Governmental debt -- biggest strawman on Earth

[code1211]

Yes. Meaning that interest on the public debt was in fact MUCH higher than Social Security benefit payments. What disaster resulted then that we should expect to see again were the same thing to happen today? You know...then what?

Wow!-------

 

[code1211]

I was hardly questioning your right to hold opinions, no matter how absurd. I questioned your qualifications as a critic of Paul Krugman. I take it that you don't actually have any that you feel would be worth mentioning. In that case, I will continue to deem your posts about him as just more examples of worthless uninformed rant.

As any elitist would.

 

[code1211]

As I attempted to indicate by linking to it, your Post-41 would have been what came before.


You've been reading fairy tales again. Try the Constitution instead. It says that the government exists in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. It goes on to say that the Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, and later still, the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived. Please do ask questions if any of this is unclear.

You are, then, anxious to surrender all of your property to the state?

 

[code1211]

So, you are contending that while some people would continue to work even with tax rates of 100%, some would not. How is that in any way different from what I first said? And let me ask further whether you consider that it is in fact landfill workers who are the big creators of wealth these days?

Your original statement that taxing wealth destroys the incentive to create wealth remains as an example of simply unsupportable bunk and nonsense of a sort usually put forward by those having little if any experience with either one. Actual high-income, wealth creator-type people would rarely be heard mouthing such silliness.

You claim that confiscating all wealth would not have any effect on the attendance of the work at work. This is irrational insanity.

You support it by rephrasing to make is less insane, but still unsupportable.

You are either completely ignorant of how the world functions or just completely ignorant.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

If that is your metric then WHO argued that we would not continue and was wrong as you claimed? Nobody. I would use as a metric, more accurate analyses and forecasts of the boom and bust cycles.

This is the latest of your original claims that you have tried to walk away from...

He thinks we can grow our way out of it and he has been claiming we would for the last 20-30 years. How good is their track record?

We have in fact simply grown out of every signficant debt-incurring episode since the Revolutionary War. Astrologer-like projections of boom and bust cycles that do not in fact exist as cycles to begin with are totally irrelevant.

So they were making projections/predictions about where the status quo would lead? That's interesting, but somebody told me they don't do that. Maybe, it was just some fool wasting my gd time with semantic hair splitting.

No, it was a qualified person speaking to one who isn't. Warning of the downside potential of large and growing abuse in subprime credit markets is like warning against the downside potential of storing gasoline-soaked rags in your bedroom closet.

What was Krugman saying? I think it went something like.... "Nothing to see here.... Move along." That is, don't listen to the critics… everything is going to be fine.

Got an example or two? Not that I don't trust people who link to Veronique De Rugy or anything.

The term malinvestment precedes Ron Paul.

LOL! Not as phony pop jargon. Before all these neocons ran away and turned themselves into leebertarians, the word was not even remotely in the realm of common parlance.

But if you were paying attention maybe you would have seen him warning about the housing bubble as early as 2002, just after the Fed began its loose credit policy and was grilling Greenspan for it prior to your "actual economists.". He has also called for greater scutiny of the Fed.

Well, interest rates had been cut in response to 9/11, which was in 2001. But the actual economic effects of that were almost all absorbed by the end of the calendar year, and it was indeed 2002 by the time the failure of Bush's Tax Cuts for the Rich prompted Greenspan to promise he would keep rates at such low levels in the long-term. As for Paul's "grilling" of Greenspan, it was often painful for witnesses of all sorts to sit through his rambling harangs until the gentleman's time had expired. Paul was an in-house kook and his absence will provoke about as much sorrow and sadness in the House chamber as Jim Bunning's has on the Senate side.

As for a supposed housing bubble, maybe you mean to refer to a market that rose and then declined again. That's what markets do, you know. Interest rates and long-term asset prices are of course inversely related. When mortgage rates fell by some 330 basis points in three years, home prices should have seen a marked increased (as of course, should the number of refinancings). And when interest rates at last rose again, home prices should have leveled off and refi's with them. And by God, that's exactly what happened. What shouldn't have happened was the widespread abuse of credit markets and the sale of known-to-be-sick assets into secondary mortgage markets as if they were AAA. That's what caused the problems. Money-hungry cowboy capitalists stripping off profit and selling off risk, walking away with huge profits and bonuses for it while putting the entire global economy at risk. All done right under the noses of idiot laissez-faire, free-market-minded regulators.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

It did not decrease the unemployment rates as projected. Your assessment is nothing more than revisionist nonsense.

