WARNING: The US economic situation is going to get a lot worse - KUNSTLER

SHOOT: I agree, while most have a ways to go to coming to terms with where we are now.

Kunstler: Meanwhile, the nation is lumbering toward an epochal moment of truth when the non-viability of how we get by day-to-day is exposed for all to see, including those other nations who have been lending us colossal sums of their hard-earned money to keep our operations afloat. This will be the moment when the US renounces its debt -- or just proves unable to continue pretending to service it. This moment is liable to come sometime after the middle of this summer. It will be the moment when all the green shoots babytalk stops and the scope of onrushing hardship becomes self-evident.

clipped from kunstler.com Notice the two words largely absent from whatever public discussion exists around these matters -- "swindle" and "fraud."  The reason they're missing is because if they happened to enter the conversation, something would have to be done about them, namely investigations and prosecutions. The president is the person in the best position to set the terms of this public discussion, and by avoiding these two words he's blowing the chance to begin the process of correcting the tragic course we're on. These swindles and frauds range from malfeasance at the highest levels to indecency in the lowliest cubicles -- i.e. the collusion of a revolving cast of cabinet-level officials with Wall Street executives to loot the US Treasury, the probable criminal dereliction at the mid-level of agencies like the Federal Reserve's oversight office and the SEC, to certain and outright street grifting in the traffic of securities known to be worthless at their creation.