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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pezz who wrote (5348)	11/9/2000 10:30:55 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10042

what does that have to do with our discussion? It has a lot to do with the discussion when you consider we supposedly ran a $90 billion surplus last year... That means that SOMEONE LIED!! Instead the national debt ROSE by some $60+ billion!! Now it begs the question as to why they didn't dedicate ALL of that $90 billion from last year, OR THE $237 BILLION THIS YEAR, to paying down the debt. The simple answer is that they really can't pay back $200 billion per year without distorting the market and making the dollar even more attractive versus the Euro/Yen.. If you don't understand the concept, you'll need to pick up a book on macro-economics and floating exchange rates. My entire point is that anything that increases the national debt (like holding trust fund money in T-bills, ie: privately held government debt) opens the door to politicians spending it rather than buying out publicly held government debt. Just as liberals are claiming that putting the surplus into the stock market would be risky and distorting, so is it for government debt markets. Except screwing with government debt markets has a direct correlation on the value of the US dollar. The only realistic solution I can think of at the moment would be to set up a "target zone" for where the Fed/Treasury would like to the dollar to trade and then buy back debt when the dollar is weak, or rebate surplus tax revenues when the dollar is overvalued, in a manner that meets that goal.