Debt

Archive for Debt

The Debt Ceiling and Default

A video version of the stuff I’ve been blogging about here. Note that I recorded this before news of the deal. And remember, my course on “Basics of Economics” starts today!

Is It Unconstitutional for the Federal Government to Default on Its Debt?

Nope. Or at least, I have as much authority in saying that, as the bloggers and pundits who claim otherwise. Here’s what the relevant section from the Fourteenth Amendment says: Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for […]

Potpourri

==> In Noah Smith’s absence, he has a claque of lesser men (and women) blogging at his site. This guy, Peter Dorman, not only failed to acknowledge The Great Debt Debate of 2012 in his initial post, but he dismissed Nick Rowe’s futile attempts to educate him in the comments. (Oh, notice Gene Callahan et […]

Two Obvious Facts on the Debt Ceiling Showdown

Big “showdowns” in Washington are always hype, with both sides distorting the facts so that the hapless citizen–whether he watches Fox or CNN–focuses on irrelevant details and misses the big picture. When it comes to the recurring conflict over raising the debt ceiling, here are two obvious facts that explode just about everything that the […]

US Government Starting to Face a Cash Crunch

This Neil Irwin post is pretty good (I think I got this from Alex Tabarrok on Twitter): [I]n the…market for Treasury bills, things are starting to get scary. These are short-term IOU’s of the U.S. government, bills issued for 30, 60 or 90 days. They enable Uncle Sam to manage cash flow much the way […]

Bob of Christmas Past on Debt Ceiling

Back in July 2011 I recorded a commentary for Campaign for Liberty on (not) raising the debt ceiling. They recently re-ran it, saying the numbers were a little different today but the general points are still valid–and I agree. In particular, the claim that failure to raise the debt ceiling is the same thing as […]

Sequestration Analysis

Man the CBO makes it tough to figure out what absolute spending levels will be. Their analysis of the December/January budget deal–the one that spared us the horrors of the fiscal cliff–is couched as changes relative to the then-current baseline. So I took that as the August 2012 CBO Outlook, and constructed the following: I […]

Paul Krugman’s Eyes Are Smiling

In this post, Krugman takes Marco Rubio to task for claiming that government deficits crowd out private investment. Amongst his points, Krugman produces the following scatter plot: …and then comments, “Contractionary policy has proved contractionary.” Wait a second. Look at that chart. Even on its own terms, it’s not nearly as obvious as Krugman makes […]