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conservatives can no longer deny they've been lied to about deficits.

Visbek said:
...and I just briefly explained how that isn't correct either. You're being equally inaccurate in your attempts to correct someone else.

Yes, Congress had a role -- I forgot to mention that the repeal of Glass-Steagall was a big factor. But Congress didn't act alone; someone had to sign those laws, let alone guide them through Congress.

Clinton, Bush 43, Greenspan also a variety of influences and responsibility. But overall, the government piece was relatively small. It was mostly market mechanisms, of capital looking for somewhere to go, then forming a bubble, then the private sector pumping it up to get their piece. Most of the government's responsibility is in a failure to regulate.
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And what makes your explanations any better than those of others?
 
Visbek said:
...and I just briefly explained how that isn't correct either. You're being equally inaccurate in your attempts to correct someone else.

Yes, Congress had a role -- I forgot to mention that the repeal of Glass-Steagall was a big factor. But Congress didn't act alone; someone had to sign those laws, let alone guide them through Congress.

Clinton, Bush 43, Greenspan also a variety of influences and responsibility. But overall, the government piece was relatively small. It was mostly market mechanisms, of capital looking for somewhere to go, then forming a bubble, then the private sector pumping it up to get their piece. Most of the government's responsibility is in a failure to regulate.
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It wasn't the laws that the incoming Dem. controlled Congress passed, it was the fact that they were going to take control of Congress. The market does not trust a Dem. Congress, since it's much more anti-business than the market is comfortable with. It saw the change coming and pulled back. Had it been Pres. Bush, the recession would have started far sooner, but it didn't. The market saw the Dems. coming and it took cover. All the stuff you brought up had a place in this, but the first domino was the market contraction. When that happened, it opened the door to a whole lot of other issues that had either been masked by the up market or only came about when the market contracted. It's like sailing a ship onto the rocks and blaming the lack of accurate maps, lack of dredging, poor markers, etc, but until the water level dropped, none of that mattered. Yes, it all existed, but as long as the water was high, their danger was hidden or non-existent. But when that water dropped, suddenly all those problems got exposed.
 
Moderate Right said:
Don't forget that they not only fight wars overseas but they fight wars against women, the poor, seniors, minorities, and they are racists and bigots too, among other things. How much more evil can they get? And yet their nominee still beat Hillary and they are in control of the House, the Senate, and most governorships and state houses.
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They must be doing something right, I guess. :)
 
Visbek said:
The gross debt -- which includes intergovernmental loans -- did continue to go up. However, that's because when payroll taxes run a surplus, the government is required by law to lend those funds to the rest of the government. I.e. when payroll taxes run a surplus, gross debt increases. Further, when we draw down from the Social Security trust fund, gross debt can shrink, even though Social Security is in a more precarious position.
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The gross debt does not increase unless you spend that surplus, which is what happened.
 
faithful_servant said:
..and once again, a liberal ignores the FACT that it was a response to a DEM. Congress that triggered the last recession. But that's just truth and if the truth doesn't match the narrative, go with the narrative - right???
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FS, nobody asked about your delusions concerning the causes of the Great Bush Recession. This thread is about the fact that no matter how much you try, you can no longer deny your conservative masters lied to you about debt and deficits. See how you're trying to deflect with your "finger pointing" about an unrelated issue. Please address the thread topic that the one person you could always count on to tell you what you wanted to hear about debt and deficits just confirmed everything every democrat tried to tell you the last 8 years.
 
faithful_servant said:
those surpluses were the result of the trickle down economics and policies pushed by the REP. controlled Congress and prio radministrations, not by ANY effort of Bill Clinton. They happened in spite of him, not because of him.
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Yeah... No. Not at all.

Reagan's "Trickle Down Economics" was pushed years before Clinton took office, and they actually increased the deficits and the debts substantially. Reagan slashed taxes, mostly for the wealthy -- too much, in fact, as he was forced to increase them slightly a few years later -- and spent lavishly on defense. The result? He increased the debt by 186%, or $1.86 trillion. In today's dollars, that's almost $3.79 trillion in today's dollars.

Bush 41 took much of the brunt of those policies. He presided over the S&L failures, a result of deregulation in finance. Unemployment spiked due to the 1990-91 recession.

