Sorry, the middle class in China is more important to our businesses than Americans are, given that the middle class in China is larger than the entire American population [financialpost.com]. Of course, we'll continue to ignore the hundreds of millions of peasants in poverty, just like they're ignored in the US. Bad for profits, you see.

He's a kook because, while he makes one or two good points, by and large he's a historical and economic ignoramus, or more likely just a snake-oil dealer selling a suite of easy solutions that would neither be easy or solutions.

Imagine for the briefest moment if Ron Paul got elected. It's certainly not going to be the case that Congress is going to be filled with enough like-minded people that would be willing to go along with him, and so he would have at best very limited capacity to make good on any of his promises, and more likely would soon piss off Congress, regardless of party affiliation, and would find himself a very lonely man in the Oval Office as 2/3s majorities killed his vetoes and refused to co-operate with any of his plans.

Remember this, though sometimes it's hard to tell these days, a President is only as strong as Congress allows him to be.

He's called a kook because his preferred economic theory is to ignore evidence and history, especially when turned into mathematical models, and invest based on psychology. "We think this stock will do well, because the company's CEO is so charismatic" is Austrian School economic advice. The Austrian School is the conspiracy theory of economics. Once in a while, somebody predicts something that happens, but not reliably enough for it to be taken seriously, and the evidence in favor of other theories is far more substantial.

The idea of a perfectly-balanced budget makes little sense for a government. Running with some debt allows the country to have more liquid cash now, and pay for it with growth in a few years. What is even more absurd is going into debt by much more than we can reasonably expect to gain over a short time. Unfortunately, that's what's happening now: With more people unemployed, income taxes are bringing in less revenue than expected, but the contracts still have to be fulfilled, and that means that money has to come from somewhere. China has money to spare, so we sell them bonds to cover our contractual obligations. Of course, this mean we'll owe China a huge amount of money in a while, but that's actually somewhat preferable to defaulting on a large amount now.

There is a possibility that China will forgive some debt in exchange for more lenient political posturing, or extend it to a longer period with little or no additional cost. We'll have to wait and see what happens over the next few years. Maybe Apple will decide to bring its manufacturing to the US, boosting the American economy high enough to cover the debts. Here's hoping.

A president has more power than you think.

(1) He can veto, and veto, and veto again any budgets that increase spending. He can just sit tight until the Congress finally he gives him a balanced budget (or close to one).

(2) As Commander-in-Chief he could end the slaughter of innocent men, women, and children in Afghanistan almost immediately. He's simply order them to withdraw and come home.

(3) Also Ron Paul founded the Liberty Caucus in the Congress. It has about 100 members. All they need to do is swing a few Republicans and Democrats to join their cause, in order to get the 51% majority needed to pass laws. (Such as a repeal of the NDAA and Patriot Act.)

IMHO :-)

He thinks he is holding secrets for his life. He might be right.

I can respect an individual who took on the major intelligence agencies and won. He's done leaks on thousands of other topics as well.

If he holds a couple back to save his life, I think he's being wise not dishonorable. In real life people are often confronted with unpleasant choices.

I'm not an economics person but there are plenty of people who do (like Ph.D. Walter E Williams and Thomas Sowell), and they are warning us of the current danger.

Or you could just look at Iceland, Greece and Italy. The U.S. has almost the same debt-to-GDP load they have. We are not immune to the same collapse as they did.

Already China and Russia are abandoning the dollar in order to trade directly with gold (or gold-backed SDRs). It's time to wake up. http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report/ [rt.com]

My prediction:

Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee. Obama will likely defeat him by a wider margin than he did McCain. Nobody really really likes Mitt, he is better looking than McCain but the policy is all the same. The base can't get behind it, they won't come out to vote, election over.

-1 or 2 years from now we will be at War with Iran, but not Russia we are to important a trade partner. The Russians will claim neutrality while making our lives hard.
-You and I will sit here and tell people they should have voted for Ron Paul.
-The Obama voters will are not already wondering what happened to Hope and Change will device, not get fooled again. Next election GOP will win with a Chris Christy or other popular governor. The DNC will take a drubbing.

Yes and no. The problem, as some European nations have recently discovered, is that it doesn't take a whole lot of uncertainty for interest rates to skyrocket. Right now we can issue debt and people will buy it at low interest rates because they trust that we will, in fact, be good for it. China has been buying a large amount of our debt because they have the money, and because they see it as a solid investment - not least because it helps prop up our economy which helps their economy immensely - so they effectively get the interest on the debt plus the positive effect that debt has on their economy.

This has been great for the U.S., because we have been able to maintain low interest rates on our massive debt that keeps it affordable. As long as those interest rates are low, we are fine. However, if China ever decided that they were no longer interested in buying our debt, the interest rates would likely need to be increased to attract investment from other parties. Even relatively small increases in the interest rate result in major increases in our cost of borrowing, which increases the likelihood of default (all else being equal). This is what bit Greece and others - they were okay as long as interest rates stayed low; as soon as rates started to increase because there was some doubt about their future ability to pay it back, that once-affordable debt load quickly became unaffordable. Which, of course, made investors more wary of buying their debt, leading to further increases in interest rates, and so on. The same thing could happen with the U.S. debt, and it could happen very quickly.

Ironically, perhaps the best protection against China abandoning our debt and wreaking havoc with our economy is to ensure that we continue being their major export market. This relationship makes the effective interest rate they receive on our debt higher - basically, with our trade balance they are guaranteed to get a good portion of the economic activity generated by the debt they are buying from us. Large-scale investment from, say, Russia, would not see that extra benefit so buying our debt (as opposed to the debt of a significant trade partner, assuming Russia was in the position to buy anyone's debt) isn't as attractive to them. So, China is willing to buy our debt at a lower interest rate than some other investors might, which helps to keep our debt affordable, which allows us to buy more from China. Not to say that this relationship can go on forever, but a lot of the noise about immediately trying to cut our trade with China could easily backfire and make our current debt-load crippling.