[ExI] I Miss The King of Extropia

John Clark johnkclark at gmail.com
Mon Jul 18 00:33:48 UTC 2016


On Sun, Jul 17, 2016 at 4:13 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:



> ​> ​
> John, US presidents do not control T-bills.
>
>
​Yes they do.​ Unless the congress periodically passes a law to raise the
farcical "debt ceiling" and the president signs it, that is to say unless
they agree to pay for the stuff they *ALREADY AGREED TO BUY* the T bills
will go into default. Let me repeat that, the largest and universally
regarded as the safest investment on planet Earth would go belly up! And
that almost happened, on October 16 2013    T-bills came within  45 minutes
of defaulting. That was the day I stopped being a Republican and that is
why I think Ted Cruz may be the only person who would be a worse president
than Donald Trump.

​>
> We recognize that not all debt is bad.
>> Runaway debt is very bad.
>
> Runaway?
​
In fiscal year 2009
​
the deficit was 9.8
​%​
 of GDP, in
​
2015
​
it was
​
2
​.​
5
​%. ​That doesn't sound like the end of the world to me.


> ​> ​
> There is no way the US can keep borrowing at the rate it is going without
> catastrophic default, regardless of who is president.
>> It isn’t at all clear to me we haven’t already passed the point of no
> return some time ago.
>
>
​The sign that government debt was getting too large would increasing
inflation and skyrocketing interest rates, but today the inflation rate is
the lowest in my lifetime and interest rates are the lowest in the history
of the country. It sound to me like debt is too low not too high.  ​


​> ​
> The US has become so addicted to borrowing and spending, we are openly
> proclaiming we cannot balance the budget without it,


So what? As I said, except the for Clinton years the budget hasn't been
balanced since 1835 and we don't seem to have reached the point on no
return yet.


​John K Clark​




>
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