
Charting the American Debt Crisis - geekfactor
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/28/us/charting-the-american-debt-crisis.html
======
DanielBMarkham
Enough with the propaganda graphics. Please.

Political theory and hundreds of years of tradition holds that the
legislature, not the President, is solely responsible for spending. That's why
we have legislatures. That's their job -- to exert popular control over taxes
and spending.

It's also a fact that the people you currently elect are responsible for the
spending and policies that go on today. If new guys couldn't change policies
and spending, then why have elections at all?

Please. Enough of this already. You want me to sign a letter saying your guy
is awesome? Happy to do it. Just please cease and desist the posturing.

~~~
nimblegorilla
What do you mean by propaganda graphics? That article seems pretty factual to
me. If we can't have articles like that then it seems like you are arguing for
a public informed solely by talking-head soundbites.

Also, the president has some influence on policy debates and can veto any
spending bill congress passes. I don't think it's accurate to say the
legislature is solely responsible for spending.

~~~
OstiaAntica
In the U.S. the legislature really does hold the power of the purse. The
substantial majority of spending is through entitlements, tax code
distributions, and debt repayments, which are all on autopilot. The President
can veto year-to-year discretionary spending, but the veto can be overridden,
which damages the president's credibility and so that situation is avoided by
capitulating.

~~~
nimblegorilla
I'm not disagreeing with that, but the executive branch has some influence.
Especially when the vice president casts tie-breaker votes in the senate.
Vetos also need a larger majority to override and congress is often split down
the middle.

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cryptoz
Why aren't the wars mentioned under Obama as well? He actively chose to
continue fighting both of them, spending huge amounts of money. Sure, he
didn't start them but he's had plenty of opportunities to stop them and he
hasn't.

It's clear that most of the blame is to G. W. Bush. But neglecting to mention
that Obama is fighting two wars seriously irks me.

~~~
xradionut
It's not like he has a magic wand or is a dictator. Obama is beholden to the
same group of monied interests as the rest of capitol hill. If the large
banks, oil companies and corporations thought it would be in their interest to
end the wars, the troops would be home. Plus what are you going to do with the
sections of economy that depend on these wars? There's no plan to shift any
funds or manpower to any peaceful purposes.

~~~
cryptoz
> It's not like he has a magic wand or is a dictator.

He does have a magic wand, in the form of a pen that he can use to veto new
military spending. He hasn't used it.

> If the large banks, oil companies and corporations thought it would be in
> their interest to end the wars, the troops would be home.

No. If Obama chose not to renew the various war spending bills, the troops
would be home.

> Plus what are you going to do with the sections of economy that depend on
> these wars?

This sentence is confusing to me. The wars cost us money, money that we don't
have any more and that is causing us huge amounts of trouble right now. I'm
not sure what will happen to those sections. But they didn't exist 10 years
ago, they exist now for the sole purpose of killing people, and they are using
money that isn't theirs. Surely we can do away with them.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_This sentence is confusing to me._

Xradionut is using the broken window principle - if we break stuff and then
rebuild it, we've increased GDP and therefore helped everyone. If we stop
doing this, we might ruin the economy.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window>

In other news, the Tsunami was great news for Japan.

~~~
xradionut
: rolls eyes :

No. I'm a life long student of history and politics that was raised by a pair
of history professors. I grew up watching news about the Vietnam War and the
Nixon debacle. (Yes, I'm an old cynical fart.) Most people evaluate political
news with the attention span of a day-trader or ferret instead of spending the
time researching the causes and tracing the money.

Obama can't fulfill his promises nor do the morally and legally right actions
to "fix" the situation. His hands are tied by his political obligations.
That's why the general public is going to be f __ked some more. We've
basically turned back a generation of progress in a generation.

------
shawndumas
"President Obama asserted[1]: '[T]he deficit was on track to top $1 trillion
the year I took office.'

This is seriously mistaken.

