Numbers aren't knowledge.

Post #381,833 by Another Scott 10/9/13 12:33:02 AM Reply	Numbers aren't knowledge. Don't let the stacks of numbers on that page convince you that the thinking behind it is correct. http://www.treasuryd...v/NP/debt/current See the 2 categories? Debt Held by the Public and Intergovernmental Holdings: What is the Debt Held by the Public? The Debt Held by the Public is all federal debt held by individuals, corporations, state or local governments, foreign governments, and other entities outside the United States Government less Federal Financing Bank securities. Types of securities held by the public include, but are not limited to, Treasury Bills, Notes, Bonds, TIPS, United States Savings Bonds, and State and Local Government Series securities. What are Intragovernmental Holdings? Intragovernmental Holdings are Government Account Series securities held by Government trust funds, revolving funds, and special funds; and Federal Financing Bank securities. A small amount of marketable securities are held by government accounts. $4.8T of the "debt" is the Social Security Trust Fund, etc. When Greenspan and Reagan and all those folks convinced everyone that we needed to vastly increase FICA to shore up Social Security for the Baby Boomers, that increased the federal debt. Funny how that works, huh. Why does it work that way? Because it makes no sense for the government to have billions of dollars sitting in a vault when it could be doing good for the economy. The federal debt is no scarier than the Easter Bunny. As long as we continue to make payments when they are due. ;-) China buys Treasuries because they take in masses of dollars and have to do something with them to keep their currency from increasing in value. So they buy Treasuries to keep up the value of the dollar. Similarly with our other trading partners. They want us to buy their stuff, so they don't want their currencies to appreciate too much. When people take out a mortgage to buy a house, they aren't suddenly bankrupt because their debt is greater than their annual income. The mortgage is due over a long period of time. Similarly, the federal debt is due over decades. The Republicans scream about the debt and the deficit when a Democrat is in the White House because they want to cut the social safety net and only want to direct federal dollars to their supporters. They don't care about it otherwise: "Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter." My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
Post #381,844 by danreck 10/9/13 9:09:39 AM Reply	Re: Numbers aren't knowledge. Not that any of this matters because Rethuglicans still hate gays, women and want to starve our cheeldrunsÂ from the crazy site that I am not supposed to "believe"... * At the close of the federal government's 2012 fiscal year (September 30, 2012), the federal government had roughly: Â $7.5 trillion ($7,517,000,000,000) in liabilities that are not accounted for in the national debt, such as federal employee retirement benefits, accounts payable, and environmental/disposal liabilities.[11] Â $21.6 trillion ($21,622,000,000,000) in obligations for current Social Security participants above and beyond projected revenues from their payroll and benefit taxes, certain transfers from the general fund of the U.S. Treasury, and assets of the Social Security trust fund.[12] Â $27.0 trillion ($27,000,000,000,000) in obligations for current Medicare participants above and beyond projected revenues from their payroll taxes, benefit taxes, premium payments, and assets of the Medicare trust fund.[13] * The figures above are determined in a manner that approximates how publicly traded companies are required to calculate their liabilities and obligations.[14] [15] [16] The obligations for Social Security and Medicare represent how much money must be immediately placed in interest-bearing investments to cover the projected shortfalls between dedicated revenues and expenditures for all current participants in these programs (both taxpayers and beneficiaries).[17] [18] [19] * Combining the figures above with the national debt and subtracting the value of federal assets, the federal government had about $67.7 trillion ($67,726,000,000,000) in debts, liabilities, and unfinanced obligations for current Social Security and Medicare participants at the close of its 2012 fiscal year. * This $67.7 trillion shortfall is 105% of the combined net worth of all U.S. households and nonprofit organizations, including all assets in savings, real estate, corporate stocks, private businesses, and consumer durable goods such as automobiles. * This shortfall equates to: Â $215,311 for every person living in the U.S.[23] Â $559,331 for every household in the U.S.[24] Â 428% of the U.S. gross domestic product.[25] Â 2,513% of annual federal revenues.[26] Is something major in these numbers up for dispute? They ain't good by any measure (even if they were off by a trillion dollars!!!)Â If this were a company that didn't have the ability to print money, I most certainly wouldn't buy stock in it. Would you? My original point was that even if I pedantically walked you or any partisan on any side through the "actual" numbers, explained that I want more from my tax dollars (extremely large percentage of my income for almost 35 years now) than the ability to service debts accrued in the seventies and eighties for politicians long dead to buy votes in elections in the long ago past, etcÂ Hell, on the same site you posted http://www.treasuryd...ir/ir_expense.htm check out the number. $400 Billion with "b" to "service" the debt - money not spent on education, the arts, science, cheeldruns, or national defenseÂ I'm pissed, aren't you? You get a break, a change of pace every eight years or so. You get to turn your brain off when your team is in power. My team never winsÂ just looking for a little empathy maybe. YMMV. Sometimes it helps to vent with old friends. Just a few thoughts, Dan
