Re: ""nothing else is excluded...."
So, to be clear, you are saying that Foreign Sovereign ownership of US sovereign debt was included under the definition of that line 'public ownership', (& thus on the chart)?
OK.
Re: " When was the last storm that was as damaging to the US as Katrina?...."
Or the Fed-engineered drying up of liquidity in the early 1980s? Or the long-term costs to the taxpayers of the S&L crisis and bailouts (around a Trillion, with interest on the debt)? Long Term Credit crisis... Asian devaluation crisis... Japanese crash... Reagan recession... Bush I recession... etc., etc., etc.
EACH extended period of time has it's own down-turns, unexpected crisis, business blow-ups, fraud/waste/abuse, wars, storms, etc.
The turns of the business cycle are normal. Financial and credit crisis are to be expected (a normal and routine part of Capitalism), and planned for. ACCOMMODATED.
What is *abnormal* is the assumption of eternally rosy results....
Re: "Harm to the economy is much more complex than higher deficits. Its still opinion. Assumes facts not in evidence."
$200 Billion dollars this year (and one of the fastest rising line items in the entire federal budget!) is the REAL and MEASURED cost of interest payments on the (ever rising) national debt.
Not 'opinion'. Measurable (& extremely unpleasant) reality.
The national debt ($5.6 Trillion when Bush first took office, and closing out this fiscal year at about $10 Trillion) is also a very unpleasant fact. Not an opinion.
In a world of rising interest rates, rising real cost of debt service, as the prices of real assets climb... that will only become MORE of an extremely unpleasant reality. |