The Congressional Budget Office's projections from January of 2008, the last
ones made before it recognized the housing bubble and the implications of its
collapse, showed a deficit of just $198 billion for 2009, the year President
Obama took office. In other words, the deficit was absolutely not 'on track to
top $1 trillion.'"[2]

\----

[1]: [http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/07/25/obamas-address-
to-t...](http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/07/25/obamas-address-to-the-
nation-on-debt-talks/)

[2]: [http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-
press/president...](http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-
press/president-obama-doesnt-understand-the-origins-of-the-deficit)

~~~
ojbyrne
From the second link: "The huge deficits came about entirely as a result of
the economic downturn brought about by the collapse of the housing bubble."

Since the housing bubble and the collapse happened before Jan 2008, and was
not _recognized_ (which is being used as an accounting term - i.e. put on
paper) - using the phrase "on track" to include that subsequent recognizing
seems perfectly reasonable.

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bavcyc
No article on the US debt is going to be neutral.

Someone posted an interesting video the other day:
<http://www.kpcb.com/usainc/>

The Heritage Foundation has a different take on it:
[http://blog.heritage.org/2011/07/28/the-truth-about-
obamas-b...](http://blog.heritage.org/2011/07/28/the-truth-about-obamas-
budget-deficits-in-pictures/)

Which shows that Obama is more to blame than Bush.

Situation is normal as each side is blaming the other side.

John Mauldin has a book called Endgame, which is worth reading through
Interlibrary loan. It presents some interesting ideas.

Think we need a new super post that just allows everyone to post articles on
who's responsible for the US debt underneath.

~~~
davidw
> Think we need a new super post that just allows everyone to post articles on
> who's responsible for the US debt underneath.

How about this as an alternative suggestion: we keep politics off of HN?

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hugh3
Does this graph take interest into account?

For instance, if the deficit was one trillion dollars at the end of President
Smith's administration and two trillion dollars at the end of President Jones'
administration eight years later, how is the blame apportioned between Smith
and Jones? A large fraction of Jones' deficit is due to the fact that he's
stuck paying the interest incurred under President Smith. So a fifty-fifty
assignment of blame is wrong. On the other hand, we can hardly absolve
President Jones for his failure to pay off the debts incurred by President
Smith, either.

Of course, as DanielBMarkham has said, the whole idea of blaming presidents
for deficits is rather silly, when it's really congress that writes the
budgets. (Not that presidents can be absolved of blame either...)

------
TamDenholm
I know i'm making a glib comment on an extremely complicated issue, but i
really wish i could just raise my own credit limit over and over again in
order to keep a good credit rating.

~~~
sethg
The debt ceiling is not analogous to your credit limit. Your credit limit is
imposed by the institutions that loan money to you. The US debt ceiling is
imposed by Congress.

The closest analogy to your credit limit is the interest rate for Treasury
bills; as investors become more concerned that the US will either become
insolvent or inflate its way out of debt, they will demand a higher interest
rate for that money. T-bill rates are as low as they’ve been since the 1940s,
so clearly the markets are happy to loan the government money; Congress is
just arguing about how much to allow itself to borrow.

~~~
nhaehnle
Actually, neither is really analogous to an individual credit limit.

As you correctly point out, the debt ceiling is an entirely voluntary
constraint that the US government imposes on itself (if, as is appropriate
from an economics point of view, you take the government to be the union of
executive, legislature and judicative branches).

The interest rate for short-term T-bills necessarily follows very closely the
monetary policy targets set by the Fed. In fact, the Fed and Treasury
cooperate all the time to control the supply and demand of T-bills, in order
to make sure that the interest rate established by the market matches the
target rate - that's just part of normal day-to-day operations, see e.g.
[http://pragcap.com/resources/understanding-modern-
monetary-s...](http://pragcap.com/resources/understanding-modern-monetary-
system)

Long-term interest rates behave slightly differently, and some people believe
that useful information about the state of the economy can be extracted from
them.

This is still not analogous to a credit limit, because those long-term rates
can never actually constrain the US government financially. After all, Fed and
Treasury can always work together to reduce the supply of long-term bonds,
which will drive down the interest rate.

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btilly
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/infographics/us-national-debt> provides an
interesting alternate take. Rather than chart by when the debt arrived, it
charts by which policies caused the debt.

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grannyg00se
So on May16 there were extraordinary measures to inject funds into the budget.

What extraordinary measures were taken to ensure that the budget would be
closer to being balanced going forward?

It seems like there is a never ending solution of debt limit increases going
back decades. I suppose things need to get broken very badly before the
drastic changes that are needed can be made. Until the general public feels
real consequences that are directly attributable to this spend more mentality,
nothing is likely to change.

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MaysonL
What debt crisis?

THERE IS NO DEBT CRISIS.

What we have here is a Congressional insanity crisis.

And a media fail crisis.

~~~
OstiaAntica
Surely borrowing 41 cents of every dollar you are spending, going on 4 years
now, while at the same time completely failing to prepare for the baby boom
generation's retirement, is a crisis.

------
mckoss
Excellent visual. I've not seen this explained as clearly in any other news
source. It seems so simple to do; I chalk it up the kind of lazy Journalism we
have today.

