the ides of march

"The Ides of March are come, old man." 

"Aye, Caesar, come, but not gone."

--Julius Caesar, Act III, scene one  

If you're like most of us, you can be forgiven for not knowing a thing about what's likely to occur on March 15, 2017. The national government's ability to borrow any further money ends that day, and the next debt ceiling crisis looms as the temporary agreement engineered by Obama and John Boehner in 2015 runs out.

I watched 3 or 4 hours of network news yesterday & never heard a word about it. We're now in countdown mode (Zero minus 9), and I'll be watching the dinner hour news and trying to determine who is the first to give this story front-page play. Other than Jim Kunstler, no one seems to have picked up on the gravity of this crisis.

And that's the second thing I'll forgive Americans for today. "Why is this a crisis?" they ask, knowing that disasters in the past due to the debt-ceiling running out were fairly easily avoided, and could be again this time. All it would take is for Congress to agree to raise the debt ceiling.

But unless you're one of those who thinks it's possible to get blood out of a turnip, you know why THIS Congress will never raise the government's ability to borrow.  This means that on March 16, 2017, we'll be living in a country with huge debts but no income, and by June we'll be dead, stone broke and in total default mode.

Unless we get rid of at least half this government and replace it with one able to accept reality, and maybe even deal with it to some degree, we're looking at a variation on the theme "Weimar Republic, 1923." Either way there are rough times ahead.