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Editor’s note: If you
don’t laugh, you’ll cry...
Investors.com...
Don’t Let Debt Limit
Get In The Way Of The Party
By Mark Steyn
April 29, 2011
The other day Paul O’Neill said that ...
Oh, wait. I suppose I ought to explain who Paul O’Neill is. A decade
ago, he was George W. Bush’s first Treasury secretary. I have no very
clear memory of him except that he toured Africa with Bono and they
were photographed in matching tribal dress looking like Col. Gadhafi’s
Mini-Me twins at a Tripoli sleepover. Other than the dress-up fun, I’ve
no idea why they were in Africa, but you paid for it, so I’m sure there
was a good reason.
Anyway, Secretary O’Neill popped up the other day on Bloomberg
Television to compare debt-ceiling holdouts to jihadists. “The people
who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling,” he said, “are our
version of al-Qaida terrorists. Really.”
Really?
Absolutely.
“They’re really putting our whole society at risk by threatening to
round up 50% of the members of the Congress, who are loony, who would
put our credit at risk.”
But hang on, generally speaking, when you hit your “debt ceiling,” your
credit is at risk. If you’ve got a $10,000 credit card, and you run it
up to the limit, but you need a couple more grand right now, pronto,
because you outspend your earnings by 50% every month and you have no
plans to change that anytime soon, well, the bank might increase the
limit to $15,000, or $20,000. Or they might not. There is a question
mark over your credit because there is a question mark over your
creditworthiness: It is at risk.
Paul O’Neill seems to regard that attitude as unhelpful. So does
Timothy Geithner, his successor at what is still laughingly known as
the United States Treasury. Geithner says that even to be discussing
the debt ceiling is “a ridiculous debate to have.”
Ridiculous?
Absolutely.
“I mean, the idea that the United States would take the risk that
people would start to believe we won’t pay our bills,” continued
Geithner, “is a ridiculous proposition, irresponsible, completely
unacceptable.”
The best way to persuade people to believe we’ll pay our bills is to
borrow up to our limit, and then increase the limit and borrow a whole
bunch more. This would be the 75th increase in the debt ceiling in the
last half-century. Let’s just get it done, and resume the party.
Read the rest of the story at Investors.com
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