U.S. Debt Expected To Soar This Year: $2 Trillion Increase May Test Federal Ability to Borrow
"the national debt is projected to jump by as much as $2 trillion this year, an unprecedented increase that could test the world's appetite for financing U.S. government spending."
is this not the problem that got us into dire straits in the first place?
lessons we were supposed to learn from the mortgage/credit fiasco:
1. don't lend money to people who can't pay it back.
2. don't borrow more money than you can pay back.
was anyone paying attention?
2 comments:
To be fair, if you reject the whole "the market will regulate itself" BS and accept that the market will have bubbles and busts, one (say, John Maynard Keynes)could argue that the gov't should be countercyclical. So that when the economy is in a recession, the gov't should cut taxes and increase spending (even if this creates debt). Of course the flip side is that this only works if during a healthy economy the gov't raises taxes and cuts spending to pay back the debt from the recession. So the real issue with the $2 trillion number isn't that we're going to have to spend more money now, but that someone (coughBushcough) thought it would be a good idea to cut taxes and increase spending during an economic boom. Which is the opposite of a good idea. But at least we get to blame Bush for it: http://www.iblamegeorgebush.com/
apologies for lack of clarity in my post. i was not trying to suggest that borrowing in general was bad, but rather given the fact that our national debt is approaching 11 trillion dollars, bumping that number by 20-ish% seems like a poor decision in light of our ever increasing national expenditures.
i guess the question is, who thinks lending the US money right now is a good idea? we can't pay that shit back.
...though, to be fair, i suppose not lending the US money could be a worse idea.
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