The Federal Budget Sequester Is Coming, and It Won’t Be Pretty | The Exchange - Yahoo! Finance
But before we get to the "and yet...," let's review the bidding. For
many years, federal policymakers have spent more money than they have
coming in. Policymakers were able to "steer" this irresponsible course
because the U.S. has the most powerful economy in history and a long
record of repaying its debts. So private American investors, the
Chinese, the Japanese, the Saudis, and almost everyone else with a
little lose change believes that if they loan their money to Washington,
it will be safe and they will even earn a little interest. Although
most Americans don't realize it, they get their federal benefits in part
from the Chinese. And, hey, if it works, why stop? In fact, letting
other people pay our bills has worked so well that for the last four
years that federal policymakers have spent well over $5 trillion more
than they took in, bringing the nation's public debt to over $16
trillion.
Running deficits as we have been doing is what is really "stupid,
ridiculous, insane," etc. In fact, the exploding federal deficit is one
of the three or four greatest failures of government in U.S. history.
The worst thing about our deficit is that we now charge ourselves 60
cents for every dollar we spend and pass the other 40 cents on to the
next generation. Americans have never done anything like this before.
No comments:
Post a Comment