"There has never been a default on the country’s debt over the last couple of hundred years and there wasn’t going to be this time either."
This is not true. The United States defaulted on all its debt and on all Federal Reserve notes when it reneged on its promise to redeem dollars for gold at one ounce for $20. Before 1933 a dollar was DEFINED as 1/20th of an ounce of gold, and both treasury bonds and paper money were just promises to pay in "lawful money." In 1965 the government defaulted again by reneging on its pledge to redeem all dollars for silver at a rate of one ounce for every $1.25.
Secondly, while I share Bill's frustration about the lack of attention to serious problems, the biggest culprits are not the media but the American people. People don't know about Iran's nuclear program and the national debt because they don't want to know. Over and over again they have thrown temper tantrums when politicians try to deal with serious problems and things get tough, such as Bush's commitment to defeating terrorists in Iraq or Republican senators' proposal for a freeze on Social Security COLAs in 1986.
"There has never been a default on the country’s debt over the last couple of hundred years and there wasn’t going to be this time either."
This is not true. The United States defaulted on all its debt and on all Federal Reserve notes when it reneged on its promise to redeem dollars for gold at one ounce for $20. Before 1933 a dollar was DEFINED as 1/20th of an ounce of gold, and both treasury bonds and paper money were just promises to pay in "lawful money." In 1965 the government defaulted again by reneging on its pledge to redeem all dollars for silver at a rate of one ounce for every $1.25.
Secondly, while I share Bill's frustration about the lack of attention to serious problems, the biggest culprits are not the media but the American people. People don't know about Iran's nuclear program and the national debt because they don't want to know. Over and over again they have thrown temper tantrums when politicians try to deal with serious problems and things get tough, such as Bush's commitment to defeating terrorists in Iraq or Republican senators' proposal for a freeze on Social Security COLAs in 1986.