Our hero, Paul Krugman, is at it again, shining a bright light on the biggest deficit hawk deceiver: Fix the Debt, funded by billionaire Peter Peterson. Here's the synopsis quote:
What’s happening now is that all the Peterson-funded groups are trying to exploit the fiscal cliff to push a benefit-cutting agenda that has nothing to do with the current crisis, using artfully deceptive language — as in that MacGuineas letter — to hide the bait and switch.
The article is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
What's so great about Krugman is that he doesn't let up. The media is entangled in the weed trap leading to Fiscal Cliff fear, bamboozled by groups like Fix the Debt.
Krugman is perhaps the only major media writer who pulls back the veil and shines the light of reality on the mainstream-spewed debt/deficit nonsense. Over the past month or so, he has written a series of articles on the national debt and why even with the projected growth of the national debt it isn't problematic as long as: interest rates stay low indicating it's easy for the US to borrow, GDP growth eventually returns to 3% gradually lessening the debt percent of GDP. Further, other articles he's written have shown in detail how slowing government spending too much to decrease the growth of the debt would hamstring the still-fledgling recovery. Of course, he's also been pointing out the need to increase revenues ... .
This time he takes aim at Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO, for his come together blather in trying to pin equal blame on Ds as on recalitrant Rs.
Take another sip below. Then go read the entire article.
Howard Schultz, the C.E.O. of Starbucks, has a reputation as a good guy, a man who supports worthy causes. And he presumably thought he would add to that reputation when he posted an open letter urging his employees to promote fiscal bipartisanship by writing “Come together” on coffee cups.
In the letter, Mr. Schultz warned that elected officials “have been unable to come together and compromise to solve the tremendously important, time-sensitive issue to fix the national debt,” and suggested that readers further inform themselves at the Web site of the organization Fix the Debt. Let’s parse that, shall we?
First of all, it’s true that we face a time-sensitive issue in the form of the fiscal cliff: unless a deal is reached, we will soon experience a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that might push the nation back into recession. But that prospect doesn’t reflect a failure to “fix the debt” by reducing the budget deficit — on the contrary, the danger is that we’ll cut the deficit too fast.