Obama’s Student Loan Plan: Implements Limited Forgiveness and Some Other Changes

Yesterday as part of Obama’s campaign sweep on the taxpayer dime he announced his new student loan plan…

Excerpt:

It is also a part of the plan that monthly payments be capped at a level of 10 percent of the money that left over when all taxes are paid and basic necessities taken care of. This cap has been at 15 percent, which takes a lot more money out of the pockets of citizens and out of the economy.

Understanding Obama Student Loan Forgiveness

President Barack Obama will undoubtedly be remembered for his healthcare reform legislation that was recently passed by Congress. However, there is another program that is much less well known that could affect far more people directly. This is the Obama student loan forgiveness program.

Under the terms of this program, anyone who makes his monthly payments for twenty years after leaving college is eligible to have his/her remaining balance forgiven. At least, this applies to anyone with Federal Direct loans, Stafford loans, and Perkins loans. Those who take out their loans from private lenders such as Sallie Mae are still responsible for repaying their loans in total.

Individuals who spend ten years in public service positions become eligible to have their loans forgiven at that point rather than having to wait the full twenty years. This means that their debt is forgiven in half the time and their debt reduced significantly sooner.

It is also a part of the plan that monthly payments be capped at a level of 10 percent of the money that left over when all taxes are paid and basic necessities taken care of. This cap has been at 15 percent, which takes a lot more money out of the pockets of citizens and out of the economy.

There are also programs in place that allow teachers to work for just five years in elementary or high schools that have been designated as low income schools by the Dept. Of Education. This applies to FFEL loans and to Direct loans.

Military personnel are also able to achieve forgiveness for their student loans if they have a degree. This program works for members of all five branches of service, including the Coast Guard and Reserves.

A final option is to apply for income based repayment terms. While it is probably best to sign up for this early in the life of the loan, older loans may still qualify for this lower payment plan. Of course, the clock starts all over when one signs up for this option. That means that someone who has worked in public service for eight years and signs up for income based repayment must work another ten years in public service instead of the two he/she would have had left.

Student loans are a fact of life for the vast majority of college graduates. This is especially true of those who go beyond a bachelor's degree and take graduate level classes. Sadly, the much higher pay they were promised if they pursued their education to its fullest has not materialized. The economic recession has made this fact even worse for most.

The Obama student loan forgiveness program is intended to help ensure that individuals do not wind up broke because they chose to continue their education. While nobody will see his/her loan just disappear overnight, payments have been lowered and the time shortened that one must pay before the remaining balance is forgiven. Public service workers and teachers are eligible for forgiveness at much faster rates due to the nature of their jobs.

Achieving Student Loan Forgiveness Through One’s Career

For those who wish to get their college degree but are not as financially stable to do so, student loans are definitely a great thing to have. However, the large interest rates of such as well as the length of time it takes to pay for them can make them a financial burden in the long run. This has been the trend until student loan forgiveness programs were introduced.

Some people might not know this fact, but it is actually possible to get a student loan forgiven. An effective way to do so is by getting a job that entitles one to avail of the opportunity to get the loans lessened up to a certain degree.

Here are some of the occupations one can take up and expect the possibility of loan forgiveness.

1. Volunteers - Some of the organizations in the community today can offer a student loan forgiveness opportunity for their volunteers. This is available in exchange for a specified length of time in service.

2. Military personnel - Aside from being able to serve the country, a military man also gets to avail of student loan repayment. However, this is limited to the Army and Air Force as well as their corresponding national guards. The Navy also offers this for its members.

3. Doctor or lawyer - Certified practitioners in both the legal and medical fields can choose from a variety of options to get their student loans forgiven as well. Since it takes up to a six-figure amount for them to finish their degree and be able to practice fully, forgiveness loans are definitely a blessing for them.

4. Teacher - Teaching is a profession greatly honored by the government considering how valuable education is. Because of this, complete loan forgiveness is also offered for those who teach in public elementary, middle and high schools.

Student loans that are set on an income-based repayment plan can take up a maximum of 25 years. This seems like a long time. However, someone who pays dutifully every month without missing a beat might be able to lessen the entire term of the loan.

Knowing all these, a student can take time to assess what college degree to take up and career to build. Of course, it is still very important to take note of what one really enjoys doing, but the financial part of the process is also something to think about in order to reach the ultimate state of financial stability.

