Power vacuum sends U.S. close to fiscal precipice

Dang, good article. I am passing the link around.

People are starting to wake up and realize that ALL politicians are crooks. Go ahead, shut the government down.

Nobody will notice.

With government shut down, they can't mess up more and Obama can't start another war.

The reason that there is a leadership vacuum is because there are no leaders. Politics is it's own system, and is unfriendly to outsiders, or anyone who wants to take any form of control, or make meaningful change.

Those in America who really are leaders stay in the private sector, where they can exercise leadership without having to sell their souls in the process. These people avoid government for two main reasons, first, being a leader in the private sector usually pays better, and second, politics requires good hair, looks, speaking ability, etc. In the real world, real people are often not electable because they lack the necessary good hair. Remember how much John Edwards and John Kerry paid their stylists each month? It's utterly ludicrous, but sadly true.

Obama was not, and was never going to be an agent of change. How could he have ever been? Obama had absolutely no professional experience in the private sector. He had absolutely no leadership experience in his educational and university career. Obama had no formal trainng in even basic economics. Teaching is the profession of those who can't perform in the real world ( I am a former teacher myself). His lack of decisiveness and leadership was evident during his senate career during which he neither wrote nor sponsored any legislation, and where he didn't even bother to vote on most of the bills which came to his desk.

This lack of leadership is showing clearly now, even after being president for 5 years, he still has no idea what to do. Being a man without any particular beliefs, he has nothing to fall back on, or to guide him. His advisors are all people whom he likes, so none will give him honest advice, and even if they were to do so, he wouldn't have the proper sense to use it.

And Obama is not unique, both parties in America are full of non-leaders with good hair and articulate voices. They are simply tools and mouthpieces of cronies and crooks whose own success depends on supplying easily manipulated non-leaders to the voters.

On the rare occasions a real leader attempts to enter government, they are quickly shut out. Meg Whitman in Califorina was a good example. Mitt Romney was a lesser example (I am not a Republican, by the way). The current political system does not allow financially independent people who are used to taking control, as they have no strings which can be pulled.

Plato described Democracy as one of the weakest forms of government, and we can see why he would think so.

And Obama is not unique, both parties in America are full of non-leaders with good hair and articulate voices. They are simply tools and mouthpieces of cronies and crooks whose own success depends on supplying easily manipulated non-leaders to the voters.

So in essence, the people are at fault. It just goes to show, you don't get the government you want, you get the government you deserve.

Article and comments are way to over the top! First of all President Obama has not lost control and John most definitely is not top gun!! Lol!! The argument is that Republicans had been threatening to not sign off on paying bills and funding for programs in attempts of defunding Obamacare, an government insurance program Republicans oppose. They have only made 42 attempts wasting time and money. Nothing serious, just more foolishness from john and crew!!

Article and comments are way to over the top! First of all President Obama has not lost control and John most definitely is not top gun!! Lol!! The argument is that Republicans had been threatening to not sign off on paying bills and funding for programs in attempts of defunding Obamacare, an government insurance program Republicans oppose. They have only made 42 attempts wasting time and money. Nothing serious, just more foolishness from john and crew!!

And this proves the point. Were Obama a strong leader, he would be able to get his agenda through, regardless of the oppostion. Let's ot forget that during his first term, his party held majorities in both houses of congress, but even so, remakably little was done, other than spending more money than all his predecessors combined.

When Reagan was president, his party contolled neither house of congress. But he was a strong leader, and he pushed his agenda through despite fierce oppostion. But then again, Reagan was a leader (much as I hated him at the time), Obama is not.

Were Obama a strong leader, he would be able to get his agenda through, regardless of the oppostion.

You're presuming that what Obama says is his agenda is really his agenda. Remember, these clowns are controlled by cronyists and various industrial complexes (military, education, health, prison, etc).

So one might argue that the "power vacuum" is really only in the observable, as understood by the average, low information voter on the street.

While the "behind the scenes" power structure is only getting stronger.

Obama has clearly been as successful as he needed to be to get his agenda through. All this disappointment comes from making the naive error of assuming that his agenda bore some relation to what he said in his campaigns that it was. Anyone with the slightest understanding of politics knew from the outset that his agenda would be whatever the agenda of his financial controllers was, and could see that his backing came from Wall St. and the corporatocracy, as indeed does that of almost everyone in the U.S, government. His continuation of the Bush-era agenda, with a few items designed to suggest a more liberal outlook, comes as no surprise to anyone not blinded by his personal charm and glib rhetoric.

You have a Government that refuses to pull in the purse strings. If anything spending reduction should have been done years ago. Instead spending went way up and Gov got bigger. The Financial controls/laws (Wall Street/Banks) have only gotten worse and more out of hand also. Corruption is worse and it is not uncommon to see it at the Billion $ level (MF Global et al). Food stamps/Unemployment is very high. =All these trends are highly negative and Japan Gov seems to be trending this way lagging (behind) the US (Japanese business is on the up and opposite of this trend).

It is a fight between the financially responsible and the corrupt (Libs/Globalists) that want their handouts, criminal activity, and or tax exemptions to continue. =The US is at that breaking point now and both corrupt political parties are responsible to getting US to this point. =You may see both of these corrupt political parties go down in flames and anyone with a political party affiliation may be suspect in the future.

Where are the trillions of dollars being produced going?

Actually, the article seemed to a lot of opinion with no fact to back it up.

Where are the trillions of dollars being produced going?

Part of the money went to fund "stimulus" programs, which really means that it was paid mainly to government union workers who voted mainly for Obama and his party.

The next part went to "add liquidity" to the markets and economy. The government believed that with much of the money pool tied up in questionable mortgages, and other securities, and that many companies were reluctant to loan or invest money, it was thought that addiing money to the pool would loosen things up. The end result is that companies were still reluctant to loan or invest money, but inflation from this policy helped push commodities prices much higher, inceasing the cost of living for most Americans. No one really knows how much, like unemployment figures, the government keeps changing the formulas to make the numbers less bad.

Another thing which happened (somewhat quietly) was that the welfare reforms put in place by President Clinton were discontinued, and as a result, there are about 10% more people in America collecting welfare (101 million) than there are people workong full-time (87 million).

Lastly, three bouts of quantitive easing (printing trillions of dollars) were performed. The government printed lots of money, and used this money to buy government bonds. This pushed the value of the dollar further down (we remember how the yen grew against the dollar). The goal here was supposedly to decrease the cost of American goods and increase exports, but the real goal was to allow the government to spend more, as the national debt is not tied to the rate of inflation.

Altogether, enough money has been spent (squandered) to buy a new home for every family in America, or to buy a new iMac for every person earth.

But the main reason all this money is spent is so the politicians can buy the votes they need to get reelected in the next election. Sadly, most of them will be.