Conversation at the Hardware store today

Went to the hardware store with the neighbor today and got into a conversation with one of the workers there.

He asked me how things were going and I told him okay. The sun was shining, it was a nice day and the people seemed friendly.
I have talked to him before but only about hardware stuff. He made a comment about a civil war might be coming. I am not sure where that come from but I found it had to resist. I told him it would not surprise me the way things were going.

As the conversation progressed he made the comment that the Federal Reserve was trying to cut Social Security and that they administrated it. I told him that SS had nothing to do with the budget or the national debt and the Federal Reserve had nothing to do with Social Security.

He did make a statement that I could not refute. He said that after the Great Depression that foreign bankers came over here with their monies to bail us out and now we owe them. I have never heard of this, anyone know anything about this??

We did talk about how to fix SS and I told him raise the cap or eliminate it and problem solved. Another customer agreed and said I was the only one he had ever come across that agreed with him on that solution.

edit: spelling 'they to their'

The Bretton Woods System : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system

What many do not understand is that Great Depression didn't just affect the US. The economic slump affected North America, Europe, and other industrialized areas of the world. We were not the only nation in monetary peril.

The United States sold war bonds to raise money for WWII, which were bought by foreign banks as well as foreign investors, as well as US banks and investors.

Though those have been paid off, savings bonds, T-bills, and other assorted US debt instruments have been sold since WWI to raise money for the money we fail to raise through taxes. All pay interest, and all get us further into debt.

the depression, the 1930's........ unless he was confused
He did not seem like a crazy, he actually listened and he appeared to hear

during the Depression. There was an Emergency Appropriations Act in 1935 IIRC that provided the money for the WPA and other economic stimulus programs.

http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

That was paid for by selling savings/treasury bonds, which increased foreign debt, or just printing money - which essentially does the same thing by making the dollar worth less.

The graph is logarithmic so all told the debt we incurred to get out of the depression is a blip on the radar today. We've replaced it many times over with newer debt.

'At no time since 1945 when Republicans have been in total charge of both elected branches of government have they ever reduced spending. They talk about it a lot, but they never deliver.'

and this one

'The fact is that Reagan was able to push his tax cuts through both Houses of Congress, but he never pushed through any reduced spending programs. His weak leadership in this area makes him directly responsible for the unprecedented rise in borrowing during his time in office, an average of 13.8% per year.'

Surprise: Dems are better for rallies
Despite 'market friendly' Republican policies, stocks rise more and volatility dips under Democrats.

http://money.cnn.com/2004/01/21/markets/election_demsvreps/index.htm

of the Andrea Macris scandal. Liberal media my ass! Here's a guy sucking up every bit of a phony story that hurts a Democrat and has heard nothing of a real one that makes his hero look like a total perv.

I could see him not believing the loofah boy stuff but never hearing about it? If there is a liberal media source that will treat the Weiner thing like Fox and most of the others treated Macris' suit, I don't know about it.

like some garbled version of an anti-semitic slur used against "foreign bankers" since the Middle Ages. We WERE NOT bailed out by foreign bankers (or by domestic ones for that matter) during the Great Depression.

The U.S. does issue 30-year bonds, 10-year notes and various other debt instruments which can be purchased by investors foreign and domestic. But the issuance of those -- which did occur during the 30s -- in no way 'bailed us out'. What bailed us out was FDR's New Deal. Period, end of story.

The Great Depression was nearly 90 years ago.

and try to gather more information from him ......... just trying to change them a little at a time

Answer: "Well, it may be that in 1935 foreign banks had a lot of money, and in 1935 they may have loaned money to the U.S., but I'm pretty sure that by 1945, ALL of those foreign banks put together didn't have a sack of turnips to make soup with. Have you heard of the Marshall Plan? We didn't just have to feed Germany and Italy, the European countries on the winning side didn't have shit to scrape together either. Don't you know that the United States by itself was half the world's economy in 1945?"

And then you can go off on a tirade about how our big money capitalists have moved that economy to China.

Revolutionary War...how do they think countries finance big things?

but that was not he brought up and I did not know so I could not refute him without research........
I guess I thought having facts was better than just throwing things out there

That's what the RW does.