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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BGR who wrote (77293)	3/9/2000 1:31:00 PM
From: Zach E.	Respond to of 132070

BGR, You are using old data to refute the Treasuries future intentions. Not that in the original note, I said that "so far, it is a surplus in name only." I found the press release from the Treasury here (let me know if this is not the same one that you were referring to): ustreas.gov The release does support the contention that debt will be paid down (up to $30 billion). So, maybe the debt by this time in 2001 will be ~$30 billion lower than now, or only ~$115 billion higher than 1999. But then I got to the last paragraph, which reads in part: "Over the last two years, America has made the largest pay down of debt ever -- $140 billion..." Even you would (hopefully) agree that the above is misleading, since they are not counting the interest-bearing, non-marketable debt that has increased by far more than the marketable debt has decreased (presumably what they are talking about in the above). So, given the fact that they are already taking credit for a debt paydown that has not happened in any real sense, color me skeptical that we will see a decrease in debt by next year. However, I will agree that we cannot know whether that will happen until next year's figures come out, so if you want to postpone further discussion until then, fine. Zach