Fighting debt with debt, cause its the American way

From money.cnn.com

Maybe its because I don't understand how to budget a state or a country, or maybe its just because I don't understand the logic behind borrowing money to pay back money you already owe, but this shit just doesn't make a damn bit of sense.

I've been thinking about getting into the stock market lately.  Its something I've always wanted to do, just not something I ever really understood.  I talked to some people and they gave me some advice, so I decided to go for it, and in my quest for market research, I happened across the above linked article, so I gave it a read.

Now, states being in debt is nothing new, and TARP and all the other stimulus money is nothing I haven't heard about 1000 times either.  What frustrates me though, is this continuous loop of owing money to one party, borrowing money from another to pay off the first party, and owing the second party more money than you originally owed, and calling it a good idea.

If I owe my friend John 20 bucks, and borrow 27 from my friend Carl so I can pay John back and still by myself a cheeseburger, I'm still fucked in debt.  I'm not improving my situation in the slightest, I'm really just pissing Carl off, because now he has to wait until I have money to pay his broke ass back.

But that's the American way, apparently.

My question is: Where does this borrowed money come from?  Who are we indebting ourselves to to pay off our debt?  Who are we handing control of our finances over to?

I'm not saying I have the answers to these deficit problems, nor am I pretending to say that I know what is going on, but I can say that the cycle is obviously fucked up, since it has yet to fix a damn thing.  Its going on 3 years now where massive debt is being covered by more massive debt, and the amount of debt has not shrunken a bit.  Maybe the budgetary officials need to step back and reassess their situation.  Maybe the need to include a bit more micro economics in their macro economics.

When I owe someone money, the first thing I do is see what I can cut out for a few months to reallocate appropriate funds.  Do I own 700 dollars to a credit card company?  Uh oh, looks like I need to stay home and pick up some of my old hobbies rather than go out and spend money on new ones.

It works pretty well for me, and I know it for damn sure would work very well for everyone else... if they can get over themselves and realize how much they are fucking up.  But when there is no regulatory body constantly on the ass of city officials making sure they aren't dropping 40,000 dollars a month on fake bakes, or 3,000 dollars a night on gourmet cheeseburgers, yeah, shit is going to get fucked up. 

But that's not the end of the problem.  Or even a considerable portion.  That's just something to quickly point blame on.  There are numerous other problems, ones that you and I cannot even imagine.  The problem with them though, is that they are all associated with "way of life" costs, and because of that, they will never be stricken from a budget, because once a person or family gets accustomed to living a certain way, they will not change that way of life until it is violently ripped away from them.  And even then, before change happens, they will struggle to maintain that way of life through any means necessary.

So, I guess we better all get ready to have reality ripped from beneath our asses and have google and all those other wonderous things ripped from beneath us and the Chinese come rolling in with tanks and glorious oppression.