The comedy of errors being played out in Washington would be funny were it not for the fact that the real victims will be well outside the Belt Line. Estimates of the job loss from sequestration range from 750,000 to 1 million. Not a single one of those will be from the individuals responsible for this debacle.Forbes — Pragmatic Economist
Suicide by Sequestration
John T. Harvey | Professor of Economics, Texas Christian University
5 comments:
All this fuss over $85 billion! Meanwhile, despite Bernanke testifying about it at length before Congress on Tuesday, nobody seems to grasp that Fed remitted $87 billion of interest income to the Treasury earned from its QE holdings in 2012. Why not just put sequestration on hold for now and declare that they have found the savings they were looking for in that Fed interest income?
Ed they ideally want a balanced budget and even beyond that they think we have to "pay back" the "debt" eventually...
They have NO view of our govts fiscal authority on any level... ie libertarians.
rsp
Matt - Both sides in Congress know that a balanced budget ain't happening any time soon and that paying back the debt will never happen. On the other hand, for different reasons both sides would like to avoid sequestration. All of this eyeball to eyeball brinksmanship is over $85billion this year, but all they have to do to defuse that time bomb set to go off this Friday is acknowledge that at the budget deficit will be reduced by at least that amount and probably more owing to Fed remittances of interest income back to Treasury. Presto, chango, immediate sequestration crisis solved!
Too funny Rombach!
But seriously, a few $85 billion must still be lying around, somewhere.
Under Madoff's extra mattress warehouses?
Surely in the NSA's secret accounts at Goldman Sachs?
Roger - More than $85 billion is lying around in the military budget. Bring the troops home from Afghanistan, and while we're at it from Japan, South Korea and Germany as well and put them to work securing the border with Mexico so they can spend their pay domestically. What are we protecting Germany from? Poland?
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