Goldman says pay attention to this important shift in FX market dynamics
...on public assistance.
49.1%: Percent of the population that lives in a household where at least one member received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2011.
[That figure] is up from 30% in the early 1980s and 44.4% as recently as the third quarter of 2008.
(From "Number of the Week: Half of U.S. Lives in Household Getting Benefits," Real Time Economics)
About 65 percent of federal expenditures over the last ten years have gone towards entitlements. By comparison, about 15 percent has gone towards national defense, excluding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq has cost three percent, and only about one percent has gone towards the war in Afghanistan (including the cost of ongoing military operations and all reconstruction and stabilization assistance combined), according to [blog post author Paul Miller's] analysis of figures from OMB.
(From "Obama's Legacy on Afghanistan," Foreign Policy's Shadow Government blog)