"INFRASTRUCTURE" Spending As A Transfer Payment? Depends on Whether It's Social or Physical Infrastructure

(Commentary by Roger Erickson)

What are Transfer Payments, and why are they off-budget? Well, just because.

Yes, our country is pretty arbitrary about what is, and what isn't, exactly which kind of fiat. That kind of stuff matters to accountants, banksters and lobbyists ... as long as they're paid for their time and ... anything OTHER than their utility to nation. :)

It will be interesting to see how these two "ships" - infrastructure funding & Deficit Terrorism - manage to pass in the night. :)

Meanwhile, look at this example, to get an idea of the diversity of options that we could - and might yet - be exploring.

Waterways Council Lobbies for Multi-Billion Dollar U.S. Ship-Channel Project

" .. commercial waterway legislation may be enacted for the first time since 2007. The House plans to vote as soon as today on a multibillion-dollar bill that would authorize 23 port, dredging, levee and environmental restoration projects"

Looks like similar bills passed both House & Senate, with differences being negotiated in a Congressional Conference.

Could it be???

Are we accidentally, barely, saving ourselves from ourselves? Just in time?

Maybe the Tea Party, fiat-Deficit-Terrorist members will, rather like FDR, end up essentially voting to make "INFRASTRUCTURE" spending a Transfer Payment, and therefore officially "off budget"?

Just like most of our Social Infrastructure & similar public investment spending?* :)

Wouldn't that be hilarious, and unexpected? Less surreal things have happened in our wacky, national history.

Meanwhile, note that [all?] Corporate Welfare IS officially, on-budget. Maybe things aren't as bad as we thought.

It should be a hoot watching our Congress critters attempt to unravel all this reality. :)

You can almost see their mental wheels ... j..u...s....t... starting to
turn. Who knows, maybe they actually will.

Or, they might scare themselves, freeze up, and simply stop the country in it's tracks ... again.  Keep your fingers crossed and your fiat dry.

* Gosh, maybe we could even fund local police and white collar crime regulation as an Off Budget Transfer Payment!    Wotta concept! :)

Implying a "Novel" Way to Look at the National Debt? (plagiarizing a 400 yr old view?)

commentary by Roger Erickson

Here's another article you wouldn't expect to see in the Washington Post.

Maybe someone at the CFR read Warren Mosler's book & decided to have "one of their own" plagiarize - as a novel insight - it and all fiat-currency literature going all the way back to John Law.

Could this be the start of a campaign to puncture their own straw man? Does this mean that the DT's have decided it's time to recover from their own DTs? Admittedly, one advantage of having the DTs is that one can rearrange one's paradigm at will, as if in a self-editing dream. There's even a bevy of contractors - like Zachary Karabell - collectively known as the PICC, or Propagandist Industrial Controlfraud Complex.

Another way to look at the national debt