Clinton had a surplus mostly because of two factors:
• A good economy, which generated big revenues
• The reduction of defense spending, as a result of the fall of the Soviet Union

He didn't make the economy great, but he did mostly get out of the way of the Dot Com revolution and other aspects of economic growth. He also made the choice to reduce defense spending, over the objections of many Republicans.

And lest ye forget, Republicans in Congress didn't often get their way in terms of spending cuts. I take it you've already forgotten how Clinton's rejection of Republican budgets led to a shutdown in the winter of '95...?
 
Moderate Right said:
And what makes your explanations any better than those of others?
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Why gosh, I dunno -- maybe because my explanations are more accurate, more comprehensive, and based on facts and a decent understanding of complex global economic factors, rather than partisan nonsense? Just a thought.
 
Casca XV said:
The GOP lied about the Deficit? Are you F**king kidding?

The Deficit is the annual budget shortfall that creates the National Debt, and Obama has increased the National Debt more than all the prior 43 Presidents combined.

Yet Dems use phony numbers to claim he cut the deficit in half, leaving out that he quadrupled it just before that.
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first off, please notice the double spacing in the rant. Anyhoo Casca, throwing out long since disproven narratives doesn't address the thread topic. Try to focus on just this part "You can’t ever balance the budget if you don’t get this economy growing.” Remember when the economy was cratering at -8.2% and losing 600,000 jobs a month. That means your conservative masters were lying when they told you we needed to cut spending. No matter how many times we tried to explain to conservatives it wasn't "just a spending problem", you would flail and whine and post falsehoods. No matter how many times republicans proved they were flaming hypocrites on debt and deficits, you would flail and whine and post falsehoods. Now casca, please address the thread topic instead of flailing and whining and posting falsehoods.

And since you seem like a nice guy, Bush actually doubled the debt. He's the guy that "spent" more than all presidents combined. Reagan tripled the debt. he "spent" three times more than all presidents combined. so bush's massive deficits is actually a republican tradition. And Casca, President Obama inherited the massive trillion dollar Bush Deficits (yea, they have a name). Before President Obama took over, the CBO revised Bush's last budget deficit to 1.2 trillion. Here's a nice little chart for you

Date of estimate___2/1/08___1/7/09___actuals
Total Revenues___2,817___2,357__ 2,105
Total Outlays____3,100___3,543___ 3,518

this link has the January 7 2009 estimate of Bush's last budget.
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/111th-congress-2009-2010/reports/01-07-outlook.pdf

please notice that revenues collapsed 700 billion and spending only went up 400 billion. Remember when you were told "its only a spending problem"? yep, that was a lie too. Anyhoo, please address the thread topic, not the delusions you desperately cling to.
 
Harshaw said:
More than that, liberal luminaries such as Paul Krugman were urging that "debt scolds" be ignored, and that there should be deficit spending for years to come in the Hillary administration:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/prudential-macro-policy/

That was this past August; he re-affirmed by tweet in Ocotober:

View attachment 67212280

But within the last few days, now that there's going to be a Republican administration, in his own words, "deficits matter again."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/...gain.html?rref=collection/column/paul-krugman

There's hardly a shred of difference between the economic conditions of late October and today, so the only explanation for the about-face is abject, slobbering hackery.
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harshaw, thank you for your obedient rant about nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman. However, this thread is about the fact that no matter how much you try, you can no longer deny your conservative masters lied to you about debt and deficits. Please try to focus.
 
faithful_servant said:
It wasn't the laws that the incoming Dem. controlled Congress passed, it was the fact that they were going to take control of Congress. The market does not trust a Dem. Congress, since it's much more anti-business than the market is comfortable with. It saw the change coming and pulled back. Had it been Pres. Bush, the recession would have started far sooner, but it didn't. The market saw the Dems. coming and it took cover. All the stuff you brought up had a place in this, but the first domino was the market contraction. When that happened, it opened the door to a whole lot of other issues that had either been masked by the up market or only came about when the market contracted. It's like sailing a ship onto the rocks and blaming the lack of accurate maps, lack of dredging, poor markers, etc, but until the water level dropped, none of that mattered. Yes, it all existed, but as long as the water was high, their danger was hidden or non-existent. But when that water dropped, suddenly all those problems got exposed.
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What fresh nonsense is this?

Your comments don't make any sense whatsoever. Which Bush are you even talking about? What years? Which recession?
 
