铁铠冥魂天赋和符文:The "disease root" of America lies in its pol...

来源：百度文库 编辑：九乡新闻网 时间：2024/04/29 20:53:08

The "disease root" of America lies in its political system!


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For the first time in its history, America is charging headlong towards a default. Don't be fooled by how unlikely this sounds: unless there is a dramatic turnaround by August 2, the world's largest economy will have to stop honouring its debts.


If it is hard not to find the idea faintly preposterous, it is only the latest episode in a farce which runs back for years. In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration was forced to shut down parts of the federal government to keep the US economy afloat. For half of the current financial year, the Obama administration was forced to run the country on an extended incarnation of last year's budget – rather as if George Osborne had decided in March to reprint last year's document and present it to the House.


These silly episodes each derive from the same basic fact: that the world's largest economy has a political system which is ill?equipped to manage a 21st-century economy. That it has taken a financial and economic crisis to bring this sharply into focus shouldn't be entirely surprising – to adapt Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, "it's only when the tide goes out that you find out who's been swimming naked".


Today's dilemma is stark. There is a legal limit on the size of America's total sovereign debt of $14.3 trillion, and with the costs of the recession still weighing down the federal budget, that ceiling is due to be hit on August 2. The letter of the law says that at that point the country simply cannot borrow more, and so must either stop financing its debt (a sovereign default) or cut internal payments. Indeed, this week, Barack Obama told CBS News that payments to social security recipients, veterans and the disabled could simply dry up on August 3. "There may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," he said.

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Unlike Greece or some of the other weakened eurozone states, the US is not facing default because of its inability to pay. Its overall debt levels are manageable, at least in the short term. The explanation for the crisis is purely political – the Republican-controlled House of Representatives refuses to increase the debt ceiling. This is economic illiteracy of the highest degree: because the limit is an arbitrary figure, it takes no account of the size, health or spending demands of the economy. The figure which policy-makers plucked out of the sky in 1917 when they first devised this wheeze was $5 billion, which is enough to fund today's US military apparatus for all of three days.


The debt ceiling has been raised on 80 separate occasions in the past 70 years by parties on both sides of the aisle, but every so often someone uses it to hijack events and threatens to bring the economy to a halt.


Having managed to squeeze a half-decent deficit reduction plan out of the President, the Republicans are none the less refusing to lift the debt ceiling; many say that they won't budge unless Obama agrees not to raise taxes at all. If the likelihood is that a last-minute deal will be struck, as in 1995, there is no guarantee of that. Harvard economist Jeffrey Frankel thinks that there is at least a one-in-four chance of default.


Part of the problem is that the Republican Party, a mish-mash of Tea Party extremists and more sensible deficit hawks, is still in disarray as it shuffles towards the presidential primary season. But the deeper issue is with American politics.


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Facing current situation in U.S., Telegraph summed up that "America's political system isn't quirky, it's dangerous", the Irish Times said it's a "U.S. deadlock" and Arkansas Times criticized directly that "The U.S. gets to crazy!"


Ding Gang, a senior journalist of China's People's Daily, wrote an article and said "Washington needs the reform on political system!"


Ding said political decisions are not made by the White House, especially a weak White House, but only made by those Congress senators who would love to follow the votes. Current Obama government can't get rid of the rule, either!


On the surface, such balance is helpful for the national interests of U.S., but how could a government make benefitial decisions for national interests when it is so hard in taking even one single step under the restriction of Congress?


Looking through the "passionate arguments" of those politicians, its all interests of their own or their groups behind but only without the national interest of United States, not even mention the global interests.


Such voting politics and parliamentary politics sort of blind the political sight of the White House and hindering White House's decision-making capability, and finally to make the White House become weaker and weaker.


So, U.S. , it's time for you have to make some change and reform on your own political system and stop being criticized with other countries' political systems in your own frame.


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Not to put too fine a point on it, U.S. is very badly sick and the "disease root" just lies in your political system.  (Telegraph/Irish Times/Arkansas Times/Global Times)
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