June 01, 2010
The Washington Post notes the conventional wisdom of the Washington elite that there should be a run on U.S. bonds because of the size of the country’s debt and deficits. It then points out that the markets seem to be contradicting the conventional wisdom. It is worth noting that nearly all of the purveyors of this conventional wisdom completely missed the $8 trillion housing bubble, the collapse of which wrecked the economy. Missing a bubble of this enormous size suggests that this convention wisdom is not grounded in a serious understanding of the economy. It would have been worth noting this point in discussing the conventional wisdom.
The article also asserts that: “the mix of spending cuts and tax increases that could close the gap [the budget deficit] are wildly unpopular.” This is not true. During a period of extraordinarily high unemployment, like the present, there is no reason that the Fed could not simply buy and hold the debt being issued in order to prevent future interest burdens from increasing. To reduce future health care expenditures the government could publicly finance clinical trials for prescription drugs, thereby allowing all new drugs to be sold as generics for a few dollars per prescription. It could also allow Medicare beneficiaries to buy into the lower cost health systems in other countries, sharing the huge savings with the beneficiaries. The government could also roll back defense spending to the levels projected before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And, to raise revenue the government could impose a financial speculation tax like the one that currently exists in the UK.
There is no evidence to suggest that any of these measures are wildly unpopular although powerful interest groups may object to them.
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