Tony Blankley is relaxed about the US trillion dollar deficit. Very relaxed indeed. Perhaps too relaxed… August 4, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, US Politics.trackback
Here’s a surprise… consider his thoughts from the most recent Left Right & Centre podcast…
Well I too am terribly concerned about the size of the debt the US is incurring and I understand the Chinese concern about it. I temper that concern only by knowing the history of national debt and it’s always been the case that people fear that now we’re borrowing more than the economy can sustain, Macauley was making that argument about the British economy after the Napoleonic Wars and yet the British with that huge debt that they incurred ended up having the most prosperous century in history in the 19th century, and we’ve been talking, I can remember during the Reagan years, was a €250 billion deficit in 85 going to crush the economy? and we had 25 years of a boom, so it maybe as huge as these deficits are and they are terrifyingly large, a €2 trillion deficit a year, increasing total debt by almost €9.5 trillion over the next decade, maybe we’ll find the economy can exploit that and we’ll have prosperity, but I understand and share the Chinese concern.
Remember, this guy is a fiscal conservative. Can’t believe for a moment that that was his line back in the days when he was an advisor, or was it communications maven, for Newt Gringrich. Unless the terms fiscal conservative and deficit hawk have been reworked out of all recognition.
“Fiscal conservative” is code for being against the welfare state.
For obvious reasons (it’s very, very popular with most of the population, who are not stupid) that can’t be admitted out loud by the rich and the corporations, though.
So instead think tanks full of wingnuts and professional shills are set up and funded generously to come up with b-s proxy arguments.
‘Reagan proved deficits don’t matter’ – Dick Cheney.
If you have a strong economy, a strong military, representative institutions, and a public happy to guarantee the debt, you can pretty much borrow as much as you like if the examples of C18th Britain and the US in the contemporary era are anything to go by.
That would indeed to be the case G. That it’s the right that is aligning with this is lamentable.
Nice quote Dr. X.
EWI, I think you’re right. What’s sickening though is how these guys made precisely the opposite noises when it suited them. And watching the Daily Show this last week to see the shite about the healthcare plan and the fiscal stimulus being trotted out – not least the clunkers programme which is now out of cash because it was so popular, something the right see as a negative – is disheartening because one knows they’ll just serve up the usual dish in three years time of ‘irresponsible spending’ etc, etc.
What’s sickening though is how these guys made precisely the opposite noises when it suited them.
It’s all just hot air towards their ends (at least with the US Democrats, you know where you stand). Same as for being against “activist judges” – except where it’s their own reactionary appointees! – and it wa interesting to see McDowell using this language a moth or two back.
Are you following the current US healthcare goings-on?
I am indeed. What’s fascinating is the rhetoric being whipped up against it…