For God's sake, give us a fiscal cliff!

I'm trying to make sense of the trouble the US faces. They seem to have a cool name for everything but this seems to be a deadline where the legislators have stated "we'll really tighten our belts". I'm sure it has a lot to do with the republicans holding the power in congress since the last election and telling Obama that "this has to stop sometime". That said, wars and nuclear subs are damned expensive and the Republicans love that shit.

So, the US government owes a shitload of money to the rest of the world (mostly China and Japan I suppose.) If they don't collect some more tax but more importantly manage their spending they are headed into huge debt problems. The US are in trouble but are nowhere near the crap that Europe has.

The legislators are scrambling and 2013 won't be all that they say - I feel. But the US need some version of the fiscal cliff to make sure their long term debt position takes the red line rather than the blue below:


Australia needs a similar thing. Let's leave the argument behind about the spending flurries of 2008-2010. It probably helped keep us out of the financial shit, but then so did Gina, China and our holes in the ground.

The US need to do something and run the risk of a recession. Ffs as a teenager we lived so long in recession that I thought it was the norm. The 1993 - 2007 dream run was bizarre, surreal. Deep down I knew it had to end.

The dream run has ended. As a country, we need to HTFU and just tough it out for a few years. It's anew thing for most people under 35. Wayne Swan will never give us a budget surplus and I don't really care about that. But the government needs to do some tough shit on spending and (god forbid) taxation now - as if we were going to get a surplus.

Australia is pretty well placed, financially, but if the rest of the world is eating bread and dripping we shouldn't be dining on lobster and caviar. Lest we're like the guy who wins a lottery and blows it all in three years.

I'm scared, but sometimes scared is good.

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