Paul Krugman added another post on the potential impact of large deficits on the U.S. economy in which he argues that it doesn't matter that the U.S. can print its own currency; it still faces the same constraints from financial markets. I would argue that it matters a great deal for two reasons that I laid out in my previous post.

The first reason is that at any point in time the Fed would have the option to intervene in bond markets and buy up debt, if private investors were demanding very high interest rates. This is important because the decision by the Fed to not buy debt would always be a policy choice, not an economic fact.

There is a popular mythology in economic policy circles that in 1979 there was no alternative to putting Paul Volcker in as chair of the Federal Reserve Board to really tighten the screws and get inflation under control. At the time inflation was rising and the dollar was falling. Volcker sent rates through the roof, giving us the recessions of 1980 (destroying Carter's re-election chances) and then 1981-82. The latter recession was at the time the worst of the post-war era.

Volcker is widely touted for making the tough call to throw millions of people out of work. (Somehow rich and powerful people are always credited with being "tough" when they inflict pain on ordinary workers and the poor. It seems that if they were really tough they would be inflicting pain on the rich.) Arguably Volcker made the right call even though it did impose enormous costs on the country.

This is what readers of his column presenting a hypothetical presidential address to the country in 2026 must be wondering. In this speech, Mr. Mankiw's president explains to the country how the rising cost of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid let to unsustainable deficits. Of course Mr. Mankiw's president knows that the real story is the explosive growth of the costs of Medicare and Medicaid. These were in turn driven by the soaring cost of private sector health care. If per person costs in the United States were the same as in other wealthy countries then the United States would be looking at a budget surplus, not a deficit.

Given the basic facts, it is hard to understand why Mankiw's president did not propose a system that allowed the United States to take advantage of trade in medical services by letting Medicare beneficiaries buy into the more efficient health care systems in other countries. The tens of thousands of dollars in annual saving could be split between the beneficiaries, the host government and the U.S. government. The total savings to the U.S. government would reach hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

If Mankiw's president were not such a protectionist then surely she would have pushed for such a policy long before this speech. Opening to trade certainly seems preferable to cutting off health insurance to middle income beneficiaries, as Mankiw's president proposed.

It does not happen often, but it does happen; I have to disagree with Paul Krugman this morning. In an otherwise excellent column criticizing the drive to austerity in the United States and elsewhere, Krugman comments:

"But couldn’t America still end up like Greece? Yes, of course. If investors decide that we’re a banana republic whose politicians can’t or won’t come to grips with long-term problems, they will indeed stop buying our debt."

Actually this is not right for the simple reason that the United States has its own currency. This is important because even in the worst case scenario, where the deficit in United States spirals out of control, the crisis would not take the form of the crisis in Greece.

Greece is like the state of Ohio. If Ohio has to borrow, it has no choice but to persuade investors to buy its debt. Unless Greece leaves the euro (an option that it probably should be considering, at least to improve its bargaining position), it must pay the rate of interest demanded by private investors or meet the conditions imposed by the European Union/IMF as part of a bailout.

However, because the United States has its own currency it would always have the option to buy its own debt. The Federal Reserve Board could in principle buy an unlimited amount of debt simply by printing more money. This could lead to a serious problem with inflation, but it would not put us in the Greek situation of having to go hat in hand before the bond vigilantes.

This appears to be the case, since the Post featured an article, arguing that Social Security benefits should be cut, that made no reference to the the trust fund. The article tells readers:

"Social Security is the single largest federal program, dispensing about $700 billion last year to nearly 60 million people, the vast majority of them retirees. Since the program’s creation in 1935, the cost of Social Security benefits has been entirely covered by payroll taxes paid by current workers. This year, however, payroll tax revenues are projected to fall $45 billion short of covering benefits, and the problem is projected to grow as the number of retirees balloons compared with the number of working adults."

Actually, there have been prior years when current taxes did not cover benefits, but more importantly the program quite deliberately built up a surplus of more than $2.6 trillion, which is held in U.S. government bonds. It is drawing on the interest from these bonds in 2011. It will eventually rely on the principle on these bonds, which will be sufficient, together with current taxes, to cover all benefits through the year 2037.

Mark WeisbrotThe Sacramento Bee (CA), March 24, 2011 En Español

March 2011, Dean Baker

Georgianne Nienaber has an extremely important article on the housing crisis that will confront whoever is the next president. As Nienaber writes, "The bottom line is that half a million Haitians will be living in "tent" (tarp) cities at least through 201

Dean Baker
Truthout, March 23, 2011

Even former President Bill Clinton thinks that structural unemployment – unemployment stemming from a mismatch between job seekers' skills and job requirements – is an important cause of unemployment today. One oft-cited cause of structural unemployment i

Dean Baker
The Guardian Unlimited, March 22, 2011