deficit spending

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: Read below the fold...

Here's the next group of Ryan's follies from his answer to the President's 2011 SOTU.

On bureaucracy and innovation:

”Depending on bureaucracy to foster innovation, competitiveness, and wise consumer choices has never worked – and it won’t work now.”

That may be. But depending on the big banks and big US corporations to either get lending going again, or to bring innovation and jobs to the United States also won't work. What will work is for the Government to increase aggregate demand by deficit spending in areas of the economy we want to grow.

“Bureaucracy” is just a scare term. The big corporations that Ryan, the Republicans, and many Democratic Congresspeople serve are all just as bureaucratic, and in the case of the health insurance companies, even more bureaucratic than the Government. The dirty little secret of the social sciences is that bureaucracy comes with large size whether we're talking about private or public organizations. So, unless Ryan has plans to break up the large banks, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, telecommunications companies, and exporters he loves so much, he really ought to shut up about “bureaucracy,” because his precious private sector has absolutely nothing to crow about when it comes to that feature of large organizations.

If we don't like bureaucracy, then what we need is regulation that will break up large organizations, making them illegal beyond a certain size. Then perhaps we might create functioning markets and be able to shrink the Federal government too. But this kind of solution is off the table for Ryan and Romney since regulation is a no-no from the standpoint of their ideology. Read below the fold...

Still more Ryan's follies from his answer to the President's 2011 SOTU.

On the Affordable Care Act (ACA)

”Then the President and his party made matters even worse, by creating a new open-ended health care entitlement.

“What we already know about the President’s health care law is this: Costs are going up, premiums are rising, and millions of people will lose the coverage they currently have. Job creation is being stifled by all of its taxes, penalties, mandates and fees.”

Read below the fold...

More on Ryan's follies and the overall quality of thinking we find in this young “guru”! Here's more from his answer to the President's 2011 SOTU.

”On this current path, when my three children – who are now 6, 7, and 8 years old – are raising their own children, the Federal government will double in size, and so will the taxes they pay.”

It will be roughly 19 years until Ryan's children are raising their own children, and guess what? GDP will be between two and three times what it is now, and, as we've already seen there's no reason why taxes should be any higher as a percentage of income for most people, unless of course, people like Ryan keep lowering taxes for the rich and raising them for everyone else in order to achieve a damaging budgetary surplus.

Hopefully, the tax rates for the top 2% of the population will be far higher than they are now, and estate taxes will return to their levels in the 1950s, so that gentlemen like Congressman Ryan can begin to pay their fair share again, and the United States can once again have a wealth distribution that is more equal than the likes of Russia, China, Turkey, and Jordan. Read below the fold...

In celebration of Paul Ryan's nomination, and in consideration of his reputation among Washington, DC villagers as a fiscal guru, I thought it might be fun to do a series of posts, of which this is the first, critiquing examples of Ryan's past wisdom. Here's the first example:

”We face a crushing burden of debt. The debt will soon eclipse our entire economy, and grow to catastrophic levels in the years ahead.”

The debt referred to here by the Congressman is the accounting construct of the national debt subject to the limit, or the face value of the debt instruments the Government has yet to redeem. But just why the “burden of debt” is so crushing, or even a burden at all to you and I really needs to be explained carefully by Ryan and the other deficit hawks to the rest of us.

I don't see any public debt burden on myself or any American people at all either at present or in the future. Why? Because a burdensome debt is one that you and I will personally have to pay back, and we just won't ever have to pay the public debt of the US back from taxes that we are asked to pay to the Government. That is, we won't unless Congress and people who believe the things Mr. Ryan believes, decide to pay the debt by levying taxes, cutting Government spending, and running Government surpluses until it is paid. Read below the fold...

I have a petition to President Obama up here. It's about minting that $60 T coin and ending austerity. The wording of the petition is:

”A 1996 law gives the Executive Authority to mint coins w/arbitrarily large face values and deposit them at the Fed. The President should immediately mint a $60 Trillion coin, and use the proceeds to pay off the national debt completely, cover all likely deficit spending by Congress over the next 15 years, and take the issue of spending cuts in programs that benefit the 99% off the table! Google "$60 Trillion coin" for background!”

The purpose is: Read below the fold...

Well, here we are again, House leaders have agreed on a compromise continuing spending resolution at the same level as before from October 2012 through January 2013. It's likely now that the President(s?) will probably try to make the money available for deficit spending as of today, last through the time period of the continuing resolution so that one deal including both the budget and raising the debt limit can be made by March of 2013. According to the July 31, Daily Treasury Statement, there's $499,424,000,000 left until the debt ceiling. That's an average of $62,428,000,000 deficit spending per month for the next 8 months, ending March 31, 2013.

