In other news:

Help, help! The sky is falling! I've got to tell the Queen!

@blankhead - The article does not mention capitalism, I did.
The govt is in debt because more money is coming out than going in, simple as.
Have you ever played the game of Monopoly, you can only keep lending the losing player so much to keep them in the game, eventually you've got to say 'Game Over', I can't keep bank-rolling your losses.
The only sustainable way to continue the game without increasing debt is for the person with all the money to give some of that money to the person without any money, then the game can go on indefinately.
That is a metaphor for real life, capitalism is only sustainable if the people with all the money give some to the people without i.e. China to write off US govt Debts, EU to write off Grek debt, etc, etc.
We have already seen this done back in 2000 with the write of National Debts of African countries et al.
I've tried to simplify the issue to make it more understandable but I must admit to losing the thread a little of the point you were trying to make.

People have been predicting the fall of capitalism since the 1840s.

At one point do we admit that the marxists are wrong at that capitalism has been successful.

maybe you should be more precise in your words. if you mean that the rich cannot be legally allowed to keep all their wealth without the system collapsing, then that is one thing. but to say "capitalism" that word could mean any number of things. there were huge disparities of wealth back in the days before modern capitalism. when i think capitalism i think free market, which is nothing like what we have. so if you just throw out this word it can confuse people.

writing down national debts does not much affect how capitalist a country is i do not think, since the debts are odious - essentially fraudulent. people supposed to be representing the people instead borrowed money and spent it on things that in no way benefited the country. under modern capitalism, debts created fraudulently are not enforceable. and the debts are to a central bank that has no constitutional authority to exist and would not exist in a true free market.

i think it is technically maybe possible to recover from the current distribution of wealth but realistically probably not. if we switched to a perfect free market now, with no regulations or government-granted monopolies or government supported fractional reserve banking or things like that, then we would slowly recover.

but realistically the disparity is so high that if those rich in positions of entrenched power could buy off george bush and obama so incredibly easily... now they are so unimaginably wealthy and powerful that the next guy will be bought out before he even starts his campaign... not that bush or obama werent.

Wait, Nigee -- your claim is that, due to Capitalism, the government has run up an unsustainable debt that will explode and ruin the economy?

...

I think you may not fully grasp the word "capitalism."

or maybe an analogy would be good. let us say that our condo elects a board to make decisions on the condos behalf. then the president we elected tells us - ok in order to keep the banks going, which is vital for us, because we may need to borrow money from them in the future - we will borrow money from the bank, and then give it back to the bank. of course, we will have to pay back the debt, and get nothing for it, but... it is vital because we occasionally need loans and we do not want a new bank, we want this old one to exist forever, besides it gave me a truckload of money to finance my co-op board campaign.

then the members of the coop vote an overwhelming 90% against this plan.

then the coop president, possibly after deals under the table, does it anyway.

90% of americans were against the bailouts, but they happened anyway.

now under capitalism the coop members are not obligated to pay this debt. the same holds true for americans and the bailout debts. not to mention the money spent to bomb countries when the majority were against it. if we are talking true capitalism here.

it even seems possible to argue that if the public votes for a war (unlikely but if somehow they did) and it turns out the banks paid off all the major media to lie to get them into the war (as happened in basically every war) then that debt is kind of created fraudulently and could be argued should not have to be paid back.

@semck ... that is a trait of most of our governments - capitalist, socialist, or otherwise.

This sounds reminiscent of an episode of The West Wing.

lol Nigee. There will be a run on the pound way before there's a run on the dollar.

The bankers are still wankers, why have we got the most obnoxious and useless bunch of c**** running our financial institutions and looking after our money.
How can anyone have confidence in the future with the lunatics running the asylum, the bankers have learnt one important thing during the banking crisis, if they fuck up the govt will bail them out .... no wonder they are so arrogant and incompetent.
What do you call 500 bankers at the bottom of the Atlantic ...... a good start

shh nobody tell him that the bailouts were not supported by laissez-faire capitalists

"the government has run up an unsustainable debt that will explode and ruin the economy?

...

I think you may not fully grasp the word "capitalism.""

If capitalism sustained enough economic growth by itself there would be no need for large-scale government spending to fuel the economy. So it's absolutely a symptom of the problem of capitalism, which has been evident since the 1970s.

"shh nobody tell him that the bailouts were not supported by laissez-faire capitalists"

Nobody tell the laissez-faire capitalists that their deflationary policies led to the Great Depression and the abandonment of the gold standard, and that they've had no credibility since then.

