U.S. Default: It's Not If But When

[SunTrader]

No it didn't The world was brutal and violent before the concept of credo boosted Italian cities and expanded the GDP potential. In most of the old days, the strong took from the weak and kept them enslaved via serfdom, outright slavery, or personal debt.

The world WAS brutal lol.

In today's world the 1% own 90%+ of all assets but ok got me there they don't own 99%. Yet.

The Fed, and in lockstep CB'S around the world, take from the weak and give to the strong.

The more things change the more they stay the same - just dressed differently.

 

[piezoe]

The world WAS brutal lol.

In today's world the 1% own 90%+ of all assets but ok got me there they don't own 99%. Yet.

The Fed, and in lockstep CB'S around the world, take from the weak and give to the strong.

The more things change the more they stay the same - just dressed differently.

You've made observations that can not be argued with, but your attributions are all wrong. You need to look to those that determine spending and tax policy, rather than to regulators and bill payers. The Fed and Treasury simply react within the confines of the orders they have been given. These agencies of government make mistakes. Their mistakes are corrected once recognized. Errors in legislative statutes and policy, in Judicial rulings, and in Administrative directives are, on the other hand, seldom owned up to and may go on indefinitely for political reasons, even long after they are recognized.

The Fed can not reasonably be blamed for Piketty's r>g, the relationship that guarantees wealth of those with capital will grow more rapidly than those without. This relationship of return on capital to economic growth is endogenous to all the Western capitalist societies we regularly compare ourselves to. It is in the United States, the most capitalist and least democratic of the comparable nations, where wealth inequality, and concomitant inequality under the law, has reached extremes approaching that seen in the days of serfdom. (For a globalized view, however, see https://www.theatlantic.com/interna...blem-with-pikettys-inequality-formula/371653/.)

If you hope to see less wealth inequality -- which you have indicated you believe is too high -- then to know what policies to support and which to shun you would first have to correctly understand the status quo.

 

[SunTrader]

LMAO

 

[piezoe]

Whatever. I posted not just for your benefit but for others too who are caught up on the size of debt and deficit without correct understanding. It is a common error. I made it myself for years. You seem to be hung up on MMT, and although I know MMT fairly well, it has little to do with points made by my posts. These posts do have to do with simple arithmetic however. If a government, which is the sole source of legal tender, taxes back out of an economy as much money as it created and spent into the economy, obviously zero dollars remain in the economy. Hence the requirement for deficits. This has more to do with fourth grade arithmetic than with MMT.

I don't mind you being silly, I like being silly myself sometimes. But there are others here who have simply bought into debt hysteria without first doing the arithmetic to realize that some deficits over time are absolutely necessary. For a 15-trillion-and-growing economy the required deficit can get rather large. Of course we can spend on the wrong things -- I think we have -- and deficits can get too large, at least in my estimation. It is not necessary to get into MMT to understand this. It does help to get into MMT, however, if you're interested in what roles Treasury securities play.

If you look back in time, you can find examples where the government, not understanding its own money, made mistakes by taxing more out of the economy than it spent back into it, to the point of leaving the private sector economy starved for liquidity. This happened rather dramatically after WWI when the Wilson administration produced budget surpluses via continued heavy taxation and used the surpluses to retire war debt as quickly as possible. The result was, not surprisingly, a severe recession....

 

[SunTrader]

2020 U.S. GDP 20.94 trillion

Current U.S. Debt 23.3 trillion

Math, 4th grade or any other level, don't lie.

 

[piezoe]

2020 U.S. GDP 20.94 trillion

Current U.S. Debt 23.3 trillion

Math, 4th grade or any other level, don't lie.

"The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name" ~ Confucius

I should remind you that when the central bank buys bonds it is reducing the so called "debt", As this action reverses what the Treasury did when it sold the bonds. In one case bonds are swapped for dollars; in the other, dollars are swapped for bonds. In neither case is new money being created. That happens only when the Central Bank covers Treasury overdrafts. To understand this fully you would have to study MMT, which you haven't. Japan has retired roughly 50% of their so-called debt by putting the yen back into the economy that they previously withdrew by substituting JGBs.

If you want to learn about this without going into the actual plumbing, you can read Stephanie Kelton's new book. It is an easy read, but so far as I can see consistent with the rigorous treatments, just much less detailed...and much less critical discussion.