Yes, it did, as any serious source would report. But let me ask you a question. If you were walking down the street and a gust of wind blew five one-dollar bills out of your hand, but I was able to snag two and return them to you before they were blown away for good, what sort of loss would you have incurred? Hint: This is a test to see whether -- unlike so many right-wingers -- you understand the difference between gross and net.

Government spending takes resources out of the private sector before it can spend or consume.

Really? In virtually every recent year, the government has paid out MUCH MORE than it has taken in. This means that in actual fact, there has been a continuous net outflow of funds from the public sector to the private sector, and yet you are able to sit there and suggest rhat there is some sort of economy-crushing layover effect going on out there? They say that fairy tales can come true, but this one simply hasn't.

I apologize, if I have misrepresented your views, but I assume you support Krugman and the idea that we can just raise taxes.

I support ideas and policies based on the facts and reason that argue in their favor. I don't have any need for idols. I outgrew such silliness a long, long time ago.

To answer though, it appears to me that they share control.

And while reasons for control being in the hands of the governments of the people involved would likely be self-evident, do you have any rationale at all to suggest why some bunch of self-serving financial manipulators and speculators should have an equal share of control? Do they get to step in and run the world simply on the basis of how they want their puny series of bets and side bets to work out?

What does this have to do with bailing out the banks? It is just another strawman.

You have tried to tie taxation to bailouts when nobody has asked you for an extra dime with which to bail out any banks either here or abroad. And if they had, that's the government's business to decide, not yours.

I was at the antiwar rallies, buddy, and unlike faux peace advocates of the left I am still against such abuses of power.

And you want to make strawman claims? Unbelievable.

Can you try to be a little more succinct?

No. I understand that the more detailed my posts, the more damage they do to those of people who have posted without having any understanding of the topic or without having done their requisite homework. But I am rarely in so merciful a mood as to let these deceptive or misleading posts get by.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

Of course, it is and I fully support the first amendment.

Really? This didn't sound as enthusiastic as "full support" might have...

Markets allow for it to happen without wasting expense and effort on lobbying the government. The lobbying and politicking serves no "social utility" or "public good." It only creates a schizophrenic bottleneck which even when it "works" (during the bubbles expansion) leads to widespread malinvestment.

I made a statement. According to ME! You got anything to add or counter it with or are you just being a little prick?

No need to be so sensitive. I was merely wondering what it was that led you to believe that people that demand heavy handed tactics be employed are just delaying the inevitable and adding to the misery. You didn't offer any evidence or explanation of the claim at the time and are apparently determined not to now either.

We are in the midst of a calamity of a scale that has not been seen since the Great Depression. The government's responses HAVE created protracted paralysis and have lead to the loss of millions of jobs. They are making a mess of it just as they did during the Great Depression.

You're too much!

GDP recently...



...and in 1929-1941...

 

[Cardinal Fang]

"That makes a postwar record 42 months of unemployment over 8%, the longest period of unemployment that high since the Great Depression. While Obama promised us when he wanted to pass his nearly $1 trillion wasteful government spending stimulus that unemployment would never climb above 8% if we did, it has never fallen below 8% during his entire, mistaken Presidency."

Psst! Peter "Club for Growth" Ferrrara is a part of the right-wing propaganda machine that invented the "8%-promise" meme in the Spring of 2009. This article is from 2012, which is since theSpring of 2009, not before. You posted it anyway because, like all others who have tried, you COULD NOT FIND a single reference to the phony "8%-promise" meme that is concurrent with the actual debate of the bill. The reason for this is that NONE EXIST. The whole idea was not made up until months after the fact. Get used to it.

Another thing the stimulus was supposed to do, remember "shovel ready" never happened.

