CBO: US likely to fall off 'fiscal cliff' if Bush-era tax cuts allowed to expire

I am not educated in US-Asian politics but logic compels me to ask:

The United State's is among China's best trading partners. The Chinese own tons of American debt. They have a vested interest in seeing the US economy prosper, and for Americans to continue to buy electronics, clothing, etc., it manufactures.

North Korea is a rogue nation, essentially living in the stone age.

I'd think that at some point, China has a vested interest in making sure that North Korea stays reasonably in line because a solid US-China relationship far trumps anything North Korea can offer the Chinese. And I can't believe, since they share a border, that China wants to see the North Koreans doing anything that would get them eliminated from the face of the earth in a nuclear holocaust.

 

The U.S., unless things have changed, is pretty much clueless on the internal workings of Chinese politics, and even more so regarding North Korea.

China can't afford to piss the U.S. off too much now, but it's not trying to build a "blue-water navy" just for kicks-and-giggles. Romney is talking tough to China, which had Huntsman cringing on how idiotic that stance would be.

 

Namby-pamby liberals everywhere agree that government spending cuts would re-start the recession. Namby-pamby liberals such as Mitt Romney.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-would-romney-really-cut-spending-on-day-one-20120525,0,7869713.story

"Well because, if you take a trillion dollars for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5%. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression. So I’m not going to do that, of course. What you do is you make adjustments on a basis that show, in the first year, actions that over time get you to a balanced budget."

 

Nobody but the nutjobiest nutjobbers disagree with that. The question is whether it would stave off a worse recession later.

 

The question came in reference to Mitt's assertion that he'd be cutting from "Day One," and this whole thread is based on the looming fight about whether we are going to let those automatic cuts happen, so I think the nut job segment is larger than you'd expect.

 

Pretty soon all the stores can just have "deficit spending" sales. You buy all kinds of stuff and make your grandkids pay for it. Or course, you can't shop until you have grandkids who have money, but I'm sure Keynes had a plan for that, too.

 

What do you think Visa and Mastercard are?

 

Another thing is that our defense partners (or "partners") buy lots and lots of military hardware from us.... enough to make America by far the world's biggest arms exporter. It makes a mockery about us being a Christian nation but that $32 billion or so a year pays for a lot of jobs.

 

I hate to break it to you but that age already has been shifted. It goes up to 67 for those born 1959 or later.
http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/ageincrease.htm

 

75 would save a lot more money -- 80 a lot more.

 

You can still receive benefits at 62.

 

So if we cut Social Security benefits how will that will increase consumer demand?