U.S. Debt Is Not Like Europe’s: It’s Time to Spend Our Way to Recovery, Says Galbrait

[Free Thinker]

and to think this guy is from texas. the right wingers always beat up on krugman because he is an eastern libreal when he says the same thing. wonder what they will say now? he is basically saying the republicans austarity plans will tank the economy.

U.S. Debt Is Not Like Europe’s: It’s Time to Spend Our Way to Recovery, Says Galbraith
But James Galbraith, professor of economics at the University of Texas, still has his concerns about the state of the U.S. economy.

But Galbraith believes drastic cuts in a time of economic distress is the wrong strategy and could do more harm than good.

So what about the warnings from the ratings agencies? Galbraith doesn't give them much credence.


"[Unlike Europe] there is no long-term [public] debt problem. We're clearly in a sustainable situation or the markets would not be giving the U.S. government the rates that they're giving it," he says while noting that debt to GDP in the U.S. is no where near 100% when you factor out the amount of debt that is actually held by the government itself.


http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/u-debt-not-europe-time-spend-way-recovery-125624442.html

 

[jem]

Sure... keep spending our kids money until the ponzi scheme collapses and we turn into to some crony socialist state like east germany. I love these fricken "patriots" who claim to be economists who do not understand that after a bubble you need to clean out the excess, not distort the market and support it by robbing from our kids.

This guy is a comedic leftist clown who was a senate staffer and writes leftist tripe as a career advancement tool in the field of govt handout positions and holder of the lloyd bentsen chair!!!

here is his bio...

http://utip.gov.utexas.edu/JG/

James K. Galbraith

Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and Professor of Government

Galbraith is the author of six books and several hundred scholarly and policy articles. His most recent book, "Unbearable Cost: Bush, Greenspan and the Economics of Empire, was published by Palgrave-MacMillan in late 2006. His next book will be “The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too,” forthcoming from The Free Press. Inequality and Industrial Change: A Global View (Cambridge University Press, 2001), is coedited with Maureen Berner and features contributions from six LBJ School Ph.D. students. Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay, was published by the Free Press in August 1998.

Galbraith maintains several outside connections, including serving as a Senior Scholar of the Levy Economics Institute (www.levy.org) and as chair of Economists for Peace and Security (www.epsusa.org). He also writes a column on economic and political issues for Mother

Jones, and contributes occasionally to The American Prospect, The Nation, the Texas Observer and to the op-ed pages of the major newspapers.

Galbraith teaches economics and a variety of other subjects at the LBJ School and UT Austin's Department of Government. He holds degrees from Harvard and Yale (Ph.D. in Economics, 1981). He studied economics as a Marshall Scholar at King's College, Cambridge, and later served on the staff of the U.S. Congress, including as Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee, before joining the faculty of the University of Texas. He held a Fulbright Distinguished Visiting Lectureship in China in the summer of 2001, and was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2003. His recent research has focused on the measurement and understanding of inequality in the world economy, while his policy writing ranges from monetary policy to the economics of warfare, with forays into politics and history. Visit the web-site of the University of Texas Inequality Project (UTIP) for current research and an archive of published writings.

 

[Max E.]

LOL, too funny, nice find Jem.

Quote from jem:

Sure... keep spending our kids money until the ponzi scheme collapses and we turn into to some crony socialist state like east germany. I love these fricken "patriots" who claim to be economists who do not understand that after a bubble you need to clean out the excess, not distort the market and support it by robbing from our kids.

This guy is a comedic leftist clown who was a senate staffer and writes leftist tripe as a career advancement tool in the field of govt handout positions and holder of the lloyd bentsen chair!!!

here is his bio...

 

[rew]

If more deficit spending will fix the economy then run up your own credit card. Advocates of spending money we don't have should have to pay the principal and interest, not me.

 

[Ricter]

Quote from rew:

If more deficit spending will fix the economy then run up your own credit card. Advocates of spending money we don't have should have to pay the principal and interest, not me.

If a guy loses his job it might be a good idea for him to get a haircut, a new suit, have a resume makeover, take a night course, etc. All things he'd have to spend money on.

 

[Lucrum]

Quote from Ricter:

If a guy loses his job it might be a good idea for him to get a haircut, a new suit, have a resume makeover, take a night course, etc. All things he'd have to spend money on.

THIS is your rationalization of our governments massive deficit spending?

In your "analogy" the expenses are minor and immediately show results.

The federal governments spending is huge and has in most cases only marginal if any benefit to the nation as a whole.

 

[rew]

Quote from Ricter:

If a guy loses his job it might be a good idea for him to get a haircut, a new suit, have a resume makeover, take a night course, etc. All things he'd have to spend money on.

Those would be excellent things for him to put on his own credit card.

 

[Petsamo]

Quote from Free Thinker:
and to think this guy is from texas.

Yes Free Thinker, there are lefties in right-wing Texas, particularly if they come from academia.

 

[Max E.]

This is spot on. Good call.

Keynesians and big government supporters always seem to ignore the velocity of money, it is the single concept that continues to baffle them to this day, and it is also the main reason why government stimulus and keynesian economics has failed repeatedly over time.

The best metaphor i can think of for the failure of the stimulus is this. If you had a car that was stalled on the side of the road because it ran out of gas most people would logically think to stick gas in the GAS TANK but the plan of big government supporters is to simply douse the entire car in gasoline and hope some of it eventually makes its way into the tank.

And if you are Obama, when that fails, the plan is to simply light a match, and blame it on the republican kid down the road when the whole car blows up.

Quote from Lucrum:

THIS is your rationalization of our governments massive deficit spending?

In your "analogy" the expenses are minor and immediately show results.

The federal governments spending is huge and has in most cases only marginal if any benefit to the nation as a whole.

 

[Ricter]

Quote from Lucrum:

THIS is your rationalization of our governments massive deficit spending?

In your "analogy" the expenses are minor and immediately show results.

The federal governments spending is huge and has in most cases only marginal if any benefit to the nation as a whole.

My point is, not all spending is bad. I agree there is waste, but I submit that waste can be minimized. I also realize that just as I think there are some programs we don't need, another guy thinks we do need them, and we're both equally adamant about it. That knowledge, if it really sinks in, requires one to "man up" and learn to compromise.