White House officials said Obama will provide student loan relief in two ways:

First, he will accelerate a measure approved by Congress that reduces the maximum required payment on future student loans from 15 percent of discretionary income annually to 10 percent. The White House wants it to go into effect in 2012, instead of 2014. In addition, the White House says remaining debt would be forgiven after 20 years, instead of 25.

About 1.6 million borrowers could be affected.

Second, he will allow borrowers who have a current loan from the Federal Family Education Loan Program and a direct loan from the government to consolidate them into one loan. The consolidated loan would carry an interest rate of up to a half percentage point less than before. This could affect 5.8 million more borrowers.

Washington Posts Wonkblog: There is a Bush-Era Backstory on Obama’s ‘New’ Student Debt Proposal

The student debt relief proposal President Obama rolled out this morning isn’t exactly new. As I mentioned earlier today, it’s more of an adaptation: It lowers some existing caps on how much student borrowers have to pay back on their loans each year. Those caps are pegged to income, hence the name for the policy: Income-based repayment. Or, in education policy terms, IBR.

The Obama administration didn’t create IBR; instead, it inherited the policy from its predecessor. President George W. Bush signed the College Cost Reduction and Access Act in September 2007. The law allowed, among other things, for student borrowers to cap loan payments at 15 percent of income and for loan forgiveness after 25 years of payments. All those changes came into effect in July 2009.

Today’s proposal uses the same structure, but moves the goalposts: the cap for loan repayments gets dropped to 10 percent of income and loan forgiveness gets moved up to after 20 years of payments.

The nonprofit Project on Student Debt for years now has been an IBR advocate. It drafted much of the policy proposal that Bush signed in 2007 and that the Obama administration has now strengthened. I spoke this afternoon with the Project on Student Debt’s president, Lauren Asher, about the history of income-based repayment, what these new changes mean and why the new publicity push matters for student borrows. What follows is a transcript lightly edited for content and length:

Sarah Kliff: Tell me about the history of income-based loan repayment. How did the proposal come to be law?

Lauren Asher: We’ve been working on these issues since 2005. The idea of income-based repayment evolved out of an analysis we did, that looked at payment options for student loans. Students were really getting mixed messages from borrowers: Sometimes you’re encouraged to borrow because it’s a good investment; but on the other hand you’re warned not to borrow too much.

We came up with this proposal, which was a sliding scale that took into consideration how much the borrower is earning. We originally thought of it as regulatory, but then legislators got involved. Our original recommendation said that the loan forgiveness should be at 20 years.

SK: But it got set at 25 years. How did that happen?

LA: The way the law got written, the education secretary had the authority to set it up to 25 years, so that’s where it’s currently set.

SK: What does today’s announcement mean for the program? How much more expansive does it get?

LA: One of the most important things about this announcement is the administration is committing to help more borrowers find out about IBR. There’s an estimated half million enrolled right now, and millions more could benefit from the program.

There really needs to be more public outreach and education. So we’re really thrilled that the department is going to do that. If you talk to people at the Occupy Wall Street protests, or in your everyday life, you find they owe more than they ever have before.

SK: That’s interesting that you mention the publicity around the program as the key change here. How much do you think it matters that the administration is also lowering the caps for loan payments in the IBR program?

LA: We’re especially excited about the commitment to raise awareness about IBR. In a previous life I’ve worked on other policy issues. And when something is a new policy, it can take awhile to penetrate public consciousness. With student debt, there’s no time to waste.

That being said, the changes to payment will make the program even more affordable for current students. IBR is a light at the end of the tunnel, and the tunnel will be shorter and brighter with these changes.

Side Note from Tea Party Nation:

The Occupy movement has many goals. Many of them inconsistent with each other, but that is what happens when you smoke too much marijuana.

One thing mentioned by almost every one of the group is the demand that student loans be forgiven.

Let’s assume for a moment that could be done. What would it mean? While consistency is not one of the strong points of the Occupy movement, this would be the ultimate form of corporate welfare.

From the Frum Forum:

All colleges are corporate entities. (Harvard University is actually the oldest corporation in the United States.) Unlike most other entities treated as charities or considered government agencies, they derive most of their revenue from the sale of services–education and research–to paying customers. Only a handful of institutions, maybe 400 of the country’s 4,000 or so colleges and universities, have endowments large enough that they don’t have to watch the “bottom line” for every single project they undertake. Even some colleges with big endowments–Johns Hopkins comes to mind–are fixated on growing revenue and surplus (profit). Explicitly for-profit colleges are just a little more honest about their status as businesses.