Another case of not paying attention. Lists of shovel-ready projects had been compiled from extensive submisssions by governors and mayors beginning in September of 2008. Eventually, some 90,000 of them were approved and completed, and at their peak, they were providing jobs and paychecks to about 750,000 Americans while upgrading and expanding our physical infrastructure. Not bad for "never happening".

The stimulus was a complete failure. And you say it did everything it was supposed to do. La La Land You must really love lying to yourself, makes you feel good avoiding the truth. Done

You were done before you started. Kind of like Custer. ARRA was monitored and reviewed quarterly from its inception by a cross-section of public and private sector analytical shops, such as CEA, CBO, Moody's, Goldman Sachs, IHS Global Insight, JP Morgan Chase, and others. Each of these used its own proprietary methodologies to perfrom the analyses, yet both along the way and in the end, they all arrived at very much the same set of conclusions. Some come in a little higher and some a little lower, but they are all consistent with the results noted above. Of course, many right-wingers don't actually want to be aware of that.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

That WAS my point! Congress can not simply cancel the debt owed to the public.

It cannot simply cancel the debt to ANYONE. There are no exceptions.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

Now if you wanted to discuss our founders understanding of natural rights you would be better off turning to the D of I.

The Declaration of Independence was not written as a philosophical document, but as an emergency political treatise designed to fall gently upon the ears of those continental powers whose assistance the colonists would very soon need to rely upon if their traitorous little rebellion were to have any chance of succeeding.

And of course, the Declaration is not law, while the Constitution -- all references to which you have ignored -- most definitely is.

 

[Born Free]

Another case of not paying attention. Lists of shovel-ready projects had been compiled from extensive submisssions by governors and mayors beginning in September of 2008. Eventually, some 90,000 of them were approved and completed, and at their peak, they were providing jobs and paychecks to about 750,000 Americans while upgrading and expanding our physical infrastructure. Not bad for "never happening".

Obama: "No Such Thing as Shovel-Ready Projects" - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

 

[Cardinal Fang]

As any elitist would.

Well, all of my degrees are in economics, and I have more than forty (rather lucrative) years as a practicing professional in that very field. So you see, I actually do have more than just some qualification to comment.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

You are, then, anxious to surrender all of your property to the state?

What's with the binary thinking? Are there no states between ALL and NONE that you are capable of recognizing?

 

[Cardinal Fang]

You claim that confiscating all wealth would not have any effect on the attendance of the work at work. This is irrational insanity.

What I claimed -- quite correctly -- was that even if taxes were set at 100%, some people would continue to work simply because they love the work. It really shouldn't require any great deal of thought to realize that this is true.

You are either completely ignorant of how the world functions or just completely ignorant.

You do yourself very little credit by openly admitting that you have no argument to offer at this point beyond naked personal insult.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

Obama: "No Such Thing as Shovel-Ready Projects" - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

You are plainly not familiar with the actual quote, which is snipped in your citation out of its original context. What Obama was explaining in October of 2010 was his own frustration at learning that "shovel-ready" did not mean what he and most people had thought it meant. Shovel-ready does not mean that there are people standing by with shovels, ready to go. It does not in fact mean that there are yet any people or any shovels at all, as there would be no sense to contracting for either one until the funding needed to start and finish a project was at hand. Neither was there any in-place federal contracting, accounting, or oversight infrastructure that could have snapped to attention the next morning. Dollars for infrastructure have a high stimulus bang for the buck, but it takes time to get the dollars flowing out in an effective and responsible manner. What was wrong in this picture was the definition of shovel-ready that many, includng Obama, first brought to the table. Obama has learned better since. Others it appears may not have.

 

[BayToBay]

This is the latest of your original claims that you have tried to walk away from...

He thinks we can grow our way out of it and he has been claiming we would for the last 20-30 years. How good is their track record?[/I

We have in fact simply grown out of every signficant debt-incurring episode since the Revolutionary War. Astrologer-like projections of boom and bust cycles that do not in fact exist as cycles to begin with are totally irrelevant.

I have not walked away from any claims I have made. I have walked away from the stupid strawman claims you have setup.

