Guy who thinks debt is hunky dory

This article is funny/annoying. He thinks deficits are sexy, and anyone who would worry about them is an idiot. I have some comments in green.

"...To summarize, deficit hysteria is a hoax concocted by far-right demagogues who are trying to advance their socially-destructive agenda for their own personal gain. Like me. Fortunately, the opposition has mounted an impressive counter-attack and refuted many of the spurious claims made by the deficit worrywarts. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has done a particularly good job of educating the public on the issue and analyzing the movement's supporters. Here's a clip from his article titled "Fiscal scare Tactics": Paul Krugman is far too silly, wrong, and blatantly serving of progressive interests to educate anyone. He's hardly impressive. Iv'e thought of having a blog just to mutilate his ideas, but other people have already done it.

"To me ...the sudden outbreak of deficit hysteria brings back memories of the groupthink that took hold during the run-up to the Iraq war. Now, as then, dubious allegations, not backed by hard evidence, are being reported as if they have been established beyond a shadow of a doubt. Now, as then, much of the political and media establishments have bought into the notion that we must take drastic action quickly, even though there hasn’t been any new information to justify this sudden urgency. Now, as then, those who challenge the prevailing narrative, no matter how strong their case and no matter how solid their background, are being marginalized.

This is blatantly false. If anything, the politicians and media have circled the wagons around Obama and Bernanke to pretend we're having some awesome recovery, it's because Obama saved us, and the drunken sailor spending spree was totally unavoidable. The new information is that Obama and company have spent more money than all previous presidents since George Washington combined. That is a newsflash. I don't know of more than a handful of real economists who think what they are doing makes any sense and can actually work. There are maybe 500 economists and analysts saying, "Keep doing this and you will collapse the world economy." So yeah, we might want to take a look at what they're doing.

True, there is a longer-term budget problem. ....But there’s no reason to panic about budget prospects for the next few years, or even for the next decade (because) interest payments on federal debt; according to the projections, a decade from now they’ll have risen to 3.5 percent of G.D.P. How scary is that? It’s about the same as interest costs under the first President Bush."

This is just plain retarded. He's basing this on the White House's absurd projections of growth, and projecting the near zero interest rates into the future. Nobody on earth thinks either one of those things will happen. When you actually run the numbers using really basic math, you see it gets out of control pretty fast.

Mike Whitney March 5, 2010

More evidence about my predictions, sarcasm

Three more articles by three more authors supporting my economic predictions for 2010:

www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article16929.html Financial system saved?

www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article16927.html US debt crisis

www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article16922.html Future of the dollar, excellent summary of major events showing it's in trouble.

Below is a link to a great article about how 34 states are moving to block implementation of any socialized medicine scheme.

www.newsmax.com/US/US-Health-Overhaul-States/2010/02/01/id/348526

I have a new money-making scheme. I just need a little help finding the right place to implement it. I need to know the location of the 440 imaginary congressional districts that got to split $8 billion of the stimulus bill. They even had jobs created despite being imaginary! Being imaginary, there shouldn't be anyone living there now, so if I move my family to one of those districts I should get all of the jobs created there plus all of the millions of dollars spent on that district. Right? There shouldn't be competition there. I'm sure of it. Please help.

We got the announcement today that the world record $3.8 TRILLION budget will produce the largest deficit in the history of the world.. Luckily, though, our dear leader told us that A.) it's Bush's fault that he has quadrupled Bush's deficits and B.) this budget really represents getting back to fiscal responsibility. Whew! For a second I thought it was an insane spending spree that will hurt us for the next 50 years. By the way, the projections showing the record deficit being "only" $1.6 Trillion this year are so absurdly optimistic they make me giggle. Just according to the previous optimistic estimate above (tax receipts are still falling fast, not rising), the difference between taking in $1.6 trillion and spending $3.8 trillion would be $2.2 trillion just for this year. That is about $7,000 per man, woman and child. Another way to think of it is 2,200 thousand millions.

Am I missing something?

U.S. Government Revenue vs. Outlays


Is there something wrong here? Hmmm. So, our "unfunded liabilities" (money we owe because we promised) are in the $100 TRILLION range, yet we feel free to spend far, far more than we take in, and plan to year after year? Somehow, that doesn't seem smart. Or maybe it's so stupid it's smart? No, it's straight-up stupid. There's no way those numbers work.

There is one amusing thing on these. In the year 2000 it shows a surplus. If you remember, Clinton changed the accounting rules so that the shoebox of IOU's for Social Security counted against the deficit, conjuring up a phantom "surplus" for a few years. Kind of cute in a cheap card trick kind of way. Some people even report those "surpluses" as if they were real-life numbers, which is fun.