If all student loans were to be forgiven, they would almost certainly have to be forgiven for those currently enrolled. Forgiveness, furthermore, would create a precedent that tuition for all colleges would be essentially free going forward. This would amount to an open-ended subsidy that would benefit many of America’s largest corporations (the universities themselves) forever.

Tuition costs would almost certainly rise significantly in any case as the individuals consuming education services (few of whom pay “sticker price” right now) would have no reason to even look at the costs assessed.

Interestingly a Rassmussen poll finds that 66% of Americans oppose student loan forgiveness.

To forgive the estimated $1 trillion in student loans would mean the government would have to give banks $1 trillion dollars to cover that loss.

Where would that money come from? The taxpayers, of course. We have a national debt set to hit $16 trillion soon. What are we going to do, borrow another trillion from China?

Forgiving the student loans also sends several terrible messages. First it teaches people that fiscal discipline does not matter. The student who borrowed $100,000 to land a $20,000 social work job and who spent half that money partying and going on spring break to Cancun, is treated the same as the engineering student who worked his way through school with no student loans and sacrificed to get his or her education.

The fiscal cost alone should sink this really bad idea. What make much more sense, as I have indicated in previous blogs on Tea Party Nation is to change the bankruptcy code and make student loans dischargeable under Chapter 13 bankruptcy. The obligor would still have to pay for a number of years and would pay some of the loan back so the taxpayer is not on the hook for the entire loan amount. This is not a perfect solution but it would allow the person who owes student loans the opportunity to begin moving forward without the crushing debt load on their backs. It would also mean they pay for part of the debt they incurred.

The size of student loan debt forgiveness will probably kill the idea. But look for Obama and the Party of Treason to suggest it as part of a desperate reelection bid.

The Entitlement Trap: How to Rescue Your Child with a New Family System of Choosing, Earning, and Ownership

Ask Marion~

Power Grab

The Obama administration is engaged in the most sweeping power grab in modern American history, but few people seem to care. In barely four months, we've witnessed the president and his minions taking over insurance companies, banks, and car companies, forcing private companies to sell off assets, appease unions, and stiff bondholders. Administration officials have insisted some companies take government handouts even if they don't want them and told others they can't pay back the money they've borrowed until the government gives them permission. Now, the president has decided he'll appoint a "compensation czar" whose job it will be to decide what constitutes fair pay for corporate executives. Why stop there? And, of course, they won't.

The latest move -- the appointment of Washington lawyer Kenneth Feinberg to oversee pay of the top employees at seven companies that have taken government funds -- may not seem radical, but it is. Earlier this year, in response to public criticism of the retention bonuses paid to some executives at the troubled insurance giant AIG, the administration proposed capping executive pay at $500,000 at firms receiving government assistance through the Troubled Asset Relief Program. But Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner abandoned that plan when he finally figured out that the execs would simply bail on the company, leaving the government without experienced and talented hands on deck.

So now the administration is moving to Plan B: Forget about pay caps per se but appoint a government overseer to set pay individually. Until now, in publicly traded companies that job fell to the board of directors and its compensation committee, whose legal and fiduciary responsibilities entail acting on behalf of shareholders. Directors are elected by the people who own the company: from individuals who own a few shares of stock to institutions and mutual funds that may own millions of shares.

The government, primarily through the Securities and Exchange Commission, oversees the board's stewardship, while other entities play a role as well. The securities exchanges -- the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, etc. -- also have rules that govern the conduct of boards of directors, including restrictions on who sets executive compensation. The compensation committee at publicly traded companies must be composed of entirely of independent directors -- those who have no direct ties to the company or its management either by current or, in certain instances, former employment, for example.

Compensation committees act independent of management, but they don't act in a vacuum. They often hire compensation consultants (who must have no ties to the company) to advise them on the best pay practices. They evaluate their pay structure compared to other companies of similar size and complexity or who are in the same line of business. They evaluate the performance of key executives against financial results, the achievement of personal and company objectives, and other criteria. It is a long and arduous process (I know, for more than a decade I've served on and now chair the compensation committee of a NYSE company).

