going broke, he's already lost a big chunk of bargaining power.

By that pattern i mean the dems moving more and more to the right. If Obama wins it's certainly going to strongly reinforce the the idea that the Dem establishment should only offer up candidates that are moderate conservatives like Obama.

The country can't move in a progressive direction under those conditions. It can only be a little less crazy than the insane cons would like it to be.

It's a lose - lose scenario for liberals.

The country as a whole is still fantastically wealthy, to the tune of $50 trillion. And the notion that we as a country can't afford a $1 or even $2 trillion-per-year safety net is ludicrous. But the claim that the ultra-rich are trying - and succeeding - in ripping that net to shreds is not ludicrous.... it is a very, very real danger.

Just awful. I mean horrendous!

The right way is to say look how fast we paid off the enormous debt of WWII (30 trillion inflation adjusted).

That defeats the stupid fear mongering meme that right wingers have be repeating that syas "Your grandkids will be paying off the debt".

Return to the redistributionist policy of "The Great Compression" ( see Krugman ) and we can really start spending bigtime like true Keynesianism requires and like we did in WWII to get the economy moving ( spending trillions to employ millions to build weapons is Keynesian stimulus)

Alternet argues that there is no need to pay off the debt--it will just "roll over".

It's called "waiting".

The numbers look awful at the moment because the economy is still really shitty.

Get the economy back to normal and suddenly it's not such a big problem.

Which is exactly why the people who want to reverse the New Deal and Great Society are screaming about debt now - they need to dismantle those programs now while they can make the "too much debt" argument. With a normal economy, our debt would look fine - it would be shrinking. And then they wouldn't be able to destroy the programs they hate.

since the Gilded Age.

There isn't something named "Social Security" in it. Or a big host of other programs. And the Great Society has absolutely nothing in it.

The idea that Social Security can be healthy while employment suffers, for example, is faulty. The two are 100% linked.

"Good jobs" was from the WPA.

The government was able to pay off its wartime debts for that reason.

This economy is stagnant because of government austerity. If public employment had not been cut, things would be better.

pretty dramatically the last few years. We aren't up to the world war 2 high, but it can't be a good thing to rack up the kind of debt we have been doing lately IMHO.

When you think about the high costs of energy, that is going to be a continuing issue, which makes for a bad combination. We badly need a gigantic new oil strike, or something.

they're ALSO dependent on us!

And all the debt we're leaving to our children and grandchildren? I shit you not--according to alternet it just "rolls over"!

That being the case, the author should explain why we shouldn't just borrow a million-gazillion-bajillion dollars each? The debt will never have to be paid, of course! It will just "roll over"!

That way we can dismantle the pesky Great Society and New Deal by making people freak out over China "owning" the US.

China holds a whopping 8% of our outstanding debt.

oooooooooooooooooo. Scary. It's almost TWO digits!!!!

Who do we owe our debt to? Mostly ourselves. US persons, corporations and various government trust funds own the vast majority of our debt.

What do we need to do? Fix the economy. Then the "debt problem" goes away. Fixing the economy requires doing the exact opposite of fixing our "massive debt problem". But that won't achieve the political aims of people claiming there's a massive debt problem.

what Alternet is spouting:

However, it is very interesting just how fast you ran away from China-as-boogeyman.

Neo-liberals aren't Keynesians. Krugman has ALWAYS been a Keynesian.

"Neoliberalism" isn't opposed to Keynesianism in any way. In fact, Obama's bank bailouts could very well be characterized as a neoliberal attempt at stabilizing the banking sector in an attempt to stave off any TRUE regulation.

over some of the things I read.

Last edited Tue Oct 9, 2012, 02:22 PM - Edit history (1)

Some more highlights from the Bloomberg article:

On declining debt issuance:

"Net U.S. taxable debt issuance, which includes corporate, mortgage and Treasury securities, is forecast to fall to $821 billion in 2012, the least since 2000 and less than half the record $2.28 trillion in 2007, according to Ira Jersey, an interest-rate strategist at Credit Suisse Group AG in New York. The firm is one of 21 primary dealers that trade directly with the Fed and is obligated to bid at Treasury auctions."

Companies sitting on record amounts of cash and looking at a slow-growing economy aren't going to borrow much, which leaves a whole lot of cash staring at treasuries...

Screaming all the way to the bank- Bill Gross invests in a "serial offender."

Sixty-seven percent of 1,031 global investors in a Bloomberg Global Poll in September 2011 said S&’s move was justified. Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund, said last week the U.S. will no longer be the first destination of global capital in search of safe returns unless fiscal spending and debt growth slows.

“The U.S., in fact, is a serial offender, an addict whose habit extends beyond weed or cocaine and who frequently pleasures itself with budgetary crystal meth,” Gross, who manages the $277.7 billion Total Return Fund (PTTRX), wrote in his monthly investment outlook posted Oct. 2 on Newport Beach, California-based Pimco’s website.

Gross eliminated government-related debt from the Total Return Fund in February 2011 and said in March of that year that Treasuries needed to be “exorcised” from portfolios. The fund lost against 70 percent of its peers that year, prompting Gross to capitulate and buy U.S. government debt. The company’s flagship fund has beaten 97 percent of its peers this year, Bloomberg data show.