Saturday, November 24, 2012

More "fiscal cliff" nonsense....

Interest rates are set by the Fed not investors. Why would Bernanke tell us that interest rates are to be held as is until 2015? What's incredible is these guys can get paid to say this baloney!

In the meantime Patti and I are leaving for Florida probably tonight or very early in the morning.

LEE: After fiscal cliff comes fiscal avalanche - Washington Times

If U.S. creditors decide that our debt is no longer the safest form of investment available, demand for Treasurys will drop, interest rates will rise and the cost of servicing our debt will begin to explode. Paying interest on our national debt will quickly crowd out spending on almost all other federal priorities. At that point, any deficit reduction undertaken by Washington — including the sorts of spending cuts or tax increases being discussed today — will be too little, too late. The Congressional Budget Office projects that under the most likely policy scenario, in 30 years, net interest payments on the debt could total $3.8 trillion in today’s dollars. That is more than total government spending for 2011. In reality, we are unlikely to maintain the same level of borrowing and spending for the next three decades without a significant change in interest rates for our debt. Even a modest 1 percentage point increase next year, for example, in effect would wipe out all the deficit reduction included in last year’s Budget Control Act. In other words, we would have to shoulder the burden of fiscal restraint without any actual deficit reduction — all pain and no gain. It could get much worse.

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