That’s the headline of this report from ABC News. Today, the U.S. National Debt is $16.7T, whereas our 2012 GDP was $15.6T, or our debt/GDP ratio is 107%. Economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff have shown that when debt levels are greater than 90% of GDP (for advanced economies), economic growth slows. EDIT Jun ’13: […]
Archives
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President Obama: There Is No Debt Crisis!
14 Mar 2013
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Janet Yellen, the current Vice-Chair of the Federal Reserve is rumored to be next in line to replace “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke. This is troubling because, as a committed Keynesian, she is a big fan of inflation as a way to lesson the pain of unemployment. Indeed, she is–as many others are–convinced that inflation causes small […]
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Steve Horwitz has a great counter to the income inequality debate, see here: HT to Don Boudreaux over at Cafe Hayek. For Christian thinkers, is there a biblical justification for concern over income inequality per se? I’m not talking about the poor here; simply does the Bible have anything to say in a negative sense […]
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Arthur Brooks produced yet another masterpiece in today’s WSJ, The key is here: Conservatives are fighting a losing battle of moral arithmetic. They hand an argument with virtually 100% public support—care for the vulnerable—to progressives, and focus instead on materialistic concerns and minority moral viewpoints. The irony is maddening. America’s poor people have been saddled […]
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Bernanke–the best inflation fighter ever?
28 Feb 2013
That’s at least what Mr. Bernanke suggests when challenged by Senator Corker during congressional testimony on Tuesday: Perhaps its true, IF the measure of inflation we should be concerned about is the rate of change of CPI. But there are at least two ways to criticize this way of thinking, in addition to the serious […]
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As we approach the impending sequestration, Mark Smith highlights the political tales of woe if it goes through (see below). But there seems to be an inconsistency in the “We’re all Keynesians now” Washington D.C. crowd. If you recall the fiscal cliff, President Obama proposed increased taxes that would only generate ~$80 Billion of additional […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach