"Around the globe, US debt deal prompts relief and head-shaking" by Michael Birnbaum and Simon Denyer | Washington Post, October 18, 2013
BERLIN — The US debt deal sparked relief around the world Thursday, but happiness was tempered by head-shaking that the world’s largest economy had nearly defaulted on its financial obligations, and President Obama said that the United States’ global standing had been damaged.
World leaders and investors have been puzzled for weeks about the showdown paralyzing Washington, and some had complained that US politicians who lay claim to global leadership were doing little to safeguard international finances. On Thursday, officials and newspapers from Beijing to Madrid said the crisis raised fresh questions about the strength of the American political system....
In China, where the economy is slowing, there were renewed calls for the country to diversify its foreign exchange reserves, which contain $1.3 trillion in US Treasury bonds. There was also recognition that this was easier said than done. On Monday, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency published a commentary calling for a ‘‘de-Americanized world.’’
Uh-oh.
The US currency’s dominant position in global finance is still ‘‘unshakable,’’ said Sun Zhe, director of the Centre for US-China Relations at Tsinghua University. But, he said, the ‘‘political show’’ in Washington was still damaging.
‘‘People start to doubt American credit, even the American creed, including the market economy and American democracy, and question whether the US still has the capacity to manage the world economy,’’ Sun said.
They should question it because the government has let the Wall Street creeps f*** it all up.
Beijing’s US Treasury bond holdings have fallen slightly in the past year and, more significantly, as a proportion of total reserves in the past decade.
Yeah, NO ONE WANTS TO BUY OUR DEBT ANYMORE! No one except the Federal Reserve, which is why those printing presses needs to turn out $85 billion a month.
The purchase of US Treasury bonds is a virtually automatic consequence of China’s decision to intervene in the foreign exchange market to prevent its own currency, the yuan, from appreciating, analysts said.
‘‘The recoveries of the US economy and the world economy both need a stable policy environment,’’ Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang said at a news conference. ‘‘We hope and believe that the US government can reduce the risk [of default], to promote the recovery of the world financial markets, and market stability.’’
Elsewhere, countries that have struggled with their own political chaos took a break to watch the spectacle of a no-holds-barred fight in a global superpower that ended with few concrete policy changes.
In Italy, pundits marveled at similarities between the dysfunctional US government and their own frequently paralyzed political system.
‘‘How strong, really, is America if it can be taken hostage by a gang of irreducible extremists?’’ asked Il Sole 24, a financial newspaper.
The narrative of a banker's mouthpiece.
El Pais newspaper in Spain, where the wounds of the European debt crisis remain fresh, said the deal ‘‘only prolongs the time until the next match, has weakened America’s international leadership, and has given ammunition for those who opt for a multi-polar world in response to the imminent American decline.’’
Everybody $ees it.
And in Germany, where a leading economics institute warned Thursday that Europe’s debt crisis could easily flare up again, commentators suggested that Obama’s victory may be fleeting.
I was told Europe's economy was on the mend and whole again.
Television networks focused on the US government’s rising debt, repeatedly broadcasting images of sheets of $100 bills being printed....
As German political parties hammered out a compromise deal to form a coalition following their own elections last month, the relative comity in their system contrasted with the trench fighting in Washington.
Few analysts around the world seemed to feel that the deal had resolved much of anything in the long term.
No, it kicked the can down the road for three months by eliminating the debt ceiling.
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Related: Oil falls as relief over US debt deal fades
The deal only postpones the problem, I am told.
"Early Thursday, Obama signed the measure and directed all agencies to reopen promptly. Government workers unlocked office doors, carried barriers away from national monuments, and lifted entrance gates at national parks.
Asshole could have done that anytime. He had no right closing anything.
The relief felt by furloughed federal employees was tempered by worry that the truce might not last much past the holidays. Congress approved government funding only through Jan. 15. To head off a default, the package gives the government the authority to borrow what it needs through Feb. 7. Treasury officials will be able to use bookkeeping maneuvers to delay a potential default for several weeks beyond that date, as they have done in the past. Among the maneuvers, officials can suspend contributions to one of the pension plans used by federal retirees.
The impasse furloughed about 800,000 workers at its peak, before civilian Defense Department employees were called back. It closed down most of NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Interior Department and halted work not considered critical at other agencies. Congress agreed to pay federal workers for the missed time. No such luck for contractors and all sorts of other workers whose livelihoods were disrupted."
