Tag Archives: national debt

CBO—Still Out of Paradigm after All These Years

Posted on July 20, 2014 by Scott Fullwiler | 22 comments

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published its long-term deficit and national debt projections last week. These are the projections most widely cited in policy discussions about long-term “sustainability” of the national debt and entitlement programs. In this post I focus on a small but very important part of the report—the CBO’s discussion of the “Consequences of a Large and Growing Debt,” which can be found on pages 13-15. This section can be found in past reports going back several years, and hasn’t change much if it has changed at all during this time. It is also consistent with the thinking of most economists on these issues. As readers of this blog will recognize, the CBO’s analysis is “out of paradigm” in that it is inapplicable to a sovereign, currency-currency issuing government operating under flexible exchange rates such as the US, Japan, Canada, UK, Australia, etc.

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Posted in Scott Fullwiler

Tagged CBO, long-term deficit, national debt

The Five Worst Reasons Why the National Debt Should Matter To You: Part Four, Three REAL Reasons

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 10 comments

By Joe Firestone

This is the concluding post in a four part series on the “Top” reasons why the national debt should matter. In Part One, I considered “Fix the Debt’s” claim that high levels of debt cause high unemployment and argued that this is a false claim. In Part Two, I followed with a review of the historical record from 1930 to the present and showed that it refutes this claim throughout this period, and that there is not even one Administration where the evidence doesn’t contradict “Fix the Debt’s” theory. In Part Three I showed that the other four reasons advanced by “Fix the Debt” also had very little going for them. In this part, I’ll give reasons why the national debt does matter, and why we should fix it without breaking America, or causing people to suffer.

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Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged $60 Trillion Coin, austerity, bernie sanders, CBO, CPC Budget, debt-to-GDP ratio, deficit spending, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, HVPCS, John Conyers, medicare for all, MMT, modern money theory, national debt, Peter G. Peterson, “Fix the Debt”

The Five Worst Reasons Why the National Debt Should Matter To You: Part Three, The Other Four Worst Reasons

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 4 comments

By Joe Firestone

In Part One of this series, I considered “Fix the Debt’s” claim that high levels of debt cause high unemployment and gave a few reasons why this is a false claim. In Part Two, I followed with a review of the historical record from 1930 to the present and showed that it refutes this claim throughout this period, and that there is not even one Administration where the evidence doesn’t contradict “Fix the Debts” theory. In this part I’ll continue my examination of the other four “top reasons” why “Fix the Debt” insists that the National Debt should matter to you.

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Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged $60 Trillion Coin, austerity, CBO projections, debt-to-GDP ratio, deficit reduction, deficit spending, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, HVPCS, interest rates, MMT, modern money theory, national debt, Peter G. Peterson, Social Security, unemployment, “Fix the Debt”

The Five Worst Reasons Why the National Debt Should Matter To You: Part Two, the Record Since 1930

Posted on August 25, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 13 comments

By Joe Firestone

In Part One, of a critique of the most important of “Fix the Debt’s” reasons for “Why the National Debt Should Matter To You,” I asserted that high debt levels haven’t caused high unemployment in the United States, and that, if anything causation was in the other direction. I didn’t want to disturb the flow of the argument there with a relatively lengthy survey of some of the numbers in the historical record since the 1930s. But let’s test the idea that High debt causes fewer jobs and lower wages in the United States by looking at that record now.

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13 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged austerity, debt-to-GDP ratio, deficit spending, fiat currency, GBC, goldilocks economy, Government Budget Constraint, MMT, modern money theory, national debt, Peter G. Peterson, sectoral financial balances, unemployment, “Fix the Debt”

The Five Worst Reasons Why the National Debt Should Matter To You: Part One, High Debt Levels and Jobs

Posted on August 24, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 28 comments

By Joe Firestone

I came across a post from the “Fix the Debt” campaign last month called “The Top Five Worst Reasons Why the National Debt Should Matter to You.” It’s a post full of debt/deficit lies that cry out for correction. That’s what I’ll provide in this series. Continue reading →

28 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged $60 Trillion Coin, austerity, debt-to-GDP ratio, deficit spending, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, HVPCS, MMT, modern money theory, national debt, Peter G. Peterson, unemployment

“Fixing the Debt Without Breaking America” now available

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Devin Smith | 55 comments

NEP’s Joe Firestone has just published a kindle book timed to coincide with the arrival of the sequester deadline. The book, Fixing the Debt without Breaking America: Austerity, the Trillion Dollar Coin, and Ending Debt Ceiling, Sequester, and Budgetary Crises, consists of reorganized content from Joe’s blogs plus three completely new chapters. You can follow this link to get a copy.

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55 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged austerity, debt ceiling, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, national debt, sequestration, Trillion Dollar Coin

The President’s Leverage: He Can Go Platinum

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Devin Smith | 40 comments

By Joe Firestone

Well, that’s over. The President had a chance to go “over the cliff,” bargain hard with the Republicans, get more of what he said he wanted at the price of perhaps some more days of crisis with extreme pressure building on the Republican caucus, and he blinked. I don’t much care that he blinked on tax rates for the top 2% and on inheritance taxes, because tax rate increases for purposes of deficit reduction simply aren’t needed for getting deficit spending needed to create jobs, as the rest of this post will show. Here’s what I care about: Continue reading →

40 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged $60 T coin, congress, debt ceiling, debt limit, deficit, deficit spending, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, national debt, platinum coin seigniorage

Government Financial Asset Addition = “Deficit”; Government Financial Asset Destruction = “Surplus”

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Devin Smith | 16 comments

By Joe Firestone

The word “deficit,” when applied to the Government financial accounting of a monetarily sovereign nation, that is, one that issues a non-convertible fiat currency, with a floating exchange rate, and no debts in a currency it doesn’t issue, is a problem, because the label “deficit” when applied to such a Government doesn’t mean what most people think it means. As Michel Hoexter points out:

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16 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged deficit, michael hoexter, MMT, modern money theory, national debt, net contribution, net financial assets, savings, surplus, the addition, the destruction, the national credit, the national depletion

Stop Using Obama for America Against the People!

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Devin Smith | 12 comments

By Joe Firestone

Obama for America, the campaign apparatus with the very large e-mailing list and great segmentation techniques that exploited Romney’s weaknesses to help the President to eke out (yes, I know the electoral vote involved no “eking out,” but the popular vote was something else again) his re-election victory, is now trying to mobilize people who voted for the President to work against their own interests by supporting his deficit/debt cutting activities. So, I couldn’t resist the following commentary on their mobilization e-mail. Continue reading →