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

To: i-node who wrote (763006)	1/10/2014 1:39:24 PM
From: Wharf Rat	1 Recommendation Recommended By bentway Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573432

bad data What If We Paid Off The Debt? The Secret Government Report by David Kestenbaum October 20, 2011 Planet Money has obtained a secret government report outlining what once looked like a potential crisis: The possibility that the U.S. government might pay off its entire debt. It sounds ridiculous today. But not so long ago, the prospect of a debt-free U.S. was seen as a real possibility with the potential to upset the global financial system. We recently obtained the report through a Freedom of Information Act Request. You can read the whole thing here. (It's a PDF.) The report is called "Life After Debt". It was written in the year 2000, when the U.S. was running a budget surplus, taking in more than it was spending every year. Economists were projecting that the entire national debt could be paid off by 2012. npr.org

To: i-node who wrote (763006)	1/10/2014 2:46:51 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1573432

Dave, they were CURRENT ACCOUNT SURPLUSES, meaning that for those periods, the government took in more revenue than it paid out. I know it's difficult for a highly trained accountant for yourself to understand such things, but CURRENT ACCOUNT SURPLUSES don't reduce the national debt, unless they are applied to paying down the national debt. Clinton and his crew even considered applying them to the national debt, but he was warned, by Alan Greenspan among others, that paying down the national debt might not be a good idea. So, Clinton made the mistake of passing the surplus on to George W. Bush. As I'm SURE you recall, George W. Bush took the surplus and returned it to the taxpayers, in the form of $300 checks. Remember "It's YOUR money!" HE could have used it to pay down the national debt, but chose not to. He certainly thought he had some surplus money - are you calling the "greatest president of your lifetime" a LIAR? monitor.net