Vern said:
harshaw, thank you for your obedient rant about nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman. However, this thread is about the fact that no matter how much you try, you can no longer deny your conservative masters lied to you about debt and deficits. Please try to focus.
Click to expand...

The fact he's a Nobel Prize-winning economist makes his abject hackery even more contemptible.

Me? I'm perfectly consistent on deficits, no matter who's in charge (they always matter), and I have no masters, "conservative" or otherwise, being a self-owning, free-thinking libertarian -- but thanks for dutifully defending the "honor" of one of yours, in your thread meant to single out conservatives as uniquely hypocritical on deficits.

Never mind that in the post you quoted, I wasn't talking to you. Run along now. Your participation is not required.
 
Taylor said:
The gross debt does not increase unless you spend that surplus, which is what happened.
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Afraid not.

Again, gross debt includes the Social Security Trust Fund, which grows when SS is running a surplus. By law, SS is required to loan to the rest of the federal government. Thus, a surplus in SS (payroll taxes) causes gross debt to go up.

When the SS surplus grows faster than the other debts fall, then gross debt goes up. Even though the government is running a surplus.

Or, we can just look at a chart comparing federal outlays and revenues:

mercatus_center_outlays_revenues_2014-2024_800px.jpg


H'mmm, what is that odd bump where the light green line, representing revenues, was higher than the dark green line representing spending? Oh, yeah. That's a surplus.

Please, spare us the partisan nonsense. Even granting that Clinton mostly got lucky, the reality is that his policies -- notably cutting back on defense spending -- definitely contributed to a surplus.
 
Harshaw said:
The fact he's a Nobel Prize-winning economist makes his abject hackery even more contemptible.

Me? I'm perfectly consistent on deficits, no matter who's in charge (they always matter), and I have no masters, "conservative" or otherwise, being a self-owning, free-thinking libertarian -- but thanks for dutifully defending the "honor" of one of yours, in your thread meant to single out conservatives as uniquely hypocritical on deficits.

Never mind that in the post you quoted, I wasn't talking to you. Run along now. Your participation is not required.
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His contention wasn't about their party, it was about their means.

He acknowledged that Trump wants to focus on infrastructure, but lamented that congress is unlikely to go for it. He then explained that tax cuts will not grow our economy in this context. Since Hillary was not planning such tax cuts, his reasoning remains intact.

If you had read the article you cited, you could have avoided this.
 
Visbek said:
Why gosh, I dunno -- maybe because my explanations are more accurate, more comprehensive, and based on facts and a decent understanding of complex global economic factors, rather than partisan nonsense? Just a thought.
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Just because you write more words doesn't prove anything and annoiting yourself judge of the evidence presented doesn't prove anything either.
 
Casca XV said:
The GOP lied about the Deficit? Are you F**king kidding?
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They lied about giving a **** about deficits.



Do you think there's some other reason that tax cuts for the rich never go hand in hand with spending cuts? They don't care about the size of governments or deficits, except for the extent to which their existence allows the Rs to posture against the Ds. Their posturing then leaves room for people like Paul Ryan to pretend they want really big cuts to government without having to worry that their proposals will actually get passed.
 
Visbek said:
Egads. Not even close. The 2008 recession had a lot of contributors, including:

• Refusal by Clinton and Bush 43 administrations to regulate derivatives, CDOs, CDSs, and other new financial instruments
• Greenspan keeping interest rates very low, which made lending for mortgages cheap, which helped inflate the bubble
• Failure of the ratings agencies to properly identify risk
• Failure of bank VAR systems and other internal mechanisms to identify risk
• Mortgage originators, who had no skin in the game, and quickly sold off new mortgages with poor documentation
• Mortgage originators and banks who thought it'd be a good idea to increase the number of subprime and exotic loans
• Outright fraudulent mortgage originators and banks, who just wanted warm bodies to sign loans
• Mortgage risk evaluation software, which was using out-of-date and inaccurate risk models
• Investment banks, who also often had no skin in the game, and quickly sold off new mortgages with poor documentation
• Investment banks that did everything they could to make their offerings as obscure as possible, and sell them not just to financial actors who should have known better, but also to people who had no business buying financial instruments they didn't understand
• Aforementioned financial entities that bought total crap without looking into it enough
• Aforementioned clueless buyers who had no business buying MBSs and CDOs and derivatives
• Real estate speculators, who took advantage of and fed the bubble
• Much of the American public, who were buying properties they couldn't afford, with mortgages they should never have taken out in the first place
• Pretty much everyone, who did not realize that there was a huge bubble in real estate

Despite conservative screeching, Fannie & Freddie did very little. They were very late to the subprime market, and basically -- like Lehman -- were caught holding the bag.

