Reflex wrote:
I have trouble feeling sorry for lenders who gave people earning $40k/year a $400k home loan. I also have trouble feeling sorry for the person earning that who took on so much debt. Both of them deserve what happens when the home is foreclosed and the debt turns bad.
I strongly feel we need to bring back PAYGO, which was key to balancing the budget at the end of the Clinton years. It was one of the first things Bush suspended, and the result will be another decade of deficit spending before its all over. PAYGO required that every new expenditure identify a funding source before it could be added to the budget, that effectively requires a budget to balance within just a few years. I strongly feel we should bring it back and then set aside a percentage of our tax revenue specifically for debt reduction. With some discipline we could do something real for our children, namely hand them a nation that isn't living under crushing amounts of debt.
Quite agree with what has been said so far concerning the national debt and the country's finances. Unfortunately, I don't see any of the 3 remaining candidates, or those in Congress of either political stripe, showwing the slightest inclination of going back to this approach. In short, to paraphrase a line from "The American President", they're too busy trying to keep their jobs to actually DO their jobs.
Look at what happened back in the 90's, the first year it was announced the federal budget would actually show a surplus and start paying down the national debt. There were politicians who immediately started screaming "Give us a tax cut, we want our money back!". They knew that the idea people had been overtaxed, had paid more than their "fair share", and "deserved" a tax cut would be an instant sell in many quarters and gain them political points in the short term, instead of the more difficult approach of explaining how they and their children would benefit long term from a balanced budget, paying off the national debt, and repaying the money borrowed from Social Security and ensuring it's long term solvency.
A side point, IMHO the government "borrowing" money from Social Security for other purposes is no different than a corporation embezzling money from the employee's pension fund to cover their other costs.
I'm not impressed with the proposal to make the Federal Reserve the "Homeland Security" of financial regulation. An organization that is not answerable to any other branch of government, who is now suddenly in the business of loaning out federal tax money to keep private financial institutions afloat no matter the reason for them being on the verge of failing, and who's present chairman is the former CEO of one of the very hedge funds that helped get us in this mess to begin with? The old saying about the fox and the henhouse comes to mind.
As far as diesel fuel prices and truckers, despite the fuel surcharges to cover operating costs, I can see in one way how higher fuel prices are going to hurt truckers regardless - it's going to cost more for Freightliner, PACCAR, etc, to build new rigs - increased parts costs from the suppliers, increased shipping costs to the assembly plants, increased operating costs for the plants just to keep the lights and heat on, and increased costs for delivering the new rigs to the customers. Sooner or later, those costs are going to get passed on to the companies and operators buying these trucks via a higher purchase price.
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I suggested to my wife that we could buy a Jetta with the 2.0L diesel, however, she would rather have the Grand Cherokee with the 3.0L diesel instead. Points for her. 
Neither one of us really want to own or drive a car, therefore we can’t complain about fuel prices, and the cost of fuel really doesn’t bother me. I’ll be pumping diesel even at $5.00 dollars a gallon. 
I still like engine efficiency, so I do spend money on upgrades such as exhaust, cold air intakes, and synthetic oils. If possible, I would run bio all the time.
4/11)..Bus gone to Scarp 8/23/11 