We continue to suffer from deficits, wild boom-bust cycles, the continuning stratification of wealth, our credit rating is in decline, the dollar has been shaky, the economic prospects for young people are worse than ever and we are headed towards a cliff with demographic transitions that COULD cause far more severe problems.

Nothing significant has changed. What exactly do you think has been the complaint or concern?

LOL! Not as phony pop jargon. Before all these neocons ran away and turned themselves into leebertarians, the word was not even remotely in the realm of common parlance.

Name one neocon that has become a libertarian? You more than likely are abusing one term, the other or both.

As far as "malinvestment" Mises and Hayek were using the term several decades ago. Friedman was familiar with it as well. John Mills is often credited with identifying the concept as far back as 1867.

Instead of dealing with the issues you are only engaging in condescending ad hominem attacks. Your smug attitude is not impress anyone into adopting your rather fascist morality of might makes right.

Well, interest rates had been cut in response to 9/11, which was in 2001. But the actual economic effects of that were almost all absorbed by the end of the calendar year, and it was indeed 2002 by the time the failure of Bush's Tax Cuts for the Rich prompted Greenspan to promise he would keep rates at such low levels in the long-term. As for Paul's "grilling" of Greenspan, it was often painful for witnesses of all sorts to sit through his rambling harangs until the gentleman's time had expired. Paul was an in-house kook and his absence will provoke about as much sorrow and sadness in the House chamber as Jim Bunning's has on the Senate side.

As for a supposed housing bubble, maybe you mean to refer to a market that rose and then declined again. That's what markets do, you know. Interest rates and long-term asset prices are of course inversely related. When mortgage rates fell by some 330 basis points in three years, home prices should have seen a marked increased (as of course, should the number of refinancings). And when interest rates at last rose again, home prices should have leveled off and refi's with them. And by God, that's exactly what happened. What shouldn't have happened was the widespread abuse of credit markets and the sale of known-to-be-sick assets into secondary mortgage markets as if they were AAA. That's what caused the problems. Money-hungry cowboy capitalists stripping off profit and selling off risk, walking away with huge profits and bonuses for it while putting the entire global economy at risk. All done right under the noses of idiot laissez-faire, free-market-minded regulators.

:roll:

That's just more after the fact revisionist bull****. The government's economists and regulators failed. Therefore, we should trust the government's economists and regulators. There were no laissez faire, free-market-minded regulators. The free market advocates were screaming warning what was coming and being roundly ignored and ridiculed.

The artificially low interest rates over an extended period of time, which was called for by Krugman and others, led to a bonanaza of lending and borrowing. At the same time, Bush pushed his ownership society with full support of Democrats in Congress. They encouraged quasi government agencies and banks to take bad risks and tried desperately to keep it all going until the malinvestment could no longer be hidden.

"Panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works." - John Mills

 

[BayToBay]

I don't have the desire to continue with your ridculous tactics. Please be more succinct, stop seperating every sentence to reduce the context and employing strawman arguments.

Yes, it did, as any serious source would report. But let me ask you a question. If you were walking down the street and a gust of wind blew five one-dollar bills out of your hand, but I was able to snag two and return them to you before they were blown away for good, what sort of loss would you have incurred? Hint: This is a test to see whether -- unlike so many right-wingers -- you understand the difference between gross and net.

Really? In virtually every recent year, the government has paid out MUCH MORE than it has taken in. This means that in actual fact, there has been a continuous net outflow of funds from the public sector to the private sector, and yet you are able to sit there and suggest rhat there is some sort of economy-crushing layover effect going on out there? They say that fairy tales can come true, but this one simply hasn't.

I support ideas and policies based on the facts and reason that argue in their favor. I don't have any need for idols. I outgrew such silliness a long, long time ago.

And while reasons for control being in the hands of the governments of the people involved would likely be self-evident, do you have any rationale at all to suggest why some bunch of self-serving financial manipulators and speculators should have an equal share of control? Do they get to step in and run the world simply on the basis of how they want their puny series of bets and side bets to work out?

You have tried to tie taxation to bailouts when nobody has asked you for an extra dime with which to bail out any banks either here or abroad. And if they had, that's the government's business to decide, not yours.

