Summary: The debt crisis deserves attention not just as a potentially serious event, but also because it illuminates many aspects of America: the flaws in our political structure, weaknesses in the GOP, and our excessively credulity. This post, the sixth in this series, looks at the crisis, and why we have difficulty seeing it clearly. Contents …
Mechanics and consequences of America hitting the debt ceiling Read More »
Summary: The current crisis is one of governance: how our leaders work together combine with structural flaws to produce bad outcomes. Today we look at this from a legal perspective, which describes both the problem and an easy solution. Such situations show a society its problems, and provide the pressure for successful societies to fix them. …
The comments on the FM website are littered with folks — probably smart, well-educated people — parroting nonsense they picked up on the Internet. We need to be more careful — and hold websites responsible for the information they post. Today’s example is Zero Hedge, a fun website posting interesting but often misleading information. Such as this: “US …
Another example of the “it’s on the Internet so it must be true” fail: Zero Hedge Read More »
Summary: another in a series about the financial condition of the US government. This is a follow-up to Another crack in Republic’s foundations: not the size of the debt, but when it’s due (30 October 2009). Considering the size of our debt, the Treasury staff deserves a round of applause for their performance during the recession. Bad news sells …
Good news: the Treasury Department’s debt managers are competent! Read More »
Summary:  another in a series about the financial condition of the US government.  This is  follow-up post to Why the U.S. cannot inflate its way out of debt (15 March 2010).  We’re in worse shape than most of our peers, and far larger (whales cannot manuever like minnows).  Other posts later this week discuss this important topic. The …
We can try to inflate away the government’s debt, but we’ll go broke before succeeding Read More »
