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Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy Jetson who wrote (9262)	10/3/2004 4:33:11 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15516

"Americans eat their homes to feed their family." Of course, nothing in that report, interesting as it was, supports such a statement. The first graph you linked shows what appears to be a dramatic surge in home equity borrowing, but the headline the bank gave it associated the borrowing with a surge in spending on consumer durables (i.e. washing machines, refridgerators, cars, TVs, computers, etc.), not "feed[ing] their famil[ies]." In fact, they show that surge in durables spending on the page before - surely you noticed that, right? BTW, you might be interested in knowing (or you may not, if it doesn't mesh with the party lie -oops- line about the economy) that household debt service ratios have been essentially flat since Bush took office after rising steadily (though not alarmingly, IMO) during the prior eight years. federalreserve.gov As for the other graph, it clearly does not show government spending "spiraling out of control." In fact, it doesn't even show government spending. It shows deficits, which are a function of both spending AND revenues. And it doesn't even show deficits as "spiraling out of control" as it shows them as being smaller than those of the early '90s, '80s or briefly in the '70s. That graph is also erroneous, BTW. It shows a surplus in 2000 of well over 4% of GDP. The "real" number (never mind that gov'y deficit reporting is bogus to begin with and there WAS no real surplus in 2000) only got to 2.4% accroding to the CBO. cbo.gov BTW, none of that answers my question as to the point Mephisto was attempting to make with the article he posted. I assume there was a point, anyway.