And you want to make strawman claims? Unbelievable.

No. I understand that the more detailed my posts, the more damage they do to those of people who have posted without having any understanding of the topic or without having done their requisite homework. But I am rarely in so merciful a mood as to let these deceptive or misleading posts get by.

Unemployment continued to increase after the stimulus and went above what it was warned it would be without the stimulus. That is a fact and you can twist the data all you want but there is no escaping it.

You are confusing the idea of money with resources. The government is a net consumer of resources. It can spit out all the pieces of paper it want, it does not produce much of anything.

I am not in support of centralizing control in the hands of bankers or the bureaucrats that are there to protect them. Your's is a false dichotomy that pretends they are not one in the same, until it all fails and you blame it on some phantom "free-market-minded regulators." It is quite absurd and very reminiscent.

I have no idea what you are talking about "you have tried to tie taxation to bailouts." If by this you mean income taxes, no I did not tie those together.

The anti war, pro civil liberties contingent of the Democrats has virtually vanished. While many of my Green and even Socialist friends have remained consistent on these issues, Democrats have either turned-tail and run or piped down while Obama trashes their legacy and platform. That is not a strawman. No where did I claim that was your position. You continuously try to claim I have made arguments that I have not, which is why I will continue to point out your strawman arguments.

 

[BayToBay]

Really? This didn't sound as enthusiastic as "full support" might have...

Markets allow for it to happen without wasting expense and effort on lobbying the government. The lobbying and politicking serves no "social utility" or "public good." It only creates a schizophrenic bottleneck which even when it "works" (during the bubbles expansion) leads to widespread malinvestment.

No need to be so sensitive. I was merely wondering what it was that led you to believe that people that demand heavy handed tactics be employed are just delaying the inevitable and adding to the misery. You didn't offer any evidence or explanation of the claim at the time and are apparently determined not to now either.

You're too much!

GDP recently...

You are using a false dichotomy. I fully support the first amendment. That does not mean I think that the best way to achieve a worthwhile goal is to start lobbying the government for handouts. It is a wasteful process and destructive to our cumulative well being.

By demanding that the government be more thug like in taxing and nationalizing resources the advocates of such policies are only delaying the inevitable failure of the system and adding to the misery. What more do you need me to explain on that?

Mitt Romney should buy you a bullhorn so you can go out and tell people how great they have it. I am not a supporter of his but you seem to be.

 

[BayToBay]

It cannot simply cancel the debt to ANYONE. There are no exceptions.

Why are you walking away from your claims and the rest of the post in this instance. Is it because you stuck your foot in your mouth and are too afraid to admit your error? You are still incorrect.

Congress can end Social Security tomorrow AND/OR direct it to return all assets to the Treasury. Debt owed to the public IS sigificantly different and therefore has a different impact on the confidence of lenders.

Further, when the deficits in SS begin and more of the debt is shifted to public owners this WILL create budget problems.

 

[ksu_aviator]

It's logical impossible for an entity to be in debt to itself. The definition of debt precludes an entity from being in debt to itself. And yet most of the bonds on governmental debt are held by domestic private companies. The implication is that the domestic private sector isn't part of the nation.

The only governmental debt that has meaning is that which is owed to foreign countries. And this difference could be settled diplomatically, and does not have impact on economic growth unless economy is like Greece and has become reliant on handouts from abroad. Which is not the case with the United States and northern countries in Europe.

And the tooth fairy gave you a dollar that she created out of thin air.

Do you know why I said that? Because it is more likely to be true than the fantasy laden web of denial that you wove yourself in two short paragraphs.

 

[code1211]

Well, all of my degrees are in economics, and I have more than forty (rather lucrative) years as a practicing professional in that very field. So you see, I actually do have more than just some qualification to comment.

I have heard, and it seems to be true, that if there are 40 economists asked the question on the same topic, you will get 50 different answers.

If economists are so smart, why are we languishing at a stagnant rate of growth in the economy with so many unemployed or under employed?

