Post from greshambouma at CHUM.LY

The end of a trend known as "tax, borrow and spend"… We probably are in the blow-off phase. But with the announcement of another round of Quantitative Easing (print money and buy your own debt) by the Federal Reserve, it looks to me like we are entering a new phase. Let’s call it "tax, print and spend". Maybe there will still be borrowing, but you have to wonder if there will be any willing lenders after the next several quarters during which we finance most of our deficit spending by printing money out of thin air and lending it to ourselves. Socialism matures into bankruptcy, and that is where we find ourselves today. When countries run out of the ability to borrow, they usually have two options available. They can turn to austerity measures and cut government dramatically, or they can crank up the printing presses and continue to spend, but destroy their currency by doing so. Cuts in spending result in painful economic adjustments as the country goes through withdrawal symptoms of debt dependency. On the other hand, turning to the "printing presses", or in our case the computer keyboard, as a source of financing, creates run-away inflation at some point. It avoids the hard decisions of budget cuts but is ultimately much more destructive. http://chum.ly/n/4291a0