Post #381,858 by Another Scott 10/9/13 10:48:49 AM Reply	Yeah, I'll dispute them. This $67.7 trillion shortfall is 105% of the combined net worth of all U.S. households and nonprofit organizations, including all assets in savings, real estate, corporate stocks, private businesses, and consumer durable goods such as automobiles. It's bogus. It's a number without a context. It's the same kind of argument that says that people go bankrupt when they take out a mortgage. They don't. The commitment is paid out over decades. That $67.7T ignores the fact that the economy will generate $15+T in economic activity, every year, and grow at ~ 2% a year, for as long as the population grows. $67.7T over 30 years (a short time horizon for these things - lots of the projections go out 75 years or more) is ~ 11% of the total US economic activity over 30 years. It's nothing to panic over. And that $67.7T isn't a black hole that money gets shoveled into never to be seen again. It goes back out into the economy, gets taxed, and recirculates. The net burden is substantially less. Dean Baker covers stuff like this all the time. Without putting the numbers in context, $67.7 Trillion Dollllars!!!1 is just a Golem. http://www.aljazeera...885040582883.html The argument over the debt-to-GDP ratio is especially annoying because it shows that these people don't have the faintest clue what they are talking about. There are all sorts of obvious reasons why debt is not a good measure of the burden that we are placing on future taxpayers. For example, the government has a huge amount of assets that it could sell at any time and thereby reduce its debt. The Institute for Energy Research, an industry-funded research outfit, claims the government owns more than $120 trillion in energy resources. Let's say they exaggerated by a factor of 10, leaving us $12 trillion in assets. If we sold off half of these resources, it would net the government $6 trillion. This would reduce our debt by almost 40 percentage points of GDP. That should make even the most ardent deficit hawk happy. Of course, it is not just physical assets that the government can sell. The government gives out monopolies in various areas that have enormous value. That is what patents and copyrights are. The rents earned from these and other forms of intellectual property run into many hundreds of billions of dollars a year. In prescription drugs alone they are close to $250bn a year. The government could always sell off more monopolies in order to reduce its debt-to-GDP ratio. A flow of revenue equal to what the pharmaceutical industry gets from its patent monopolies could easily be worth $2-3 trillion. That would go very far towards reducing our debt-to-GDP ratio. Danno continues: My original point was that even if I pedantically walked you or any partisan on any side through the "actual" numbers, explained that I want more from my tax dollars (extremely large percentage of my income for almost 35 years now) than the ability to service debts accrued in the seventies and eighties for politicians long dead to buy votes in elections in the long ago past, etcÂ Hell, on the same site you posted http://www.treasuryd...ir/ir_expense.htm check out the number. $400 Billion with "b" to "service" the debt - money not spent on education, the arts, science, cheeldruns, or national defenseÂ I'm pissed, aren't you? Nope. I'm not pissed about running deficits and paying interest on the debt. There are good reasons for the government to run a 2-3% deficit in good times, and only pay down the debt during booms. And run big deficits during recessions and huge deficits during depressions. National economics isn't a personal morality play. Money is a tool, not a good in itself. National economics is different from a family budget (contrary to some of Obama's earlier statements). Don't let the ideologues scare you with their numbers out to 12 decimal places. People don't think clearly when they're scared. DON'T PANIC! My $0.02. :-) Thanks. Cheers, Scott.
Post #381,862 by danreck 10/9/13 11:18:36 AM Reply	A number without context OkayÂ We're done here. You WIN! Yay!!! See you at the poorhouseÂ Maybe you can sell me your kidney or spleen. ;-) Just a few thoughts, Dan
Post #381,867 by Another Scott 10/9/13 11:24:32 AM Reply	You're no fun. I miss the semi-infinite right-shift. I thought we had a chance on this one. :-( ;-) Cheers, Scott. (Who is listed as an organ donor but doesn't think he can make reservations.)
