Well.. if any of you needs money... I'm willing to buy your PS3, DS or any other region free game.. that's how great guy I am...

In terms of sequester, federal law states that you have to give 30 days notice before you can start furloughing people. So people thinking that any effect would show up like right away really are not thinking this through. The agency I work for, our furloughs start on the last week of April. So one day a week ill be not working with no pay, and 40% of the people i know are in the same boat as me (who are federal workers). Friends of mine who are contractors (which is another 50%) dont know what their status are because their companies are not saying much. Only that they have obligations filled until their contracts run out, which will be the end of September for most.

For a lot of areas that have big government and contracting presence the effects are going to be pretty bad once the meat of the sequester hits (which I think would be around Memorial Day ish). Here in DC metro, southern California, a lot of mid west states that house federal prisons, all the southwestern border states, many high end college who would get less grant money from NIH, etc etc.

Let's revisit this at a later time and I'm sure the tone will change.

Maybe due to them having to pay more to serve the new debt from last year in addition to the old debt they had to pay interest on last year? Just guessing though.

Nope but being laid off constantly from shitty manufacturing jobs is coming close though.

I think Im dead?

Its hard to think with that Drone overhead trying to shoot at me.

Nope, I died.

Heaven is really cool, though. Good luck fixing the budget. Hopefully there will be more survivors.

I do work for a federal contractor now. And one whose job is directly reliant upon the number of people the federal government is hiring (personally, i screen background investigation cases to make sure all the required information is present, while the company as a whole oversees the background checks)

Although the company is actually overworked (they have mandatory overtime for once you get out of training, and in the month i've worked here i've barely seen a day without mandatory or at least optional overtime), so they would have to cut back a ways before they would have to start furloughing people.

The funny thing about the Sequester is, that if you count the tax increases the republicans agreed to, it's almost the exact same tax to cut ratio to the Simpson Bowles plan.

Technically we need a little more cuts.

The problem of course was they structure the tax cuts stupidly and in the most painful in the short term ways they could find so that the politicians would change it.

Cuts like this will you not feel immediately. Like being unemployed for the first month... It sucks but the first you are doing okay can always use some savings ....it is the long run that hurts...

That is a question for Michelle