The IMF joins Bernanke in threatening US legislators

The International Monetary Fund's Washington D.C. Headquarters

The debt ceiling issue is irrefutably a “hot button” issue that has Washington seemingly irreparably divided over small budget cuts that have little to no effect on the massive deficit. To make matters worse for the clowns in Washington arguing over tens of billions of dollars with a public debt realistically in the neighborhood of $100 trillion, the private Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund are now stoking the fire.
As the men and women of Capitol Hill bicker, Bernanke makes comments like, ”History makes clear that failure to put our fiscal house in order will erode the vitality of our economy, reduce the standard of living in the United States, and increase the risk of economic and financial instability.” While the IMF says that we need to raise our debt ceiling ”expeditiously to avoid a severe shock to the economy and world financial markets.”
A note about the above linked AP article addressing the IMF’s concerns: there is a massive typo that seemed to elude one of the world’s largest news organization’s entire editorial staff. The debt ceiling is not $14.3 billion, it is $14.3 trillion. This is no minor mistake as a trillion is a hefty 1,000 billion.
The IMF clearly wants the United States to raise the debt ceiling immediately. They also suggest that we add a national sales tax or European style Value Added Tax or VAT. Among their other erudite suggestions is that we must keep dumping “stimulus” into the housing market, not cut spending “too much,” and keep artificially holding down interest rates.
Anyone with even a minor knowledge of recent geopolitical history knows that the IMF and the World Bank are some of the most untrustworthy organizations on Earth.

The private Federal Reserve “officials” have also cut their projections for economic growth this year while raising their projections for unemployment. Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, has reassured us that with a growth rate of 2.5% (which we are far below at this point) jobless rates will “gradually” decrease. The IMF has also cut their projections for growth in the United States’ economy, along with former Fed chair Alan Greenspan saying that a Greek default could cause a slide back in to a recession. Realistically, we have already slid back in to the recession if you look at the revised projections vs. the original overly optimistic projections coming from the IMF and the Fed.
Not to be left out, Obama has been leaning on Republican lawmakers to take action and sign us on to more debt without making any significant cuts to the out of control government spending. Hilariously, Obama actually had the gall to criticize Republicans for taking frequent recesses. This coming from a President who was filling out his NCAA brackets while the Fukushima disaster developed is painfully ironic. I must make it clear that I am not targeting Obama, almost every single politician and bureaucrat in Washington is all but totally useless.
We do not need to raise taxes or put austerity measures in place in order to save the United States, we need to gut the Pentagon’s mind-blowing budget and refuse to keep paying money to offshore banking cartels. We need to refuse to be beholden to private bankers and their debt creation schemes that have run America in to the ground. We need to repeal NAFTA and GATT, bring the jobs back to the United States, stop all forms of corporate welfare, especially off-shoring incentives, and give the power to issue currency back to the people. We need to repeal the PATRIOT Act, reinstate Glass-Steagall, and take back every cent that was stolen from us by criminals on Wall Street and within the country’s largest banks.
Only after we take care of the most essential factors can we even start to consider raising taxes or cutting crucial social programs that are desperately needed by the impoverished people of America.