Have you and cohorts treasonously decided to let the rest of us suffer or do you just not understand what was going to happen, what did happen or how to correct it. Either you are as smart as you claim to be and are willfully withholding help or you're blowing smoke.

You say that you're the smartest guy in the room and that economists are the hope of mankind. Why haven't you and your team corrected the problems?

 

[code1211]

What's with the binary thinking? Are there no states between ALL and NONE that you are capable of recognizing?

What is the optimum confiscation rate to make you happy?

 

[code1211]

What I claimed -- quite correctly -- was that even if taxes were set at 100%, some people would continue to work simply because they love the work. It really shouldn't require any great deal of thought to realize that this is true.


You do yourself very little credit by openly admitting that you have no argument to offer at this point beyond naked personal insult.

Well then, what percent of the working population is "some"?

 

[Cardinal Fang]

I have not walked away from any claims I have made.

Perhaps you would prefer words such as "abandoned" or "orphaned"? The tragedy here is that the list of such so-far forsaken claims should actually be much longer. But in some cases, rather than preserve some remnant of dignity by simply walking away, a choice has been made to tromp over the same old misbegotten ground, all the while waving the "strawman" false-flag and calling people fascists. Very funny.

That's just more after the fact revisionist bull****.

It's just more history that you prefer to ignore in hopes of preserving the foundations of some pititful little fantasy world. The worst economic collapse since the Great Depression was in fact the product of unconstrained cowboy capitalism and laissez-faire regulators who stood by and let it all happen right under their noses.

I don't have the desire to continue with your ridculous tactics.

Yet without such desire or much if any hope of success, you will continue anyway.

Unemployment continued to increase after the stimulus and went above what it was warned it would be without the stimulus.

Employment is a lagging variable. This is one of the most basic of macro notions. When one is losing 700,000 jobs per month, one must first cut that astonishing rate of loss before one can hope to see any sort of gain. That's just basic arithmetic. You might want to note that the stove stays hot for a while after you turn the burner off as well.

You are confusing the idea of money with resources. The government is a net consumer of resources. It can spit out all the pieces of paper it want, it does not produce much of anything.

In normal times the public sector is responsible for about 20% of all domestic economic output. If you were about average then, this would mean that about 20% of your ("hard-earned") income was directly or indirectly attributable to government using you as part of its production function.

You are using a false dichotomy. I fully support the first amendment.

LOL! You don't by denouncing lobbyists for petitioning the government for redress of grievances.

Why are you walking away from your claims and the rest of the post in this instance. Is it because you stuck your foot in your mouth and are too afraid to admit your error? You are still incorrect.

Congress cannot wipe out, amend, or even question the debt of the republic to anyone. Period. Your failure to distinguish the vast gulf that separates Treasury and the public debt from SSA and SSTF as a holder of public debt is -- in addition to being laughable -- not material.

Further, when the deficits in SS begin and more of the debt is shifted to public owners this WILL create budget problems.

There is no budget appropriation for the repayment of principal on any public debt. Only interest. As was already noted, the bonds held by SSTF are typically older than average and so carry a higher rate of interest than other public debt. 10-year Treasuries closed Friday at a yield of 1.69%, by the way.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

You say that you're the smartest guy in the room and that economists are the hope of mankind. Why haven't you and your team corrected the problems?

In only too typical right-wing fashion, you referred to me as being some sort of "elitist" while providing no sort of experience or credentials to suggest any sort of credibility for your own claims. I provided a modest mini-CV in the sense of "it ain't bragging if it's true". I actually do have something of note and relevance standing behind what I post. Take it or leave it.

But also in typical right-wing fashion, you instead explode and distort that simple act into fantastic claims never made or suggested. Why is that? Do you not recognize the pure dishonesty inherent in such tactics?

As for the rest, even those whose actual identities you know don't have control. However, the combination of the President, a Democratic Congress, and the Fed did make noteworthy, quite substantial progress on the economic front (among others) in 2009-2010. The fact that Republicans took control of the House starting in January 2011 meant that the President and the Fed lost a willing partner in the effort to support recovery. Republican interests lie in prolonging and augmenting -- not in ameliorating -- the economic stresses and difficulties of the American people.