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Loren B. Thompson est en effet un lobbyiste, mais pas un optimiste.  Voir ci dessous
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End of Empire (I)
Author: Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D. Date: Tuesday, July 28, 2009  
http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/end-of-empire-i?a=1&c=1171

If you think the Obama Administration’s plan to hold defense spending steady over the next few years sounds feasible, consider this. The national debt has increased by nearly a trillion dollars since election day, and the deficit of tax receipts below federal spending will equal 13% of the economy this year. Just the interest on the federal debt will cost taxpayers $565 billion this year (fiscal 2009).
If rates rise as the federal debt does, interest payments on the debt could increase to a trillion dollars per year by the end of President Obama’s first term. This is the first year on record that the future obligations of federal entitlement programs exceed the net worth of all U.S. households.
Loren B. Thompson Ph.D.

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End Of Empire (II)
Author: Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D. Date: Thursday, August 13, 2009
http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/end-of-empire-ii?a=1&c=1171

Economists are in transition from the end-of-the-world pessimism that they express at the bottom of every recession to the all-is-well optimism they evince when recovery begins. We will soon be treated to non-stop praise of the American economy’s strength and adaptability.
Few experts will be inclined to state the obvious: that America’s economic strength has been declining since the decade began; that we are living far, far beyond our means by mortgaging our children’s future; and that 5% of the world’s population (us) isn’t likely to go on sustaining half of global military spending while generating only a quarter of global output.

Perhaps the most worrisome sign of our secular (as opposed to cyclical) decay is the fact that, despite the Bush Administration’s tax cuts and budget deficits, we haven’t managed to generate a respectable rate of growth since the new millennium began.
The CIA says in its World Factbook that the median income of American families hasn’t budged since the nation’s bicentennial year, and this decade looks likely to be the worst since World War Two for private-sector job growth.
Rebecca Christie of Bloomberg Business News reported yesterday that the federal deficit in July was a record $180 billion, meaning that the government went a billion dollars further into debt every four hours. It would be nice to believe that this will all change with economic recovery, but don’t bet on it. 

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Remarque: Si ces chiffres sont exact, cela fait 1 Md de dollar toutes les 4 heures, soit 6 Mds par jour, soit 20 dollars par habitant/jour.
Pour ma famille de 4 personnes cela ferait 2400 dollar par mois, et pour les USA 2200 Mds par an;
Vue la répartition des revenus aux USA, si les riches ne veulent pas payer d’impôts, il faut en effet arréter .
BHO pourrait bien avoir une crise financière de première grandeur à traiter rapidement. Et le fait que la FED achète maintenant les Bons du Tresor US ne rassurera personne.
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People Costs Squeezing Investment Out Of Pentagon Budget
Author: Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D. Date: Thursday, July 30, 2009

Congressional Research Service analyst Stephen Daggett had some stunning numbers about the rise in military personnel costs in testimony he gave earlier this year. In constant 2009 dollars, the cost of an average service member has risen from $55,000 per year in 1998 to $80,000 today. And that doesn’t even include the cost of military healthcare, which—as Dan Goure pointed out earlier this week—has increased 144% since the decade began.
When you count healthcare, the annual cost of each service member tops $100,000. The cost of training and equipping warfighters to do their jobs is added on top of that.
If personnel costs keep rising faster than inflation while overall defense spending levels off, then investment in new warfighting technology will gradually be squeezed out of the budget.

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Why Does O&M Spending Keep Going Up?
Author: Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D. Date: Tuesday, August 4, 2009
The Pentagon has requested $277 billion in fiscal 2010 to fund operations and maintenance (O&M) activities in the regular military budget and overseas conflicts. That’s more than any other country spends on its entire military establishment, so you’d think pundits would be scrutinizing the account more closely. But they generally don’t, buying into the easy logic that the elevated level of outlays must reflect high optempo and the cost of maintaining an aging arsenal.
Here’s a different way of looking at O&M expenditures. Maybe huge O&M outlays are an indicator of rising personnel costs. Nearly a third of the regular O&M budget covers the cost of civilian defense workers, whose pay and benefits have been rising faster than inflation.
And most of the cost of the military healthcare system—which looks likely to spend a billion dollars a week in 2011—is carried in the O&M account. So the real culprit in rising O&M outlays is people costs, which are gradually eclipsing other types of defense spending.

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QDR Notes Impact Of People Costs But Has No Solutions
Author: Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D. Date: Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Quadrennial Defense Review insiders say all the participants understand that current trends in military pay and benefits are unsustainable, but no one has a solution. The basic problem is that the nation is trying to conduct big, protracted military operations with an all-volunteer force, and that problem is aggravated by seemingly endless congressional efforts to legislate additional benefits. One player offers this ominous assessment: if benefit costs keep going up at three times the rate of inflation and the buying power of future military budgets remains flat as planned, then investment spending would have to fall by a corresponding amount each year to accommodate the rising cost of people.

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