Wednesday, May 18, 2016

USDs for Zika eradication only with "offsets"


I'll just post this to point out how BAD it has gotten.  These libertarian morons cannot even bring themselves to appropriate some additional USD balances to combat an emergent standard mosquito borne public health threat.

The ONLY hope we have for ANY additional leading flow of fiscal is if the Fed starts to raise the interest rate; sorry this is just how BAD it has become.

In this regard, you cannot remain an advocate for ZIRP in the face of this idiot libertarian intransigence and still assert you are righteous sorry.





10 comments:

Unknown said...

Giving $4 to the wealthy, corporations, and foreigners so that we can give regular people $1 is an extremely stupid and regressive policy that nobody should support.


http://www.factcheck.org/2013/11/who-holds-our-debt/

"The largest portion of the total debt — about 40 percent — was held by federal government accounts plus the Federal Reserve banks. Since 2009, the Federal Reserve banks have been sharply increasing their holdings of Treasury securities to stimulate the economy, and as of March 31, they held just under $2 trillion of the national debt, or about 12 percent. The federal government accounts include the two Social Security trust funds, which together hold 16 percent of the total federal debt. Other federal government accounts include the federal civil service retirement and disability fund (5 percent of total debt), the military retirement fund (3 percent), the Medicare hospital insurance fund (1 percent), and several other smaller funds.
Another 34 percent of total federal debt is owed to foreigners, including China (which owned nearly $1.3 trillion of the total debt, or about 8 percent), closely followed by Japan, which owned $1.1 trillion, or 7 percent. Previously, Japan had been the top foreign owner of U.S. debt, but China surpassed Japan in September 2008. Other major foreign lenders are various Caribbean banking centers including the Cayman Islands (2 percent altogether), various oil-exporting nations including Saudi Arabia (2 percent altogether) and Brazil (2 percent).
The remainder of the total federal debt is spread among mostly private, domestic investors, including 6 percent owned through mutual funds, such as money-market funds. Another 3 percent is owned by state and local governments. The remaining 17 percent is spread among banks and other depository institutions (2 percent), owners of U.S. savings bonds (1 percent), private pension funds (3 percent), state and local pension funds (1 percent), and insurance companies (2 percent), with the remaining 9 percent held by various “individuals, Government-sponsored enterprises, brokers and dealers, bank personal trusts and estates, corporate and non-corporate businesses, and other investors,” according to the Treasury."

Unknown said...

Yeah, lets make mortgages more expensive for people so that the few people who have savings (by definition, wealthier people have more savings) can get more interest income. Genius!!!

Matt Franko said...

Ok Auburn have it your way... birth defects here we come...

Six said...

Matt's gone TINA on us.

Unknown said...

Matt-

Your love of the non-sequitur is legend. What on earth does paying more interest to TSY CD holders have to do with allocating funds to the EPA and CDC to combat the Zika virus?

Matt Franko said...

Ok so it has to be a tradeoff between Zika and AIDS or WTF????

Greg said...

@Matt

The only ones suggesting a tradeoff are the moron conservatives in congress, not Auburn.

You seem to be suggesting that if interest rates were allowed to rise then these congress critters would no longer play these games and would stop with this zero sum logic. Allowing more interest income to enter the economy would do nothing to increase the amount our congress would allocate to new govt spending. That income would be entering into the private sector not going into govt accounts. The govt would still be "running out of money ", in fact as interest payments rise we would be running out even faster in the minds of these morons.


Matt Franko said...

This Congress always yields to the Fed... if the Fed puts the rates up, the interest becomes an automatic appropriation...

Interest income will increase and states/local govt taxes will increase and then these local govts will be able to increase their programs as a result including public health initiatives for Zika or others...

Even the Sanders campaign plans require tradeoffs like this from the current GOP led House in leading flows...

The ONLY way we are getting ANY increase in leading USD flow is via Medicare/Medicare/SS these days (other automatic appropriations) if you want more leading spending than this for employment or other constructive purposes, the only other place it can come from is via interest payments at the present time under present govt...

AND... we DONT need zero rates to make our larger points about govt spending, etc ie we are not "out of money!"... in fact, we can use such an increase in interest income to HELP make our point about the importance of leading USD flow wrt the USD economy... by making predictive statements and pointing out and documenting the improvement in outcomes that will result/accompany such an increase....

Knowing what we know, to continue to advocate for ZIRP under the present conditions one would have to be a politician and certainly not a righteous person...

Greg said...

@Matt

Fair points. I hadn't understood exactly how you were seeing it til that comment. Fed independence has become a religion and bankers are the only ones allowed to make investment decisions it seems

I don't necessarily think ZIRP is key as much as I think the number doesn't matter as much as picking a number and keeping it there. Wasting all this time and efforts to go through these ceremonies of Fed decisions perpetuates the notions that these bankers are the ones that "know" best and crate too many opportunities for insiders to profit with no real work or effort.

Whatever number we choose and stay at will become the new zero.

Tom Hickey said...

We know empirically and from historical experience that interest rate setting, either using rules or based on FOMC expectations about expectations, doesn't work. It's moronism based on magical thinking. It's like wagging a dog's tail to make the dog happy. We should be shouting this from the rooftops.