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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (712331)	4/29/2013 12:18:38 PM
From: bentway	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1571803

POLITICO’s Ben White and Tarini Parti: “Democrats and their intellectual allies [who reject the need for fresh deficit and debt reduction] once occupied the political fringes, pushed aside by more moderate members who supported both immediate spending cuts and long-term entitlement reforms along with higher taxes. But aided by a pile of recent data suggesting the deficit is already shrinking significantly and current spending cuts are slowing the economy, more Democrats … are coming around to the point of view that fiscal austerity, in all its forms, is more the problem than the solution. “This group got a huge boost this month with the very public demolition of a sacred text of the austerity movement, the 2010 paper by a pair of Harvard professors arguing that once debt exceeds 90 percent of a country’s gross domestic product, it crushes economic growth. Turns out that’s not what the research really showed … and it’s helping shift the manner in which even middle-of-the-road Democrats talk about debt and deficits. … “‘The Democratic position is that we have already made significant progress in terms of long-term deficit reduction, and we are already seeing a drag on the economy from the sequester,’ said [Rep. Chris] Van Hollen, ranking member of the House Budget Committee. ‘There is no excuse for putting the brakes on already slow economic growth. The Republican plan is a prescription for more European-style austerity.’” AUSTERITY UNDER ATTACK FROM BOTH SIDES — “[T]he intellectual shift away from austerity is not just coming from the left. The conservative American Enterprise Institute issued a paper last week saying Congress has already achieved enough deficit reduction for now. Other organizations not typically associated with free-spending liberalism, including the [IMF] and Goldman Sachs, have cautioned that the austerity movement — which favors rapid reduction of national debt — may be worsening Europe’s economic problems and slowing down the U.S. recovery as well. … “This intellectual shift away from the need for more immediate deficit reduction is likely to make this summer’s debt ceiling fight even tougher. … And it makes execution of a ‘grand bargain’ on debt reduction — a pillar of [President Barack] Obama’s agenda and the subject of renewed talks between the White House and GOP senators — appear all but impossible.” THE DEMISE OF REINHART-ROGOFF — “‘Reinhart-Rogoff was supposed to establish a universal rule that there was a speed limit where debt above 90 percent of GDP became dangerous. Now I think that’s out the door,’ said Mike Konczal, a scholar at the progressive Roosevelt Institute. ‘You can still have a discussion about long-term entitlement reform, but it’s even less likely now that intellectually honest people will argue that it is even relevant to the current crisis’ of slow growth and high unemployment.” bit.ly politico.com