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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (118450)	12/21/2000 1:17:32 AM
From: TimbaBear	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769670

When you call a bond early, usually you are paying a premium for the call but your are not paying the entire interest that would have been due had the bond never been called. You appear to be defending a position rather than thinking through both sides of it. Either that, or you have only an academic understanding of some of the features of a bond call. If you thought it through, you would realize that under your current conceptualization, no bonds would ever be called early because they never would make sense. Since bonds are called early in some situations, your thinking needs to be refined. The US Government spent more than it took in for many years and for 12 of them spent drastically more. I will not, in this forum, attempt to address the issues of whether this spending was or was not well advised. I just accept the playing field we now have. The Government's ability to handle the current debt service burdens exceeds what is a prudent level in normal economic times. The current economic times are not normal, they have been extremely positive and somewhat mask this fact of excessive debt and debt service with budget "surpluses". The good times have peaked and are now in the beginnings of decline. The "surpluses" (with no change in income or spending)will now start to decline. The pain of the debt service will begin to be felt increasingly, but probably somewhat gradually at first. To offset this event somewhat, a prudent financial manager would pare expenses while the party is still ongoing. This is what the current administration has been doing and the administration-elect appears to be ignoring. I hope I am wrong.