Post #381,865 by boxley 10/9/13 11:22:52 AM Reply	Minor nit debt service on trillions isn't too bad at 1% interest, if it jumps for whatever reason we are screwed Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 58 years. meep
Post #381,868 by Another Scott 10/9/13 11:32:48 AM Reply	Not so. Baker has gone through that as well. From the same linky as above: However, there is an even more simple and completely painless path to a lower debt-to-GDP ratio. The price of long-term bonds rises when interest rates fall. The price of these bonds falls when interest rates rise. This latter point is important. Currently, interest rates are at near post-war lows. We have issued 10-year Treasury bonds at interest rates close to 1.5 percent and 30-year bonds at interest rates of 2.75 percent. The Congressional Budget Office, along with other official forecasters, project that interest rates will rise sharply over the next few years. If interest rates rise as projected, then the price of these long-term bonds fall sharply. For example, if the interest rate on 30-year bonds rises to 6 percent by 2016, then the price of a 30-year bond issued at 2.75 percent in 2012 will have fallen by more than 40 percent. This means that if the government issued $100bn in bonds at the low 2012 rate, it could buy them back for less than $60bn in 2016, instantly eliminating $40bn of government debt. (Allan Sloan made this point in a slightly different context.) The government can follow this practice of buying up large number of bonds issued at low interest rates to eliminate much of the debt it has incurred. Although the government's debt-to-GDP ratio is reaching heights not seen since the years just after World War II, the ratio of interest on the debt-to-GDP is at post-World War II lows. This means that when interest rates rise, there will be a sharp decline in the market value of government debt, allowing for massive amounts of debt reduction simply by buying back debt at the discounted value that the CBO is effectively projecting. We should have little problem shaving 15-20 percentage points off our debt-to-GDP ratio through such purchases, hitting whatever target the deficit hawks have decided is necessary. Of course, this is ridiculous. Buying back debt at discounted prices will not change our interest burden at all. But we live in a world where the folks deciding economic policy have now decided that the debt-to-GDP ratio will be the new guidepost for economic policy. IOW, don't look at a bare number and think that it means doom. Just because interest rates rise, that doesn't mean doom and gloom. Interest rates will rise as the economy improves. An improving economy increases tax revenue and decreases support payments. It makes the debt burden easier to handle, not more difficult. FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #381,893 by CRConrad 10/9/13 6:22:22 PM Reply	Maybe he didn't mean "pissed" as in "pissed off".
Post #381,901 by Another Scott 10/9/13 7:35:51 PM Reply	Ah. That bit of UK slang isn't too common here. ;-)
Post #381,907 by danreck 10/9/13 8:29:04 PM Reply	Better to be pissed off than pissed on But you already know that you old fart... How are things in the real life Sound of Music? Before you excoriate me with your flowery language, it is close. As we can all agree, numbers or kilometers are meaningless. Just a few thoughts, Dan
Post #381,909 by Another Scott 10/9/13 9:02:33 PM Reply	Re: Better to be pissed off than pissed on "There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else." - James Thurber - http://www.brainyquo...AJrG3CXyOq3sPP.99 :-D Cheers, Scott.
Post #381,930 by CRConrad 10/10/13 2:23:27 AM Reply	Dunno, depends which part of Austria you mean. I gather the bit in the north-west, up close to Germany, is the worst. For a while there, I entertained a hypothesis that every evil in the world comes from there: Hitler, Schwarzenegger, Fritzl... Then again, mr Přiklopil seems to be from the Vienna area, so that pretty much put the kibosh on that. Never been there myself, so I couldn't possibly comment. (Also because I'm not very musical either.) -- Christian R. Conrad Same old username (as above), but now on iki.fi (Yeah, yeah, it redirects to the same old GMail... But just in case I ever want to change.)
Post #381,881 by Ashton 10/9/13 4:49:58 PM Reply	Short-form non-#s rebuttal: Meh..thinks that ... the Worst-possible model for pondering Our New anti-Factoid Kultur is.. that which combines the 1) pseudo-science of The Law (direct quote of Fred Rodell/Dean Harvard Law) 2) even pseudo-er astrology of Econ! (obvious by Inspection of their math-fantasies) 3) then selecting the Worst! of the [Referents]-free symbols (which both non-disciplines regularly trash)--as some sort of Proof-toid er, Conclusion re. The Futchah Prospects of the marauding, Reasoning-free bipeds everywhere. but especially in the Land of (premeditatedly-faulty Dream-stuff.) Does Not.... all this palaver pale somewhat-into-insignificance ??? when a certain Scale&Relativity Problem is juxtaposed against all these tawdry pissing matches? Â [Yes, I concur-in-advance.. we Need a New Word/shorthand for the worldwide cabal of infantile narcissists we commonly label Plutocrats..Through the Ages.] Â Those + The Planetary madness/peril now demonstrably asymptotic to the Curve of Daily Temperature constitute, IMnsHO: --> the Place where our finest Attention must regularly--GO in any 'Next'? As.. if homo-sap FAILS THIS TEST ... nary a One of the "other cockamamie 'concerns'" will matter more than a pitcher of warm spit. --thanks LBJ fer your Texas-earthy similes n'folksy BS about the Joys of fixing-Vietnam by decimation. N'est ce pâs, mon cher?? Rest. Case. See? No fucking-Numbers, not even bogus-'IQ's required.. We NEED Rigorous-thought, not vigorous fulminations.. ... .... ..... ...... Law above fear, justice above law, mercy above justice, love above all. (This can't Work in the present/past milieus.. likely we won't ever get-There. Could be worth Dying-for, though--in the interim -vs- the usual tawdry shit.)

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