Entries Tagged as 'Deficits'
September 17th, 2007 · 1 Comment
cross posted at DailyKos by New Deal Democrat
In
Part I of this series, I examined the 1992 best seller entitled “Bankruptcy 1995”,which had predicted that the US would become unable to service its national debt as early as 1995 due to soaring budget deficits. So dire and well-documented was the warning that it affected the outcome of the 1992 presidential election, helping to elect Bill Clinton. In light of new looting of the national treasury by George W. Bush and the Republican Congress, I re-read the book to see if any of its predictions were now coming true. I posted those predictions, and the book’s thesis that continued budget deficits would drive up interest rates and lead to “Death by Hyperinflation” or “Death by Panic” in Part I.
But “Bankruptcy 1995” obviously didn’t happen, in spite of the fact that deficits have continued to be run nearly every year since then. Only part of the reason was the fiscally responsible Clinton tax and budget plan that began in 1993. In this diary I examine how a long-term, continuous decline in interest rates has actually
reduced the carrying costs of the National Debt, and why that means the sky isn’t falling –…
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Tags: Deficits · Outsourcing · Trade · Globalization
September 15th, 2007 · No Comments
cross posted at DailyKos by New Deal Democrat
Is the US going bankrupt? With an intractable trade deficit and a national debt in excess of $9 trillion dollars, it may seem so.
The signs of a looming US sovereign bankruptcy and how it would happen were the subject of the 1991-2 bestseller entitled “Bankruptcy 1995,” written by members of a Reagan-era Commission tasked to advise of the consequences of persistent government deficits. That the prophecy didn’t come true is in part due to the book’s own warning, for budget responsibility was a major theme in the 1992 presidential platforms of both Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. In 1993, without a single supporting republican vote in the house or senate, Bill Clinton and Congressional democrats passed a budget including a tax increase that ultimately gave rise to a budget surplus for the first time in 30 years, in 1999. Then came George W. Bush and the borrow-and-squander republicans, who took the surplus, looted it, and doled it out plus plenty more to their cronies.
I recently re-read “Bankruptcy 1995,” to examine the questions: Why didn’t it happen? Do any of the signs of an impending US bankruptcy exist now? Are we…
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Tags: Deficits
