BAD / WORRISOME NEWS

Two recently released pieces of financial information pertaining to the well being of America only resulted in continuing misgivings as to the economic future of our country. Here are these two worrisome reports.


The financial status of the federal government, as we are all well aware, has reached the limit of its authorized deficit spending. As current unfunded expenses present themselves for payment, Washington has begun to borrow from escrowed funds held in other federal accounts. The current focus of these "borrowings" is various retirement accounts of federal employees. The debt of Washington has surpassed the authorized limit of $14,000,000,000,000.00. That's $14 Trillion. Of this huge deficit, some $4,479,200,000,000.00 ($4.479 Trillion) of it is held by foreign nations. Communist China continues to be America's largest creditor with the most recent calculations showing that our debt to them is at $1,144,900,000,000.00. This figure is right at 25% of our foreign held debt and this fact alone is quite ominous. The three questions that immediately come to mind are: 1) Why has Communist China elected to buy so much of the American government debt?; and 2) How will Communist China utilize this debt against America?; and 3) How can Washington possibly pay back this huge obligation?


Of equal concern is the fact the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, Communist China and South Africa) holds right at $1.6 Trillion of this American foreign debt. There is no question that BRICS would like to replace America's worldwide leadership role and the manipulation of our huge debt could well be a tool to be used by them in this process.


The second piece of bad news pertains to the domestic housing market. This is a continuing problem and a huge cancer on the American economy. Foreclosures are still predominant as evidenced by the fact that recent figures have shown that 28% of all US home sales were on foreclosed property. The Bank of America has disclosed that it has over $200,000,000,000.00 tied up in non-performing home mortgages. The sale price of single family residences continues to fall and many real estate experts have pessimistically foretold of a new, big decline in this area of our economy. Coupled with this bad residential picture is the forecast of a new problem about to emerge which will be centered on a failing commercial property market.


Traditionally our nation has looked to Washington to implement remedies to confront and cure problems impacting the country. We have for the past almost 18 months looked to the Obama Administration to act and to date Obama's efforts can be described in one word - worthless.


As has been stated before, the biggest challenge to Americans is to "weather the storm" until November of 2012 when definitive action at the polls can be taken to retire Obama.