And the rules governing disclosure of executive compensation have become much stricter in recent years, especially since the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley, federal legislation that passed in the wake of Enron and other recent corporate scandals. The law now requires that, in addition to a Compensation Committee Report on executive pay, management must produce an extensive compensation discussion and analysis to be included in proxy statements sent to all shareholders. The information includes a table showing exactly how much the CEO, chief financial officer, and three highest-paid employees in the company earn, including bonuses, stock options and grants, and what benefits and perquisites they are entitled to and their cost. Similar information is provided for director compensation. If shareholders don't think they're getting their money's worth from these executives or directors, they can dump the board of directors at the next election. Or at least that's how it is supposed to work.

But enter the Obama administration to rewrite the already extensive rules. Now one man -- the compensation czar -- is going to oversee this process at seven major corporations. And who oversees him?

From the president on down, the Obama administration is filled with people who have little or no idea how the market works. Most have never drawn a paycheck in the private sector, much less had to meet a payroll or make a profit. But they're convinced they know how to run things, down to the last detail. There's no word adequate to describe the sheer arrogance of this group.

by Linda Chavez - Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity and author of Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics

Source: Townhall.com

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Related Resources:

• We Warned You About Czars – Jim Harper and Fox’s Neil Cavuto Discuss “Cyber Czar”
• Palin blasts Obama administration: Government wants to "control the people"
• White House Set to Appoint a ‘Pay’ Czar
• Obama the Destroyer
• End of Free Speech - Endoffreespeech.com
• American Progressivism – A Must Read
• Liberal Fascism – Just out in paperback

Poverty of Imagination

Venturing out each day into this land of strip malls, freeways, office parks, and McHousing pods, one can’t help but be impressed at how America looks the same as it did a few years ago, while seemingly overnight we have become another country. All the old mechanisms that enabled our way of life are broken, especially endless revolving credit, at every level, from household to business to the banks to the U.S. Treasury.

Peak energy has combined with the diminishing returns of over-investments in complexity to pull the “kill switch” on our vaunted “way of life” — the set of arrangements that we won’t apologize for or negotiate. So, the big question before the nation is: do we try to re-start the whole smoking, creaking hopeless, futureless machine? Or do we start behaving differently?

The attempted re-start of revolving debt consumerism is an exercise in futility. We’ve reached the limit of being able to create additional debt at any level without causing further damage, additional distortions, and new perversities of economy (and of society, too). We can’t raise credit card ceilings for people with no ability make monthly payments. We can’t promote more mortgages for people with no income. We can’t crank up a home-building industry with our massive inventory of unsold, and over-priced houses built in the wrong places. We can’t ramp back up the blue light special shopping fiesta. We can’t return to the heyday of Happy Motoring, no matter how many bridges we fix or how many additional ring highways we build around our already-overblown and over-sprawled metroplexes. Mostly, we can’t return to the now-complete “growth” cycle of “economic expansion.” We’re done with all that. History is done with our doing that, for now.

So far — after two weeks in office — the Obama team seems bent on a campaign to sustain the unsustainable at all costs, to attempt to do all the impossible things listed above. Mr. Obama is not the only one, of course, who is invoking the quest for renewed “growth.” This is a tragic error in collective thinking. What we really face is a comprehensive contraction in our activities, especially the scale of our activities, and the pressing need to readjust the systems of everyday life to a level of decreased complexity.

For instance, the myth that we can become “energy independent” and yet remain car-dependent is absurd. In terms of liquid fuels, we’re simply trapped. We import two-thirds of the oil we use and there is absolutely no chance that drill-drill-drilling (or any other scheme) will change that. The public and our leaders cannot face the reality of this. The great wish for “alternative” liquid fuels (bio fuels, algae excreta) will never be anything more than a wish at the scales required, and the parallel wish to keep all our cars running by other means — hydrogen fuel cells, electric motors — is equally idle and foolish. We cannot face the mandate of reality, which is to do everything possible to make our living places walkable, and connect them with public transit. The stimulus bills in congress clearly illustrate our failure to understand the situation.

The attempt to restart “consumerism” will be equally disappointing. It was a manifestation of the short peak energy decades of history, and now that we’re past peak energy, it’s over. That seventy percent of the economy is over, especially the part that allowed people to buy stuff with no money. From now on people will have to buy stuff with money they earn and save, and they will be buying a lot less stuff. For a while, a lot of stuff will circulate through the yard sales and Craigslist, and some resourceful people will get busy fixing broken stuff that still has value. But the other infrastructure of shopping is toast, especially the malls, the strip malls, the real estate investment trusts that own it all, many of the banks that lent money to the REITs, the chain-stores and chain eateries, of course, and, alas, the non-chain mom-and-pop boutiques in these highway-oriented venues.

