Monday, July 18, 2011

Me On Debt Ceiling On Local NPR

This afternoon between 3 and 4 I shall be on Virginia Insight discussing the debt ceiling. This is NPR covering western Virginia and is a call-in show.

5 comments:

Barkley Rosser said...

For anyone who is curious, you can listen to the show by going to wmra.viriginia insight.rosser . The other person on was Herman Schwartz, a political scientist from the University of Virginia, who compared the financial industry to the mafia. I only repeated my stuff from April 19 on how the administration should simply ignore the debt ceiling, along with how it is probably unconstitutional, besides being totally stupid. Herman is an old friend of Dean Baker's from undergrad school at Swarthmore.

Barkley Rosser said...

Better than that is to go to http://www.wmra.org/inchive.html or google the following three: "wmra" "insight" "Barkley".

KC said...

Interesting. What about the MMT idea that deficits are absolutely necessary all the time?

http://moslereconomics.com/2011/07/17/mmt-to-president-obama-and-members-of-congress/

MMT to President Obama and Members of Congress:
Deficit Reduction Takes Away Our Savings

SO PLEASE DON’T TAKE AWAY OUR SAVINGS!

Yes, it’s called the national debt, but US Treasury securities are nothing more than savings accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank.

The Federal debt IS the world’s dollars savings- to the penny!

The US deficit clock is also the world dollar savings clock- to the penny!

And therefore, deficit reduction takes away our savings.

SO PLEASE DON’T TAKE AWAY OUR SAVINGS!

Furthermore:

There is NO SUCH THING as a long term Federal deficit problem.

The US Government CAN’T run out of dollars.

US Government spending is NOT dependent on foreign lenders.

The US Government can’t EVER have a funding crisis like Greece-
there is no such thing for ANY issuer of its own currency.

US Government interest rates are under the control of our Federal Reserve Bank, and not market forces.

The risk of too much spending when we get to full employment
is higher prices, and NOT insolvency or a funding crisis.

Therefore, given our sky high unemployment, and depressed economy,

An informed Congress would be in heated debate over whether to increase federal spending, or decrease taxes.

Barkley Rosser said...

I am more of go for some more or less steady level of the debt/GDP ratio over the business cycle. Sweden has the highest growth rate in Europe right now, and they were running a budget surplus of 3.6% of GDP when the crash hit. Sure made it easy to run a hefty fiscal stim that has now paid off very well, tak sa mycket.

Don Levit said...

KC said:
US Treasuries are nothing more than savui accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank.
Are these funded savings accoiunts?
What about the non-marketable Treasuries in the SS trust fund?
What about the Treasuries bought by the Fed?
Can that savings account be cashed in, like a person's savings account at a bank?
Or, should we just think, it's the U.S. Gpovernment, don't even bother to ask questions?
Don Levit