[quote=sreeb]I don’t think you will see the lines drawn across income levels. I’m expecting it to come down to the productive class vs the leaching class. Much of the financial class has now joined the leaches.

I believe we are already so far gone that default is inevitable, the only question is who gets defaulted on.

It is going to come down to either the entitled (voters) or the bond holders (foreigners and bankers). By the time the 2012 elections are over, the bond holders will realize that it won’t be the entitled. Then we become Greece. Interest rates will spiral rapidly as first risk is priced in and then the budget effect of the higher rates creates positive feed back.[/quote]

Yeah, that whole post is non-credible.

The problem with us “becoming Greece” is that all of Greece’s debt was externally denominated.
Very little of ours is.
We tend to only issue debt in the form of dollars (not exclusively but for the most part).

If we ever really had a problem paying on those bonds we could just literally print the cash and mail it to the bond holders.

It is possible that the leverage spreads will increase but I doubt it.

Pretty much you can take whatever nominal promise the US makes and treat it as gold now and forever.

We still own the presses.

What will change in the next 10 years or so is that the BRIC countries will gain prominence as consumer markets.

Just wait until Chery starts producing electric vehicles for Asia.

Then being Greece will be the least of our problems.