Washington is evidently seized by panic right now. I don’t know anyone who works in the White House, but I must suppose that they have learned in two weeks that these systems are absolutely tanking, that the previous way of life that everybody was so set on not apologizing for has reached the end of the line. We seem to be learning a new and interesting lesson: that even a team that promises change is actually petrified of too much change, especially change that they can’t really control.

The argument about “change” during the election was sufficiently vague that no one was really challenged to articulate a future that wasn’t, materially, more-of-the-same. I suppose the Obama team may have thought they would only administer it differently than the Bush team — but basically life in the USA would continue being about all those trips to the mall, and the cubicle jobs to support that, and the family safaris to visit Grandma in Lansing, and the vacations at Sea World, and Skipper’s $20,000 college loan, and Dad’s yearly junket to Las Vegas, and refinancing the house, and rolling over this loan and that loan... and that has all led to a very dead end in a dark place.

If this nation wants to survive without an intense political convulsion, there’s a lot we can do, but none of it is being voiced in any corner of Washington at this time. We have to get off of petro-agriculture and grow our food locally, at a smaller scale, with more people working on it and fewer machines. This is an enormous project, which implies change in everything from property allocation to farming methods to new social relations. But if we don’t focus on it right away, a lot of Americans will end up starving, and rather soon. We have to rebuild the railroad system in the U.S., and electrify it, and make it every bit as good as the system we once had that was the envy of the world. If we don’t get started on this right away, we’re screwed. We will have tremendous trouble moving people and goods around this continent-sized nation. We have to reactivate our small towns and cities because the metroplexes are going to fail at their current scale of operation. We have to prepare for manufacturing at a much smaller (and local) scale than the scale represented by General Motors.

The political theater of the moment in Washington is not focused on any of this, but on the illusion that we can find new ways of keeping the old ways going. Many observers have noted lately how passive the American public is in the face of their dreadful accelerating losses. It’s a tragic mistake to tell them that they can have it all back again. We’ll see a striking illustration of “phase change” as the public mood goes from cow-like incomprehension to grizzly bear-like rage. Not only will they discover the impossibility of getting back to where they were, but they will see the panicked actions of Washington drive what remains of our capital resources down a rat hole.

A consensus is firming up on each side of the “stimulus” question, largely along party lines — simply those who are for it and those who are against it, mostly by degrees. Nobody in either party — including supposed independents such as Bernie Sanders or John McCain, not to mention President Obama — has a position for directing public resources and effort at any of the things I mentioned above: future food security, future travel-and-transport security, or the future security of livable, walkable dwelling places based on local networks of economic interdependency. This striking poverty of imagination may lead to change that will tear the nation to pieces.

Regards,
James Howard Kunstler

Some of you may be familiar with Neil Lori of Maverick Freedom. Neil sends these thoughts in his latest missive…

“On the domestic front I think Dmitry Orlov and Jim Kunstler are two of the clearest thinking [and] common sense writers of this time period.  The Obama Nation is about to do what I detest which is build more Roads Roads Roads when in reality we need the 3 T’s (trains, tracks and trolleys) at breakneck speed. 

“Kunstler is right on about food: we need it local and less mechanized (more hand labor).  So let us put on our work jeans, tee shirts, belts hats and gloves to do some real work.  Ditch the couch, tv and computer.  Obama’s highway construction is money down the “rat hole” (drain). 

“Geez I thought Obama had a high IQ, but his biggest failure is that he thinks inside the box and is a bit too much of a conformist who wants to keep the economy the way it has been most of his and our lives!!!!!!!!!”

He continues later…

“We need local farms, local factories and local economies.  The global village is for idiots.  No more globaloney.  Buy Amercian. Grow American.  Make it in America.”

I would venture to say that the things you eat and use will be fabricated or grown not just within the nation, but very, very near to where you live. No more trucking meat and vegetables from industrial mega-farms on the other side of the continent, and a lot fewer doodads from China.

Some of you Shooters may take issue with anyone trying to direct us toward this outcome, and I don’t blame you. I would take issue with any bureaucratic direction myself.

It’s the market, however, that will be directing these changes. Business as usual for the past couple hundred years has been a result of an energy boom and state meddling. Both are on the wane.