The government is actually more responsible for inaction -- failure to oversee new markets, rein in banks, and pop the bubble early -- than for actions. But that's very typical in a bubble. No one is ever rewarded for causing a recession earlier, even if doing so would reduce its intensity.

And that's the truth. In a nutshell. A bit more complex than your narrative, but don't let that bother you.
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Impressive list.

Really.
 
Harshaw said:
The fact he's a Nobel Prize-winning economist makes his abject hackery even more contemptible.
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harshaw, thank you for your obedient defense of your obedient rant about Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman . However, this thread is about the fact that no matter how much you try, you can no longer deny your conservative masters lied to you about debt and deficits. Please try to focus.

and harshaw, you're "misparaphasing" of Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is not more contemptible than republicans lying about debt and deficits to undermine the recovery and sabotage the economy for political gain. Real Americans suffered and suffered longer because of republican lies and hypocrisy. Your statement only proves you're here to deflect from the thread topic.
 
Visbek said:
:roll:

Wrong. There were multiple years of genuine surpluses under Clinton. Revenues were greater than outlays. By any definition, that is a surplus.

The public debt -- the amount borrowed from the public, and the measure that pretty much everyone uses -- dropped slightly during those deficit years.

The gross debt -- which includes intergovernmental loans -- did continue to go up. However, that's because when payroll taxes run a surplus, the government is required by law to lend those funds to the rest of the government. I.e. when payroll taxes run a surplus, gross debt increases. Further, when we draw down from the Social Security trust fund, gross debt can shrink, even though Social Security is in a more precarious position.

Gross debt is a valid measure. However, a) only if you use it as a consistent measure, and b) only when you actually understand how it works. It's not valid when the only reason to cite it is to blast Democrats, and/or obscure how Republican political leaders don't actually give a crap about shrinking government or reducing debts.
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The US did have an actual surplus for a year or two (acknowledging the social security fund caveat). Credit belongs to both Clinton and Congress for working together to pull that off. But they also had a very productive economy feeding the revenue coffers during that period.
 
Moderate Right said:
And what makes your explanations any better than those of others?
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So that's where we are in the post-truthiness era. As long as a warm body types words, those words are just as valid as any other words.
 
Vern said:
harshaw, thank you for your obedient defense of your obedient rant about Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman . However, this thread is about the fact that no matter how much you try, you can no longer deny your conservative masters lied to you about debt and deficits. Please try to focus.

and harshaw, you're "misparaphasing" of Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is not more contemptible than republicans lying about debt and deficits to undermine the recovery and sabotage the economy for political gain. Real Americans suffered and suffered longer because of republican lies and hypocrisy. Your statement only proves you're here to deflect from the thread topic.
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:yawn:
 
Mr Person said:
So that's where we are in the post-truthiness era. As long as a warm body types words, those words are just as valid as any other words.
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When exactly was the truthiness era?
 
Harshaw said:
:yawn:
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I guessing this is how you've decided to cowardly avoid discussing the fact that your deflecting "misparaphasing" of Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is not more contemptible than republicans lying about debt and deficits to undermine the recovery and sabotage the economy for political gain. Or the fact that real Americans suffered and suffered longer because of republican lies and hypocrisy.

I have to ask, if you don't want to discuss the thread topic or your deflecting topics, why are you here?
 
Visbek said:
Afraid not.

Again, gross debt includes the Social Security Trust Fund, which grows when SS is running a surplus. By law, SS is required to loan to the rest of the federal government. Thus, a surplus in SS (payroll taxes) causes gross debt to go up.
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Again, you are wrong in assuming that a SS surplus causes the national debt to rise. That certainly can be the case - as it was with Clinton - if you take that money to fill your coffers and spend it elsewhere. Had he instead used that money to pay down debt, the two would offset and there would be no net effect on the national debt (and no pretend "surplus", either).
 
The one and only positive thing I can say about this thread is that it is located in the appropriate sub-forum. Emphasis on the word "partisan."
 
"conservatives can no longer deny they've been lied to about deficits."

liberals can no longer deny they've been lied to about deficits.
 
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