courtesy sharelynx). The price of gold has historically tracked with our national debt. Now: ask yourself what would happen if our debt became so unsustainable that we cou...

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.   - George Bernard Shaw Our new Administration has set a record:  it’s railroaded legislation through Congress that confers the mandate on Government to spend more in it’s first month of office than the previous Administration spent on all of the Iraq war since 2003 . Not a single House Republican voted for this legislation. Most all Senate Republicans held this line. I’m glad to read that Republicans seem to be sticking to their “small government” principles. It’s too bad that they waited until Mr. Obama got elected to have their epiphany —and suddenly find them again! Not only was the last Administration rampant with runaway spending and printing of money by government on both sides of the aisle, you can bet that the Obama-Pelosi cartel will expand this premise in the months ahead. This represents the biggest increase in the size of our Government’s reach in over 60 years, possibly the...