Trillion

Your editorial "GOP plays chicken" (June 5) shows a lamentable lack of familiarity with the concept of "playing chicken. " It takes two to engage in this pastime. Your editorial should have been titled "Democrats and GOP play chicken," because that is what is happening. The two groups have opposite aims: Democrats want to continue the spending spree, and Republicans want to curb it. The Democrats have not put forth a budget for two years, and they have spent trillions of dollars that the country does not have.

Fiscal cliff is so last year. In 2013, it's all about the trillion-dollar coin. And there's at least one news outlet campaigning for the dream coin to feature Michael Phelps. If you haven't been paying attention, the idea of a trillion dollar coin -- apparently like a silver dollar but A LOT heavier -- is gaining some degree of traction in Washington as lawmakers kick around ways to fix the ginormous national debt. A legal loophole would allow the U.S. Treasury to make huge-value coins.

George Wallace used to say there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the two major political parties. Well, this election changes that calculation a mite. According to experts at the Committee for a Responsible Budget, a watchdog group that specializes in castor oil rather than milk and honey, there is about a trillion-dollar difference between George Bush and Bill .. Clinton.Neither candidate for president has offered a credible program to stop the catastrophic increase in the national debt -- despite the economic pamphlets they are hawking to the electorate.

Every kid knows that falling off a cliff is never good, but what about a "fiscal cliff" - how would that feel? Americans may indeed find out, if Congress is unable to pass a budget plan prior to Jan. 1. So, what's at stake if such an event occurs? Plenty. First, some background. Members of both political parties have spent beyond the nation's means for many years. This economic fact of life is a bit more embarrassing for Republicans, since most GOPers at least try to talk a good game of fiscal sense.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush sent Congress a $1.52 trillion election-year budget yesterday showing a ballooning deficit that may reach nearly $400 billion this year -- a record -- and could easily match that total in fiscal 1993.The package indicates that the administration taking office next January will face the prospect of steep spending cuts and tax increases to narrow the deficit, or a continued high level of federal borrowing that will cause interest rates to rise and block a firm economic recovery.

Neville Sinclair has dabbled in the stock market for about 20 years. But when it comes to his retirement savings, where he has socked an increasing amount of money recently, the 50-year-old Baltimore resident sticks with mutual funds. "Mutual funds manage your money," he said before meeting with a TD Waterhouse adviser to roll money over into an Individual Retirement Account. "You're going to worry anyway, but this way I don't have to worry so much." Investors like Sinclair are helping fuel a boom in the mutual fund industry, which has attracted unprecedented amounts of investment despite being battered by scandal and market turbulence.

WASHINGTON - President Bush and Republican congressional leaders are basking in the victory of having secured a large new tax cut, but their exuberance today will be tinged by one awkward moment. Before lawmakers can leave Washington for a weeklong holiday break, members of Congress must do something no lawmaker ever wants to be asked to do: approve the largest-ever increase in the government's debt limit, a boost of $984 billion. The Senate is set today to raise the debt limit to a record $7.4 trillion.

Ten trillion dollars is a lot of money.It's about equal to the combined gross national products of the United States, France and the United Kingdom.It's 15 times the total assets ($648 billion) of the world's largest bank (Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd.). It's 60 times the 1996 total revenue of General Motors Corp. ($168 billion).And it's in the process of changing hands through inheritance -- from America's senior citizens to their baby boomer children -- in the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history.

It has come to seem as common as a light bulb, but neither its inventors nor the events surrounding its creation are much remembered:On March 21, 1924, a shoe salesman named Edward G. Leffler and met with two stockbrokers Hatherly Foster Jr. and Charles H. Learoyd in downtown Boston to sign some some papers. And thus was born the first mutual fund. There were imitators within a few months, and the offspring include names known to almost every household with a few thousand dollars to invest Fidelity Investments, the Vanguard Group and T. Rowe Price Associates Inc.Seventy-three years since its invention, the mutual fund has revolutionized the way people manage their money.

How do you get a sense of $2.4 trillion? That's how much the Congressional Budget Office says the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost over the next 10 years. It's an awful lot of money. But not, in principle, impossible to imagine. Consider some comparisons: Hurricane rainfall, gallons per day 2.4 trillion Passenger miles flown in 2006 2.4 trillion Gallons of water used in Florida every year 2.4 trillion Estimated barrels of oil in the world before drilling began 2.4 trillion Annual flow of Indus River, in cubic feet 2.4 trillion (That's three times as much, by the way, as that of the Tigris and Euphrates combined.

