Here's a good column from the Investor's Business Daily on the dangers that could result from U.S. president Barack Obama's big-spending economic schemes.
Here's a sampling:
"It is irresponsible stewardship for Obama and Congress to go on a borrowing spree that puts America in the same unsustainable position as an overstretched boomer with too much debt and too little income and whose only option is to refinance at higher costs just to pay the interest."
The article is as concise and pointed an argument as you will find on the subject. The U.S. debt load will lower the standard of living for every American citizen. Already, the Chinese are making noise about a new world currency and the idiot nations of the worls, such as North Korea, have been emboldened because they know America no longer has the wherewithal to challenge them.
ReplyDeleteDebt is a destroyer of economies.
So I guess Powell will not be voting for Harper given the debt he's saddling Canadians with....
ReplyDeleteas one economist noted, spendulus is like giving a poisoned man another dose of the stuff to save him from the poisoning.
ReplyDeleteeconomist like keynes like to think of the macroeconomy as some giant and complex entity when all it boils down to is spend only within your means and cut spending when you lose revenue. pretty simple but not very politically motivating stuff, a prime minister that does nothing woudl be the right thing to do but we would he hammered in the next election (or in our immeidate case brought down poste haste.)
The current U.S. situation harkens back to their very beginnings.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Joseph Ellis in his book Founding Brothers: "The total debt of the United States, according to Hamilton's calculations, had reached the daunting (at least then) size of $77.1 million. Of this total, $11.7 million was owed to foreign governments; $40.4 m was domestic; and $25 m was state debt,also largely a legacy of the war. What began to trouble Madison, then terrify him, was not Hamilton's goal--the recovery of public credit--but the way he proposed to reach it."
[Alexander Hamilton wanted to assume all the states' accumulated debts into one federal debt.] Ellis goes on to say this caused a "purchasing frenzy, as bankers and investors aware of the funding proposal bought up the (government) securities in expectation of a tidy profit."
"Hamilton regarded the national debt as 'a national blessing'...Madison, on the other hand, 'a Public Debt is a Public curse.'"
Sound familiar?