09-26-2009, 09:39 PM
The numbers in that excel spreadsheet say exactly what I'm saying - that you're off by a huge margin. If those predictions are accurate, then US revenue has dropped by maybe 15%, 2008 to 2009. That's painful, but it's not a cataclysmic 60%.
"Helicopter money" isn't Keynesian. In fact, the whole concept was dreamed up by Milton Friedman specifically to counter the Keynesian notion of a liquidity trap.
No doubt, assets were overvalued in early 2008, and now they're not. That's what a bubble is, and that's what happens when it pops. Don't confuse GDP with net worth - they are measuring two very different things.
Both you and the administration are making predictions of the future, so of course they are "fictitious" - how could they not be? Are they fraudulent? Overstated by 30%? On what basis? They might be overly rosy, but 30% is a gigantic amount. The US has not run to the end of its borrowing rope, and that the world's most powerful economy is probably not about to collapse utterly under a higher debt load. Whether you see the kind of recovery necessary to sustain that load is an open question. I hope the answer is yes, but I have no magic to reveal the future - and neither do you.
-Jester
"Helicopter money" isn't Keynesian. In fact, the whole concept was dreamed up by Milton Friedman specifically to counter the Keynesian notion of a liquidity trap.
No doubt, assets were overvalued in early 2008, and now they're not. That's what a bubble is, and that's what happens when it pops. Don't confuse GDP with net worth - they are measuring two very different things.
Both you and the administration are making predictions of the future, so of course they are "fictitious" - how could they not be? Are they fraudulent? Overstated by 30%? On what basis? They might be overly rosy, but 30% is a gigantic amount. The US has not run to the end of its borrowing rope, and that the world's most powerful economy is probably not about to collapse utterly under a higher debt load. Whether you see the kind of recovery necessary to sustain that load is an open question. I hope the answer is yes, but I have no magic to reveal the future - and neither do you.
-Jester