Labor unions that represent government workers — and some Maryland Democrats — criticized the budget President Barack Obama unveiled Monday for cutting $27 billion in federal employee pensions while offering what they called a modest, half-percent raise. The $3.8 trillion spending plan for 2013 would trim $4 trillion from the national debt over a decade through a combination of tax increases on the wealthy and spending cuts. Many of those reductions would affect Maryland, including funding for Chesapeake Bay cleanup, teaching hospitals such as Johns Hopkins and research grants awarded by the Bethesda-based National Institutes of Health.

Letter writer David Gosey makes the statement, "During the administration of President George W. Bush, the national debt increased from $5.7 trillion in January, 2001 to $10.7 trillion by December, 2008" and then questions why is it that now "Republicans get religion" on the subject ("Raising debt ceiling has long bipartisan history," June 7). By Mr. Gosey's own numbers, during the Bush years the debt rose $5 trillion in eight years. Under Obama, the debt has grown $4 trillion in three years.

The United States wastes about $3,000 per person annually in health care spending - nearly $1 trillion a year. That's bad enough. Even more disturbing is who gets that trillion. The fact is, we cannot understand politics in the U.S. by watching mainstream media or following the arguments of Democrats and Republicans. That's because neither side is honestly addressing the main problem. In the U. S., according to Rick Kronick, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego, "health care costs [are]

Your editorial "GOP plays chicken" (June 5) shows a lamentable lack of familiarity with the concept of "playing chicken. " It takes two to engage in this pastime. Your editorial should have been titled "Democrats and GOP play chicken," because that is what is happening. The two groups have opposite aims: Democrats want to continue the spending spree, and Republicans want to curb it. The Democrats have not put forth a budget for two years, and they have spent trillions of dollars that the country does not have.

The possibility of a government shutdown has Washington and the left-wing mainstream media in high dudgeon. Maybe they are hoping for a repeat of 1995, when President Clinton refused to sign a budget, shut down the government and got away with it by blaming it all on the GOP. But who's to blame for this mess now? Last year, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress plus the presidency. By law, they were required to pass a budget. They didn't. Why? Were they afraid of being punished by the voters?

Debt is at the heart of our economic crisis, but the current furor over federal government debt is disproportionate, given the need to get people working. The hypnotic trance of the media on this topic betrays and breeds a woeful ignorance of how money changers exploited nearly everyone and created the economic crisis. Let's look at how debt exploded from 1980 — when President Ronald Reagan won election on a platform of deregulation and (wink, wink!) balanced budgets — to 2007, the eve of the Great Recession.

Letter writer David Gosey makes the statement, "During the administration of President George W. Bush, the national debt increased from $5.7 trillion in January, 2001 to $10.7 trillion by December, 2008" and then questions why is it that now "Republicans get religion" on the subject ("Raising debt ceiling has long bipartisan history," June 7). By Mr. Gosey's own numbers, during the Bush years the debt rose $5 trillion in eight years. Under Obama, the debt has grown $4 trillion in three years.

Treasury auction resumesThe Treasury Department resumed the auction of securities yesterday with the sale of 52-week and 15-day bills. The bill sales followed congressional action Monday night increasing the statutory limit on the national debt from $4.145 trillion to $4.37 trillion, through Sept. 30.Interest rates on 52-week Treasury bills, originally scheduled to be sold April 1, rose to an average discount rate of 3.24 percent -- the highest level since February.

WASHINGTON - Americans are recovering their shrunken wealth - gradually. Household net worth rose last quarter, mainly because the healing economy boosted stock portfolios. But the gain was slight and was less than in the previous two quarters. The Federal Reserve said Thursday that net worth rose 1.3 percent in the fourth quarter to $54.2 trillion. It marked the third straight quarter of gains. Even with that increase, Americans' net worth would have to rise an additional 21 percent to get back to its pre-recession peak of $65.9 trillion.

WASHINGTON - -The $3.8 trillion budget blueprint President Barack Obama plans to submit to Congress today calls for billions of dollars in new spending to combat persistently high unemployment and bolster a battered middle class. But it also would slash funding for hundreds of programs and raise taxes on banks and the wealthy to help rein in soaring budget deficits. To put people back to work, Obama proposes to spend about $100 billion immediately on a jobs bill that would include tax cuts for small businesses, social-safety-net programs, and aid to state and local governments.