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StephanieVanbryce

05/06/12 11:58 PM

#174901 RE: StephanieVanbryce #174898

Meanwhile, In The Bond Market- May 6, 2012

The real interest rate on 10-year US bonds is now firmly negative:



This is as clear a demonstration as you can ever expect to see that the models some allegedly authoritative figures [ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/liquidity-preference-loanable-funds-and-niall-ferguson-wonkish/ ] use to analyze the economy are dead wrong; it’s also an indication that obsessing over the deficit, and actually cutting back sharply on government investment, are crazy.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/meanwhile-in-the-bond-market/
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SilverSurfer

05/07/12 6:16 AM

#174907 RE: StephanieVanbryce #174898

OK "fiat money governments are 'spend and tax', not 'tax and spend'," – deficit spending comes first. Chartalists argue that nations are fundamentally different from households – governments in a fiat money system can issue liabilities to pay off debt, and thus (assuming they only have debt in their own currency), need not go bankrupt, unlike households, which cannot issue liabilities."

Although "deficit spending is desirable and necessary as part of countercyclical fiscal policy, but that there should not be a structural deficit: in an economic slump, government should run deficits, to compensate for the shortfall in aggregate demand, but should run corresponding surpluses in boom times so that there is no net deficit over an economic cycle – a cyclical deficit only. This is derived from Keynesian economics, and has been the mainstream economics view (in the Anglo-Saxon world especially) since Keynesian economics was developed"



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficit_spending