Bill Miller Questionable on Economics 101?

Forex Blog posts about how Bill Miller of Legg Mason did not see the deficit as a big deal, citing the Financial Times, which states:

But Mr Miller argues that the stock of US assets, currently about $50,000bn, is growing at about 5 per cent, or $2,500bn a year, in nominal terms, broadly in line with GDP. If the US needs to borrow $600bn a year to facilitate that, “that certainly sounds sustainable to me”, he said.

That quote shows ignorance to the social illness caused by the whole paying for the consolidation and growth of wealth for a few. Eventually that breeds political corruption & other social diseases.

In other, unrelated related news, Tom Delay was indited on campaign finance charges:

DeLay was indicted for one count of criminal conspiracy for some unethical, and possibly illegal, campaign activities. If this indictment sets the bar for what constitutes criminal conspiracy, it's time we take a good, long look at the actions of the current administration.

We could start by looking at the recount in Florida. In 2000, five Republican appointees on the Supreme Court conspired to end the recount and effectively put George W. Bush in office. Was their conspiracy criminal? Probably not. Was it motivated by partisan politics, and was their decision handed down on shaky legal grounds? Yes.

After Bush made it into the Oval Office, though, the conspiracies could really get started. Take, for example, the prelude to the war in Iraq. The Bush administration put forth a concerted effort to convince the American people and the world that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons and ties to al-Qaeda. George Bush told the American people that "a dictator is building and hiding weapons that could enable him to dominate the Middle East and intimidate the civilized world." Colin Powell presented "airtight" evidence for the U.N. General Assembly. Dissenters -- experts within the government who disagreed with the administration's conclusions -- were silenced. Only after we had fought a costly war did the Downing Street Memo emerge as an indictment of the Bush Administration for misleading the American public. A conspiracy to get us into war? Certainly. Criminal? Two thousand American dead, uncounted Iraqi dead, and $200 billion sure makes Tom DeLay's $190,000 check seem like chump change.

Would love to see papers intertwine these types of stories a bit more often.

How ironic / fucked up / Orwellian is it that the "small government" party can create mounds and mounds of national debt while saying the social programs supported by the other side will make the country poor?

Posted at September 29, 2005 12:11 PM