We know who is at fault here:
"Tea Party’s shutdown tactics pose new challenges for GOP" by Noah Bierman and Tracy Jan | Globe Staff, October 18, 2013
WASHINGTON — As Congress’s grueling fiscal impasse neared its end Wednesday, Senate Democratic leaders graciously thanked Republican leader Mitch McConnell and praised him for his courage in brokering a bipartisan deal. By Thursday, that praise had turned to an attack.
It came in the form of an e-mail sent around his home state by Senate Democrats’ political wing: “Face of DC Dysfunction: Mitch McConnell’s Shutdown Hurts Kentucky, Creates Disastrous Political Consequences for Himself.”
Democrats sent similar e-mails attacking Republicans facing tough elections around the country. The offensive highlighted how all Republicans — even those who publicly tried to end the Tea Party movement’s strategy of shutting down the government and bringing the nation to the brink of debt default — may pay a heavy political price.
“It’s not like the Biblical Passover, where there’s blood on the door to mark the virtuous,” said Fergus Cullen, former Republican Party chairman in New Hampshire. “Every Republican will get slaughtered. They will all suffer for the sins of one or two.”
Little hyperbolic, isn't it?
The ironies are rich. Many in the mainstream GOP fed off the Tea Party movement’s considerable passion in 2010 and 2012. Now those same Republicans face an environment in which, according to national polls, the entire party is suffering from a backlash over the fiscal showdown.
So claims the propaganda pre$$ narrative.
Related:
"We know who owns the press. What we may not know, even though they control both houses of Congress, upper and lower, is that they favor the democrats so... all the news you read now is how the democrats have come out on top in the struggle to do something about the shut down"
Eye-opening, isn't it?
GOP lawmakers and potential candidates, particularly those in moderate regions in the Northeast, are trying to determine how best to navigate an increasingly difficult terrain. Analysts say some will use a strategy familiar to Massachusetts voters, highlighting their independence from the party. Others from vulnerable regions will run against Washington as a whole or just attempt to move on and hope voters forget about the recent ordeal.
Some have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from the Tea Party movement and appear more bipartisan. Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, who ran as a Sarah Palin-backed “Granite State mama grizzly,” emerged as a top critic of the Tea Party movement’s strategy and is increasingly emphasizing alliances with Democrats....
Richard Tisei, a former Massachusetts state senator and Republican who nearly unseated Representative John Tierney in 2012 and is weighing another run, said on Thursday that he would try to emphasize disgust with both political parties if he challenges Tierney again.
“People might blame one side more than the other,” Tisei said. “But they’re just appalled by the pettiness, the arrogance, the stubbornness on both sides.”
He said he would also make the case that a return of moderate Republicans from New England would bolster like-minded voices within the party, such as Representative Peter King of New York, who led a small internal revolt against the Tea Party movement in a failed attempt to avert the shutdown.
“It would be good for the Republican Party to have more members like that,” Tisei said....
If that is the good Republican Party then we are all f***ed.
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Related: Reopening the Boston Globe
Should have left it closed.
"Near Acadia National Park, shutdown’s effects will linger" by Erin Ailworth | Globe Staff, October 18, 2013
BAR HARBOR, Maine — The shutdown sucked an estimated $24 billion from the US economy.
Says who?
Related: S&P says shutdown cost US economy $24b
Those are the same guys who said mortgage-backed securities were triple AAA rated, and I don't believe it. Just another preemptive excuse for a failing economy.
The impact fell most heavily on industries such as aerospace, defense, food services for federal workers, and tourism related to national parks, economists said. The loss of economic activity will not derail the recovery, but it will slow a lackluster economy that desperately needs to accelerate.
IHS Global Insight, a Lexington forecasting firm, projects the shutdown will cut economic growth this quarter by a half-percentage point to 1.5 percent — a rate that would probably generate too few jobs to lower the nation’s historically high unemployment.
“It’s big in terms of growth rate, [and] that has to do with the fact that we weren’t growing that fast to begin with,” said Paul Edelstein, director of financial economics at IHS Global Insight.
About 2 million visitors pass through Acadia and Bar Harbor during a short season that runs from May to the end of October. While summer is busiest, the money earned then by businesses pays the bills, said Chris Fogg, executive director of the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce. It’s fall sales that get banked and saved for the barren winter months....
Whatever. You can go read jwho the Globe talked to.
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Related: Emotions mixed as US parks reopen
Vermont Will Regret Shutdown
I don't think so.
Also see: There's a little pork in that bill: The 5 most surprising provisions in the debt deal
McConnell-Reid Deal Includes $3 Billion Earmark for Kentucky Project
What Mitch McConnell's Dam Deal and Frank Lautenberg's Death Benefit Tell Us About Govt Spending
Didn't see those in the pos Globe.
