If I borrowed a few hundred pounds off you, what would you do if I just forgot to pay you back?

Well.... if I earn over 1 trillion euros a year. i wont be too bothered. 

All individuals in congress get elected based on what pork they bring back to their district.  This is true even for Dr. No, Ron Paul, who would earmark everything his distrct wanted.

The reality is that the GOP tends to run more on shrinking the size of the government.  The reality of this shrinking is that people will support smaller government support for everyone else, except themselves, and government controls on everyone they don't like, and less for themselves.  

What you do see, on the Democratic presidential side is periodically commissions being run by the president to see if they can cut waste.  Al Gore headed up one under Clinton.  It is just done, not campaigned on.

I didn't watch the full video, because my Internet went out yesterday, and I would support the comments above about more training for bricklayers needed, and less of YOU MUST GO TO COLLEGE.

There is a problem WE (Americans) collectively share.  The problem is that there is a mentality of individualism, to an extreme, which gets in the way.  You have the liberal side that believes the state should support every single wish and whim people have, and fund it.  You have individuals on the conservative side, as demonstrated during OWS buzz talk time, that if individuals can't find jobs, and borrow money, it is all their fault, and they shouldn't of borrowed the money.  Person then washes their hands of everything and moves on.  Both ignore the reality of a social contract, and interconnectedness of things.  The system is now set up so businesses use college degrees to screen people for higher paying jobs.  They also have offloaded their training costs on individuals, through the use of colleges, and required them to end up going into debt to get anywhere.  But is this seen anywhere in the rambling comments on forums like this?  No it isn't.  It is that "you are an idiot for getting a degree in woman's studies" then the person wil end up of degrees that would seem to have work, but still face issues with employment, not showing a connect with reality.  Technical side, for example, has seen programming going into decline in the West, and engineering goes in cycles to and is tied to manufacturing.

Until people see that there are cultural values a society has, and bad ones will cause harm, and can get some agreement as to what these values are and how they are best to be supported, it is just sides yelling at each other and things getting nowhere.  

If you have the power of the state to levy taxes, and get money, even if you won't lend again, someone else is likely to do such.  

Are you serious, thinking that a privately run organization controlling the global currency is a good thing? Look I may not be an American, but even I can see that the Federal Reserved is robbing Americans of there money.

Ok, the Federal Reserve isn't really a private company.

It's essentially a government run organization that's funded by via private stock.

It's leaders are picked by the government, and outside a very specific stipulated by law dividend,(6%) all the extra money goes straight to the US Department of Treasury and to the Congressional Budget.

Outside of questionable monetary policy moves, most of what the Federal Reserve does works, and it makes the government a profit through it's own merits instead of needing taxation. (+77 Billion last year that went towards briding our budget deficit.)

It's leaders are picked by the president and congress and it's open to congressional oversite.


It's as much a private company as Social Security would be if it became optional.

I don't know who you think buys bonds... it's mainly banks, pensions/savers, and other countries. If the banks don't get the money, their stockholders are the ones who feel the brunt - which, again, include pension schemes and savers (if the bank then fails as a result, everybody feels the bite, and there may even be further bailouts). If you default on the money from other countries, you're effectively stealing from their tax payers.

And, without me buying, the demand falls, and yields increase. The only reason as to why yields are as low as they are is because of the central banks are buying up such a large chunk of the bonds - and printing money to do so. There's also the Chinese, so that they can fix the yuan... but they're not gonna be doing that forever.

I'm going to guess that this is more of a continuation of my post, rather than a post against it?