Russian PM Putin calls the American economy "Parasitic": How is this incorrect?

Can someone please tell me how Putin is incorrect on any of this? As a person who is an American who lives off of American money in a foreign country, I truly feel the ill effects of the US not keeping its shit house in order. Every time I buy anything here in Bulgaria, everyday it becomes more and more expensive due to the decline of our currency.

To put this into perspective for you, I was in Switzerland almost last summer. During this time I was there, 95Cents US could get you 1 Swiss Franc. Which was favorable. Now, because of the decline of the US currency and irresponsible Federal Reserve policies, if I were to go back to Geneve today, it would cost me $1.30 to buy 1 Swiss Franc. This means the dollar is worth one third less than it did only one fucking year ago!

Russia currently own $120 billion in US treasuries. This is a lot of money for Russia considering this is 3.37 Trillion Rubles. With the decline of the currency and the low interest rates on treasuries, Russia is actually losing money at this rate. Plus, with The Federal Reserve considering further easing of the money supply (printing more money and making treasury purchases), the treasuries that Russia and other countries own, will be worth less than they paid for them.

Right now, yields on short term treasuries are negative. Meaning it actually cost money to own short term US Treasuries. This is because of the awful interest rate and the downward decline of the currency.

This is why I think the statement of calling the US economy parasitic is VERY CORRECT, because of these long standing lies about the US and its economic practices. Such as, the lie that the US has a triple A credit rating (When it actually should not because debt to GDP is over 100% yet there has been no real measures to curb deficit spending. No other triple A rated country has as high of a debt to GDP ratio as America.). The second terrible lie is the phony rule stating that if one is looking for stability, US Treasuries are among the surest of things. This is false and the negative yields on short term US Treasuries in indicative of this.

These lies are parasitically spread by American propagandist who want to keep other nations lending so America can keep on living way above its means.

Sorry, but Russia is owed money. Like anyone who is owed money or has made a substantial investment, they demand a return! Let's say YOU owned some shares in a company. Let's say this company has been losing a lot of money and your shares are worth a lot less than you bought them for. Wouldn't you also be at the share holders meeting telling the company to get there shit together? Yes, you and everyone else would be doing this. No one wants to lose money. So how can you blame Putin?!

And do not even think for a second what I am saying is anti-American. I am so proud of being American and I am VERY NATIONALISTIC! However, I am a realist, who knows that American economic policy in its current state, is completely asinine and just plain backwards! Can we please get back to our old economic glory by not borrowing trillions which puts us at the mercy of shit hole nations like Russia and China?!

Also on a side note, Fox News lost some of my respect from this piece! Instead of making a rational argument they pull immature crap by showing a shirtless picture of Putin with his horse trying to make him look bad. Who gives a shit about the fact he has a horse and does not have a perfect body? This is the same immature crap liberal news outlets perpetrate towards conservatives because they have nothing to argue against something that is completely true. How sickening and childish that they would stoop to these levels!

America: The unsustainable.

With all of the recent fuss over raising the debt ceiling, Americans are divided. Recently I have read on Mises.org that only 48% of Americans polled, are not in favor of raising the debt ceiling. Which means only 48% percent of us actually have at least some basic math skills.

Another poll I have also read recently, is that most Americans agree we need to cut debt, yet want no cuts to entitlements or other social programs. I guess the old expression of "waiting to have your cake and eat it too" applies to this. Entitlement spending, when combined, consumes more money than even our defense budget, which is our largest individual expense in the US. Sorry, but we can not have it both ways, it is simply not reasonable.

Here is something to chew on:

In 2012 over 100 million Americans will be over 50 years old. Considering the US population is around 310 million, that means just shy of 1 out of every 3 of our citizens will be rapidly approaching retirement age. Which means they will be drawing on Social Security and using medicare in as little as 12-15 years, if they are not already.

Also, every year another 3.5 million Americans reach the gold age of 50.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt, signed the Social Security Act in 1935, I am sure he had the best of intentions. However, with life expectancies being for men 59.9 and for women 63.9, the age to recieve benefits was (and still is) 65. So with a program that collects money from individuals while they work, then these people die before seeing this money, this program sounds extremely sustainable... :-D

We have come a long way since then with all these medical advances, health lifestyles, etc, people are living to be much older now days. According to the recent census, current life expectancy is at 78.2. In another report on US life expectancy from The Congressional Research Center, A person who reached age 60 in 2003 was expected to live an additional 22.2 years, on average, and would die at age 82.2. This means people are now spending 20-25% of their life time in retirement drawing on Social Security and Medicare!

Okay, so I don't seem like I am attacking our nations elderly, let me also mention another unsustainable bug-a-boo, welfare programs.


According to a report from The USDA, as of May 27, 2011 44,587,328 Americans are now receiving food stamps. This number is a new all time high for the program. Hell, this number is 13.1% higher than it was just one year ago! Remember, this means 1 out of every 6.9 Americans are receiving food stamps.

Mixed into this number is the fact that now 1 out of every 4 of American children are receiving food stamps. Also 1 out of every 3 African American receives food stamps. I don't mean this on any racist grounds. I mean it on the grounds that African American's make up 13% of the population. So if a third of them are receiving food benefits, that alone is around 4.3% of the population!

Let us now look at Medicaid, our government run health insurance for poor Americans. Medicaid was first created in 1965. During this time only about 1 out of every 50 Americans received Medicaid. Today over 51 million Americans recieve Medicaid. That is 1 out of every 6 Americans. This number is higher than the amount of Americans who receive food stamps. To me, this is worse, as we all know medical procedures are generally more costly than providing food like in the food stamp program.

Still not scary enough?

For the first time since the Great Depression, households are receiving more income from the government than they are paying the government in taxes. Government transfers of income to households started to overtake personal taxes in 2008, and it is growing. In 2010, households received $2.3 trillion in income support from unemployment benefits, Social Security, disability insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, education assistance and other cash transfers of government funds to individuals. In this same year, households paid $2.2 trillion in income, payroll, and other taxes.


What all of this means is that our debt is simply unsustainable! A start would be to not raise the debt ceiling, so we can not borrow more to spend more. The bad thing is with this kind of spending, a vote to raise the debt limit will only come up again later if we don't raise the limit now and we cut some spending. The only real cure in my opinion, is to eventually phase out most, if not all entitlements. We must stop the unsustainable programs and spending now, so that we stop pawning off the debt on the next generation.