Saturday, June 12, 2010

It's official--Bobo is an austerity ghoul

Since the whole world seems to be going on an austerity kick, it is not surprising that the Grey Lady is leading the charge.  And Baker is correct--these idiots actually DO believe in magic.
David Brooks and the Power of Magical Thinking at the NYT
by Dean Baker | June 11, 2010 - 11:20am
David Brooks doesn't like the stimulus, as readers of his columns know. Today he engages in a bit of magical thinking in putting out his case for deficit reduction.
His first invention is telling us: "deficit spending in the middle of a debt crisis has different psychological effects than deficit spending at other times." This is very interesting, what "debt crisis" is Brooks referring to? We can point to a debt crisis in Greece, and arguably Portugal and Spain, but it is not clear what that has to do with the argument for stimulus in the United States. There were debt crises in Latin America in the 80s, no one ever raised these in the context of the Reagan era budget deficits.
In the real world we would look to things like the ratio of debt to GDP in the United States (@60 percent) and compare it to the ratios in other countries and to the U.S. at other points in time. There are several countries with debt to GDP ratios of far more than 100 percent who are able to borrow money with no difficulty. For example, Japan has a debt to GDP ratio of more than 110 percent yet it pays less than 1.5 percent interest on its long-term debt. Right after World War II the debt to GDP ratio in the United States was also over 110 percent, yet interest rates were low and the economy had decades of solid growth. more

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