Still Hung up on a 1.6 Trillion Dollar Deficit

... and wondering where it leads. Here's what's going on in Greece where they're a bit ahead of us on the debt default trajectory.

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Greece’s biggest union approved the second mass strike this month and tax collectors began a 48-hour walkout, showing that Prime Minister George Papandreou’s parliamentary majority may not be enough to ensure enactment of his plan to cut the European Union’s largest deficit.

In Japan, they're watching Greece and soiling their pantaloons.

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Japan’s government must heed the warning on soaring debt loads stemming from the turmoil of Greece’s credit-rating downgrade, a Bank of Japan board member said.

The example of Greece, along with concerns about the credit quality of countries including Spain and Portugal, shouldn’t be regarded as “a burning house on the other side of the river,” Seiji Nakamura said in a speech in Fukuoka today.

Meanwhile, President Obama, who in his own life lived off lines of credit in the years prior to his book deals and whose administration is simply blowing up our budgets with fiscal atomic bombs, had this to say.

Speaking about the economy at an event in New Hampshire, Mr Obama told Americans: “When times are tough, you tighten your belts.

“You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college. You prioritise. You make tough choices.”

In Greece, they're making tough choices to the point where unions are striking. In Japan, they're starting to panic. In the US, a guy who nearly wrecked his own finances and who has obliterated our public ones, is lecturing the rest of us about fiscal sobriety.

H/T: Our Monks of Miscellaneous Musings who have more on the topic.