For the past 10 months, average deficit spending was at $114,802.3 Billion per month, and that amount was not enough stimulus for a full recovery. So, the likely 46% reduction in average deficit spending over the next 8 months is unlikely to be any more effective in pulling us out of the extended employment recession we are experiencing, than the deficits in the preceding 10 months were. On the contrary, deficit spending over the next 8 months is unlikely even to allow us to maintain the unemployment levels we have now. So, what ought to be done?

The most important thing that can be done is to change the fiscal context of politics from one of apparent scarcity "justifying" austerity to one where spending capacity is so plentiful, that Congress will be hard-pressed to impose austerity, because its justification in the form of apparent limitations on spending capacity will just seem silly. In the summer of 2011 I proposed a solution to the debt ceiling crisis calling for the minting of a $30 T platinum coin to overcome the problem and also improve the fiscal context for progressive legislation. Now, I want to update that post and apply it to the present political situation, where based on the above events, the next serious fiscal crisis is likely to happen in February and/or March of 2013. So, here's the update. Read below the fold...

It's hard to listen to the doomsday rhetoric of Austerians like Paul Ryan and intermittently the less hysterical, but equally mythical narratives of the President when he talks about deficit/debt reduction, when you know better; when you know that both are talking about a bogeyman that doesn't exist. Here's Ryan, the Republican wunderkind:

“We face a crushing burden of debt. The debt will soon eclipse our entire economy, and grow to catastrophic levels in the years ahead.”

Read below the fold...

Like many of us, every once in awhile I get an e-mail from Michelle Obama asking for a contribution in return for a chance at having an up close and personal dinner with her husband. Here's how I replied.

Dear Mrs. Obama

My wife and I will not contribute to your husband's campaign this time around unless he immediately

1) Abandons his ridiculous and harmful deficit reduction campaign;

2) Stops talking about the US running out of money;

3) PROVES that is not the case by using his authority under legislation passed in 1996 and minting a 1 oz. Proof Platinum $60 Trillion face-value coin, depositing it at the Federal Reserve, and the using the Mint's seigniorage profits to fill the Treasury General Account (TGA) with approximately $60 Trillion in electronic credits; Read below the fold...

There's a distinction between Congressional appropriations, the mandate to spend particular amounts on particular goods and services, and the capability to spend those mandated amounts. The capability is the amount of electronic credits in the public purse, whether any of it has been appropriated for spending by the Congress or not. Congressional appropriations, not the size or contents of the purse, determines what will be spent and what will simply sit in the purse for use at a later time. So, there is a very important distinction between the USD level in the purse and whether any of it can be spent. Read below the fold...

This one is a message intended for all progressive organizations, especially those who have worked so hard to derail the drive for cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, or are working hard to protect other valuable discretionary programs.

There's another hostage-taking coming in the next three months over the 2012 Budget legislation. You know it! I know it! Everyone knows it!

So ask yourselves these questions:

1. Would Congress and the President be trying to cut Federal spending if the Treasury General Account (TGA) at the Fed had more than $50 Trillion in it?

Read below the fold...

How can the President win a victory for the people in the coming hostage-taking over the budget? Here's a scenario!

1. Mint a platinum coin with face value big enough to cover pay-off of the national debt, and the gap between tax revenues and Government spending for many years to come. For example, $60 Trillion in face value would generate enough electronic credits in the Treasury General Account (TGA) at the Fed to last for about 20 years or through 2030. Result: $60 Trillion in the TGA, none of it spent, so no possibility of inflation. Read below the fold...

Now that a debt ceiling deal has ended the immediate crisis, the attention being given to the President's options, in case there was no deal on the debt, will fade into the background, and most of the options offered to get past the debt ceiling won't be discussed again, until the next time there's a “debt ceiling crisis.” In highlighting, in previous posts, the President's option of using Proof Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PPCS) to pay back part or all of the national debt, other bloggers and myself writing about PPCS, have raised broader questions of whether the President should use it to:

-- 1) pay back the national debt entirely, Read below the fold...

By

Scott Fullwiler

(X-posted with permission of the author and New Economic Perspectives)

(Editor's note:I think this is the definitive post on how proof platinum coin seigniorage relates to inflation. So, I've now stickied it!) Read below the fold...

Today the MSM question of the morning for Congressional Progressive Caucus members is a variant of this:

“Which is worse, voting for a debt ceiling increase bill that doesn't raise any revenue and that will lead to major cuts in discretionary programs, and in entitlements including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, or voting to defeat a bill that does that and causing the United States to go into a default.”

So, there it is: a false choice again, being used to make progressives look bad if they say they will vote against anything but a clean debt ceiling deal. Read below the fold...