In the early days of making the film I.O.U.S.A., we made the decision to stick with Congressional Budget Office (CBO) numbers, but not because we inherently trust them. We enjoy parsing the shadow government statistics produced by John Williams (at shadowstats.com) as much as the next armchair economist. But the CBO numbers are theoretically conservative, and whether we like it or not, they are the numbers the market reacts to and the numbers legislators are meant to use when crafting new legislation.
[Read more...]CBO Budget Projections and the Horrors of Inflation
March 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The pills that I thought were tranquilizers turned out to be vitamins, and although I am on the verge of some kind of mental breakdown because of the mix-up, I feel great!
Turning to the old tried and true, I soon learned that I had started too late, and I was not nearly drunk enough to have properly anesthetized my nerves when I chanced to read Agora Financial’s 5- Minute Forecast report that “The CBO’s latest numbers reveal that President Obama’s proposed fiscal 2011 budget would add $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.”
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CBO Budget Projections: Make Way for More Debt
The leaders of the European Union huddled together over the weekend to devise a dramatic rescue plan for the euro. When they broke from their huddle they announced a $645 billion war chest (of borrowed money) with which to defend their 11-year old currency.
The massive rescue plans seems nearly certain to work…for a day or two…and maybe even for an entire week. But trying to combat debt fears with a great big pile of additional debt hardly seems like a winning formula. Rescue plans rarely rescue much of anything.
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