Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Dean Baker — Deficit Hawks Take Over NYT: Warn of China's "Ballooning" Government Debt

Yep, it seems that China now has a gross debt equal to 43.2 percent of its GDP, according to the I.M.F. By comparison, the gross debt of the United States is over 104 percent. But, the NYT apparently thinks China has a big problem here. 
This does matter, because insofar as the main problem with China's economy is a lack of demand, it can be easily countered with additional government spending. Of course if the government were up against some sort of borrowing constraint due to an excessive debt burden, and inflationary concerns precluded the printing of money, then the route of deficit spending would not be available. However such constraints only appear to exist in the pages of the NYT, not in the real world.
More nonsense from the US "paper of record." They want us to pay money for this rag?

Beat the Press
Deficit Hawks Take Over NYT: Warn of China's "Ballooning" Government Debt
Dean Baker

12 comments:

Anonymous said...


Just show 'em this and tell them to get with the program:

http://theweek.com/articles/583986/bernie-sanders-doesnt-need-pay-socialist-utopia

Abram Larson said...

This is concerning. What happens if China runs out of money and isn't able to loan the US any more Dollars?

Random said...

Er what about Japan.

mike norman said...

Right...what about Japan?

But more importantly this is why battling to get the truth out is a waste of time. You can't when you are up against huge media outfits like this, where the dogma and misinformation is so deep that you can cut it with a knife.

Matt Franko said...

"of course if.... inflationary concerns precluded the printing of money,"

This is not technically correct and thus WEAK... this is not an effective argument.

How do you get from a sum of currency units to currency units per unit measure? How?

What is the equation?

Mike you are being too kind with "battling" here... no one is battling (present Co. excepted)

Matt Franko said...

Here this is battling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ou7WbNiXjA

Unknown said...

You would think that qe didn't ever happen with this garbage. Do these people really believe that the fed buying tsy cds directly from the tsy in the amount equal to the deficit is "printing money" but if tsy sells to primary dealers who then sell the cds on to the fed somehow this isn't printing money or its sterilized or something even if all the accounting consequence are exactly the same. Wtf is wrong with baker .

Matt Franko said...

Auburn he is not qualified....

You have to have a cognitive ability to think systemically....

Baker is "rote".... iow he read one time "increase of the money supply causes inflation" in his training and he just believes it... he cant understand it systemically like you can... it just becomes regurgitation of the false....

He could not write the paragraph you wrote above where you follow the time series sequence of events in the operations and then are able to judge the mathematical equivalency....

He is a "rote" type person you are "creative thinker" type person in this situation....

Matt Franko said...

"Wtf is wrong with baker"

there is nothing "wrong" with him.... he is in the wrong job here....

Matt Franko said...

auburn someone could have taught him "4 times 4 = 15" when he was in grade school where you would probably have thought "wait a minute..."

Anonymous said...

Yeah, they have an audience and they don't want to queer them. Media changes the message only so quickly.

NeilW said...

It's always easier to assume whatever they are writing is written using the 'noble lie' excuse and that they are writing political propaganda.