pbraham

The way I see it:

• The US government is spending more than it earns so it has to borrow money.
• It needs to continue to borrow more money because it's spending faster than its making it, so it's hit a debt ceiling.
• It needs money to pay the interest on its debts.
• So it needs to borrow money to pay the interest on the existing debt.

If I've got this right, how can any sane person think this is sustainable? Borrowing money to pay off the interest on existing debts is not good policy. Also, wouldn't it be the case that the countries that are lending the money (probably mainly China) are the same ones that the interest is being paid to?

Or maybe I've completely misunderstood this.

This was at a local small branch of a supermarket chain in Australia. The store closes at midnight and after around 10pm they only have one checkout open and it's always the one marked 15 items or less. I've always had a joke that maybe you couldn't buy more than 15 items after 10pm but its never been a problem. Until this one time. I get to the front of the queue and start unloading my trolly. The checkout girls tells me she can't serve me because I've got more than 15 items. I thought she must be joking at first but she was obviously being serious.

"There isn't another checkout" I told her

"Yes there is. He's just opened." And it seemed that since I started to queue up another checkout