I missed where that's relevant to laissez-faire capitalists' support of the bailouts?

I'm not going to speak for crony capitalists because they're silly and deserve criticism. Incidentally they're the capitalists the OP should point the finger toward for the bailouts...

In a capitalistic society man exploits man, in a socialistic its the other way around.

Capitalism, combined with a rigorous political democracy & free press, but sensible government controls to provide a safety net for the poorest & stop corporations abusing their power - this is an approx of the US, Europe, Japan, S Korea etc position.

It is the best system mankind has found so far, and gives the populations of those countries the best quality of life.

The US debt will sort itself out as growth returns & foreign policy is more modest.

"I'm not going to speak for crony capitalists because they're silly and deserve criticism. Incidentally they're the capitalists the OP should point the finger toward for the bailouts..."

The "crony" capitalists at least acted to save the economy, for that they deserve credit. The laissez-faire types would have played the fiddle while the country burned. And we'd have no economy to speak of in the first place if we ever listened to them.

The game of Monopoly is not an accurate representation of capitalism. If anything, it is a command economy. Prices are fixed, there is no opportunity to go outside the board, etc.

"The "crony" capitalists at least acted to save the economy, for that they deserve credit."

So are you dissenting from Nigee when he criticized the bankers (and the government which bailed them out) for getting to where we are? That'd be perfectly fine, but I didn't read it that way when you chimed in earlier.

Capitalism is the worst economic system ever, except for all the other economic systems that have been tried.

"If anything, it is a command economy. Prices are fixed, there is no opportunity to go outside the board, etc."

Really, you want to give credit for decades of growth to command economies? I'm ok with that (even if the position is ludicrous), but an odd position for you to take. Capitalism must really be unworkable then.

"So are you dissenting from Nigee when he criticized the bankers (and the government which bailed them out) for getting to where we are? That'd be perfectly fine, but I didn't read it that way when you chimed in earlier."

Yes.

"Capitalism is the worst economic system ever, except for all the other economic systems that have been tried."

Trite. Can we stop with the cheap sloganeering? I've had my fill.

"Capitalism is the worst economic system ever, except for all the other economic systems that have been tried."

Anyway can you guys make up your mind if you're going with the No True Scotsman approach or giving credit to capitalism for everything good that has happened economically?

"Yes."

Sweet. It's like we're on the same side and not all at once <3

"The US debt will sort itself out as growth returns & foreign policy is more modest."

That's a relief, relax everyone, apparently it's going to sort itself out so rid yourselves of that army of economic advisers and accountants costing the country billions.
That seemed to be the attitude taken to the Nazis in 1939, leave Europe to sort itself out .......even more recently with Syria.
Not everything just sorts itself out, especially if the policies being pursued are unsustainable, as is the case of US and European economic policy.
Bankers are not sorting the economy out for the good of the nation, they are driven by selfishness and greed. Politicians are scared of bankers because they cannot imagine a world without Goldman Sachs ...... I can.
In the early days of Capitalism excess capital was used for increased research and development, investments in infrastructure, better premises, better tools and skills.
We are now at a very mature stage of the Capitalist cycle where we have huge reserves of private and corporate wealth looking for returns, this is in addition to the normal capital amounts required to sustain future economic development.
We have created a mass of derivatives markets (betting shops for the wealthy) where people can spread bet their lives away because they have more money than they know what to do with. We have created false markets in all sorts of commodities, metals, we even had Steve Wynn pay obscene millions for some shiny metal flowers for his shopping mall at the Encore in Vegas.
Yet we still have 20% of the planet struggling to get enough food to eat on a daily basis.
I don't think Bill Gates & Warren Buffett have donated billions of dollars to alleviate disease and poverty in Africa because they are dumbos or because they think God will save them a seat at the top table next to Mother Theresa and Princess Diana.
Maybe they are the 2013 version of Marx & Engels.

What have you got in mind NigeeBaby as an alternative to capitalism? If that is what you are really suggesting, an alternative. How would you ideal economic system work?

To start you off NigeeBaby I presume you mean to do away with the notion of private property and the free-market. Is that right? What next?

Putin, I was saying that the game of Monopoly is actually a command economy. As usual you refuse to comprehend.

The game of monopoly is not a command economy. Price fixing does not a command economy make.

Monopoly has just as many aspects of a free market as most western economies do.