Regards,
Gary Gibson
Managing Editor, Whiskey & Gunpowder

'Buy American' -- or Bye-Bye America

by  Patrick J. Buchanan

"British jobs for British workers!" thundered Gordon Brown, as he emerged from the shadow of Tony Blair to become prime minister.

His populist sloganeering has now come back to bite him.

Across Britain, thousands laid down tools in wildcat strikes in solidarity with a walkout from a French-owned oil refinery in North Killinghome -- to protest a $300 million contract to an Italian company that plans to bring in 400 Italian and Portuguese workers to fulfill it.

As Brown pleaded from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that Britain must not retreat into "protectionism," strikes spread to Scotland, Wales and Ulster.

Britain's commitment to let foreigners buy up its utilities and industries and bring in foreign workers to run them has backfired. Brown's own Labor Party is now angrily demanding that he live up to his pledge: British jobs for British workers.

"The Return of Economic Nationalism," wails the alarmed cover of The Economist. And understandably so.

For the stimulus bills of both Houses have a "Buy American" provision mandating that in "public works" only U.S. iron, steel and manufactures be used. The provision came out of the appropriations committee of the House on a 55-to-0 vote.

The Senate watered it down by declaring the Buy American provision must be consistent with all U.S. trade commitments. But Congress is sending a message: The rebuilding of America is to be a project of, by and for Americans, not outsourced. Sen. McCain's free-trade amendment, to strip all Buy American provisions from the bill, was routed 65 to 31

The reaction of Barack Obama, a NAFTA skeptic in 2008 with bumper stickers that read, "Buy American, Vote Obama," was to genuflect to the gods of globalism and recant his economic patriotism.

"I think it would be a mistake ... at a time when worldwide trade is declining, for the United States to start sending a message that somehow we're just looking out after ourselves," he told Fox News. We don't want to "trigger a trade war," he told ABC.

Apparently, Obama was unnerved by rumbles from Europe, which is threatening to drag us before a World Trade Organization tribunal and have "Buy American" banished forever.

But there is no easy way out now for a Democratic Party where economic nationalism is rampant. If Congress drops or Obama refuses to enforce the Buy American provision, and billions of stimulus dollars are spent on foreign iron, steel and cement, Middle America will know whom to blame. But if Americans get the contracts, and Europeans get nothing, Europe will have to decide whether to retaliate and start a trade war with a populist and nationalist America.

We may be at a turning point in history. For we are about to choose whether to fully and finally cast our lot with globalism, or to become again a nation and people who put Americans first.

We are about to decide, perhaps for all time, whether we believe in a deepening interdependence leading to one world government, or we restore the independence won for us by the men on Mount Rushmore: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.

All four were economic nationalists. All would today be decried as protectionists. For all believed that the nation's independence and prosperity hung upon its ability to stand alone in the world, and that foreign goods should never enjoy as privileged access to America's markets as American goods made in the U.S.A.

All four put America first. And it was they who created out of 13 rural colonies the greatest manufacturing power in history. Is not their record superior to what Bush-Clinton-Bush left us: a hollowed-out industrial nation dependent on foreigners for the needs of our national life and for the loans to pay for them?

Even John Maynard Keynes came around in 1933 to believe in "national self-sufficiency."

Those who prattle about the perils of protectionism need to be asked: What has free trade produced, but a bankrupt America that must go hat-in-hand to Beijing to borrow the money to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure? Are we also to use Chinese iron, steel and cement because they, with their Third World wages, will work for less than our fellow Americans?

As for Europe's threat of a trade war, bring it on!

We would eat their lunch. As analyst Charles McMillion writes, in eight years of Bush, Canada ran up $500 billion in trade surpluses at our expense, Japan ran up $600 billion, the European Union $800 billion.

These three trading partners, often by imposing value-added taxes on U.S. imports, and rebating those taxes on goods sold here, racked up $1.9 trillion in trade surpluses, sucking jobs, factories and technology out of the United States. These trade deficits, and the even larger ones with China, says Paul Volcker, are behind our present crisis.

America is bust. It is shameful to have to go to China and Japan to borrow the money to rebuild America. But to go to China and Japan and borrow billions, and not spend the money here, makes zero sense.

We have indulged in free trade for a quarter century. And look where it has gotten us.    

Source:  The Daily Thought Pad/Human Events