7 Responses

1. However if Apple wants more money, they’ll have to make products and sell them at a profit in a competitive market.

   For the Treasury, it’s a matter of “printing” all the money they want. The issue is that the House of Representatives, with its “power of the purse” is objecting.

   If one looks at the interest rates for Treasury bills, notes and bonds – it appears that the “market” seems to have great faith in the ability of the United States to pay its debts (even if the “tea party” is trying to monkey-wrench the “printing press”- which suggest the “market” feels the tea party will be able to prevent the Democrats from going the way of Weimar Germany before its too late).

2. I even have more apples then the goverment!!!

3. Maybe the government needs to stop playing favorites and stop giving money to unnecessary grants and projects or put them on the back burner and keep the country’s elderly on the front burner. After all they paid their dues and deserve to be taken care of first and not dumped and forgotten. And lets stop forgiving the wealthy and have them pay their fair share and stop burdening the middle class. Maybe if the government was run more like a business they too would be more balanced and less cash poor.

4. If the market agreed with the Tea Party that the US was likely to be unable to pay its debts without the Tea Party stopping them from issuing more debt, the price of debt would go through the roof.

   What’s actually happening is that the market seems to be perfectly fine with the possibility of the US issuing more debt, and the Tea Party, whose Raison D’etre is the idea that market judgement is always superior to that of the government is attempting to second guess that judgement by using the power of the government to override the market. I’d think this was hypocrisy if it wasn’t more likely that they just don’t know what they’re doing.

5. Big deal! I have more money than th US govt. I have a penny in my pocket and don’t owe any money. The govt has 70+ billion to spend but owe TRILLIONS. Also if you read carefully, the govt has a operating cash balance, that doesn’t mean its their money. All it means is that’s how much they can spend. (Its like have available credit on a credit card or line of credit). While apple has that value in cash or assets.
   So to sum it up, this article is inaccurate. Everyone has more money than the US govt (unless they owe trillions of dollars also)

6. “That’s because Apple collects more money than it spends, while the U.S. government does not.”

   That is because Apple tries to increase its revenues, while the politicians that run the government keep trying to decrease them through irresponsible tax cuts. If we simply returned to the Clinton era levels of taxation — a time of prosperity — we would have no problems.

7. CharlieHall, Ur quite mistaken on two accounts. 1) Even if we go beyond the Clinton levels of taxation and confiscate every dollar earned by the “millionaires” who earn more than 250K, we still couldn’t fund Obama’s agenda. However u wanna criticize Bush, spending under him as a percentage of GDP was generally around the 20% area. Under Obama, we’re approaching spending at approximately 25% of GDP. So going back to Clinton levels, it wouldn’t make a dent in the deficit or national debt. 2) We had problems even back then. Medicare costs were already 10 times greater than estimated back when Lyndon Johnson started with his “Great Society” agenda and created medicare. SO even though on yearly basis, there may have been budget surpluses, long-term projected medicare liabilities were still increasing uncontrollably. This is coming from someone who wasn’t big fan of Bush.