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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bearshark who wrote (172421)	10/13/2005 8:23:43 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

That works well. ...I was thinking about the national debt the other day and public debt vs. intragovernmental debt. Perhaps you might have noticed that the national debt is inching up a bit. It occurred to me that even when the government is running a surplus [which conservatives have recently discovered is a bad thing], you can't pay down the intragovernmental debt. It's not allowed. The intragovernmental debt represents the SS liability. If you paid down that debt, you would be eliminating the liability. The accounting equivalent of matter and anti-matter coming in contact with each other. I suppose if we put the Enron CFO and his staff in charge it could be done, but otherwise, the only way to lower the intragovernmental debt is to pay the liabilities as they come due. jttmab