Jan Baker

Rogoff: 'Adding a Trillion Dollars in Debt Is Quite Manageable'

1. Unfortunately, one cannot draw any conclusions from this post without finding another source for the first graph from wikipedia, or without knowing the source of the second graph. Because they can be modified at large and are often modified, and so extremely skillfully as to be undetectable, the data on wiki is just not reliable at all. One might expect the most manipulation for data that is important, and this data is important.

2. That said, one has to agree with sieraromero. This article would have to analyze the economic prospects of all the countries cited, and rank them, for our scores relative to theirs to be reassuring. After all, what difference is it if some people die from poison in the water at a concentration of ten percent, and others die at a concentration of twenty three percent, when point zero zero one percent could kill you? The fact that we have a certain percent of debt retio compared to others is meaningless without more analysis.

3. Also, there's this: we've never been in a demographic like this. Listen--the middle class anywhere is not reproducing. It only takes one generation to die. Can't you realize what that means to supply and demand? Do you know why Europe and China have tumbled? Because their demand went away. That was us, the US, because we are just about the only ones barely reproducing, and thus growing in consumer demand. And we quit buying anyway, because owners just won't pony up the required wages to keep demand growing even without a growth in population. Which was the way all previous markets eventually pulled themselves out. It was the magical fix: the numbers grew and bought houses and cars in spite of the wage stalemate between the owners and the workers.

And because we quit buying, Europe and Asia went down. Their debt to production ratio is meaningless without buyers.

And it won't get better here. We keep pushing lifestyles that are not reproductive, we keep making movies that convince women that motherhood sucks, we keep trivializing women, we keep trivializing men, we keep aborting. We've aborted fifty million car buyers in forty years--since Roe v Wade introduced the Red Death. That's economics 101. Bad move.

It won't get better here until we change some fundamental things. That's all. Trillions, billions, it won't matter. So let the gay agenda keep driving our politics, see what transpires. Our civilization was very fragile, that's what they'll say. Who knew? (You did, but you shut up.)