Jeff Bezos got the national debt wrong during last week’s CNBC interview. He has to know why. Amazon was founded in 1994, but it didn’t issue debt until 1999. Why did Bezos and Amazon rely for so long on equity finance over debt? It’s expensive to exchange precious shares for cash when there’s debt financing […]
Jeff Bezos Missed An Historic Chance to Correct a National Debt Falsehood Read More »
The markets are never a snapshot of the present. They’re a look ahead. It’s worth keeping in mind as commentators try to make sense of rising Treasury yields. Take the Washington Post editorial board’s analysis of the recent jump. They write that, “Yields for long-term U.S. Treasury bonds shot up to almost 5.2 percent on Tuesday, reaching their
No, the Treasury Market Didn’t Just Discover the National Debt Read More »
Mitch Daniels looks admiringly in the mirror through the words he puts on a page. See his latest Washington Post op-ed, and his comment that “No impulse is more human than wishfulness, the tendency to grasp at any straw that enables us to avert our eyes from difficult realities and put off facing them.” Daniels is
No ‘Debt Denialism,’ Mitch Daniels, Just a Focus On Markets Read More »
Government spending is the biggest, most economy-sapping tax of all. While Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg will work at all sorts of tax rates, none can work and innovate without capital. Government spending is the consumption of precious capital that could otherwise be accessed by Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg in the present,
If the Kids’ Future Were Doomed, There Would Be Very Little Debt Read More »
Economic thought with any pretense of seriousness is all about removing all barriers to production. No doubt taxes are a barrier, as are regulations, tariffs, currency devaluation, and government spending. Whatever inhibits production is paid for right now. The problem presently is that even the right-of-center economic religions, though they would nod their heads to
All Government Spending Is Painful, and Paid for Right Now Read More »
Balancing the budget will never, ever shrink the federal government opposite what the experts at Cato, Mercatus, and other right-of-center think tanks tell you. The reason why can yet again be found in national debt of $39 trillion. The debt is a loud, market signal that government revenues in the future will make those
Neither Balanced Budgets Nor ‘Starve the Beast’ Will Limit Government Read More »
What’s your limit on a typical credit card in your wallet? And if your borrowing limit is higher today than it was when you turned twenty-one, ask yourself why. To say you can borrow more today relative to twenty-one is likely a blinding glimpse of the obvious. You likely earn quite a bit more
Economic Growth Is the Cause of the National Debt, Not Its Solution Read More »
No individual, corporation, or government ever gets to choose how much money to borrow. Only in academic and pundit circles is such a fanciful notion accepted as realistic. A recent op-ed penned for a think tank purported with alarm that “Congress Knows It Has a Spending Problem, But Won’t Fix It.” And at Fox News last
A $50 Trillion National Debt In 2030 Will Signal Opposite of Debt Problem Read More »
Budgetary experts have been promising us a future “crisis” related to the national debt for years, and in some instances, decades. If you’re reading this, you likely know some of their names: MacGuineas, Riedl, Galston, Bourne, Boccia, Jenkins, Rampell, and even Musk. To say the list is truncated insults understatement. Without much exaggeration, you
The Real Debt Crisis Is That There Will Be No Debt Crisis Read More »
Conservatives and libertarians talk rhapsodically about markets, while sometimes ignoring the market signals that reject their occasional alarmism. Which is why Montgomery College economics professor David Youngberg shouldn’t be singled out for predicting a debt crisis. Most conservatives and libertarians do. In Youngberg’s case, hopefully he’ll see this critique for what it is: a push
If a Debt Crisis Loomed, There Would Be No Federal Borrowing Read More »
