An American Lion

The wolf is out there hunting, and all he sees are the destitute and the sick…too many to eat.

Being in hock like any decent degenerate gambler, having a sizable population of Americans ready for retirement and needing health care coverage are three problems that no one seems to be paying any attention to as a single concern, not three separate ones. We are spending too much money and we have millions of Americans who are going to need to be taken care of, in terms of health care and Social Security and whatever else you want to throw in there. It’s creating a perfect storm for the collapse of our country. Hate to say that it is, but what would you call it?

First, the baby boomers could touch off a stock market collapse:

The share of the U.S. population aged between 40 and 65, when people typically prepare for retirement by building their biggest pile of financial assets, peaks in 2010 and this ratio has shown an uncanny link with real equity prices for 40 years.

In snapshot, 78 million Americans were born between 1946 and 1964 and by the mid-1980s earned half of U.S. personal income.

This outsize population cohort, swollen by global baby booms as World War Two ended in 1945, is typical.

The proportion of the global population over 60 is set to double by 2050 to 21.8 percent. As birth rates fall and people live longer, ratios of retirees per worker is likely to soar.

Yet the U.S. ratio of those in prime savings years to the sum of under-40s plus those 65 and over is marked by a glaring market correlation and an obvious 2010 milestone.

Goldman Sachs, for example, points out the stock price funk of the 1970s coincided with a three point fall in this key ratio. And its sharp 15 point rebound from 1982 to next year straddled an 18-year bull market on Wall St .SPX.

After 2010, it is set to decline once more and is forecast to sink six points over the next two decades.

Couple that with the latest news on our debt:

In October and November, the government spent $292 billion more than it took in, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said.

That was even worse than the same period last year, when the government was on its way to posting a record $1.4 trillion deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

The federal budget has been battered by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, as tax revenues have plunged and spending on safety-net programs like unemployment insurance have skyrocketed.

The budget deficit was $176.4 billion in October, according to Treasury Department records, and the CBO estimated the deficit for November will have come in at $115 billion.

The CBO gave its figures in billions of dollars and said numbers may not add up to the totals because of rounding.

Receipts totaled $132 billion in November, the CBO estimated, down 9 percent from the same month last year. That was partly due to new legislation that gives increased tax write-offs to corporations.

We’re spending like there’s no tomorrow, and we have all of these helpless and hapless Baby Boomers to worry about. (I am that rare exception—I was born in 1944 and I have little or no commonality with anyone who thinks of themselves as a Baby Boomer). You would think that the government would be doing something about it, such as, bringing health care into line and imposing strict reforms in the system to adequately care for Baby Boomers while addressing the possibility that the stock market might melt down.

You’d be wrong if that’s what you thought:

I can’t tell you the number of people who have contacted me furious about the OFA fundraising email that went out yesterday (below the jump).

I wholeheartedly endorse Markos’s comments:

This is so freakin’ obnoxious I can hardly stand it. We are about to get a turd of a “reform” package, potentially worse than the status quo. We have the insurance industry declaring victory, Republicans cackling with glee, and the administration is using that piece of shit to raise money?

Obama spent all year enabling Max Baucus and Olympia Snowe, and he thinks we’re supposed to get excited about whatever end result we’re about to get, so much so that we’re going to fork over money? Well, it might work with some of you guys, but I’m certainly not biting. In fact, this is insulting, betraying a lack of understanding of just how pissed the base is at this so-called reform. The administration may be happy to declare victory with a mandate that enriches insurance companies, yet creates little incentive to control costs or change the very business practices that have screwed so many people. But I’ll pass.

So far from what Obama promised when he announced his health care plan in 2007 it’s not even funny.

Do I make these things up? I wish I could. I’d sell the rights, and someone would make a pretty gory horror film off of it.