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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 8:08 PM
Subject: Change I Can Believe In
To: letters@nytimes.com
To the Editor:
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 8:08 PM
Subject: Change I Can Believe In
To: letters@nytimes.com
To the Editor:
Now that the People have voted for change, Mr. Brooks counsels timidity. That's sage advice is the goal is to put the GOP back in the White House in four years, but a non-starter for mending what is wrong in America. Just as president Clinton began paying down our foreign debt in the fat years, these are the lean times that call for deficit spending. With our climate collapsing, our transportation system out-dated, our education system in shambles, employment falling and bin Laden still at large, this is the time for bold governmental leadership. If that adds temporarily to our debts, so bet it.
Barry Levine
3 comments:
Hi Barry,
"Temporary" deficit? Everyone has their hat in hand for a bailout now--industries, states, cities, and more to come. We may already be at 5 trillion in committed obligations--will this grow to 10, 15 or more? The debt service on this will cripple the economy when interest rates go up, which they will when inflation heats up, which it must since the U.S. is and will be printing money to cover all these obligations.
Hi Barry,
"Temporary" deficit? Everyone has their hat in hand for a bailout now--industries, states, cities, and more to come. We may already be at 5 trillion in committed obligations--will this grow to 10, 15 or more? The debt service on this will cripple the economy when interest rates go up, which they will when inflation heats up, which it must since the U.S. is and will be printing money to cover all these obligations.
Hi Morris!
FDR's programs (and repeal!) buoyed the spirits in '33 but unemployment went up when he tried to balance the budget prematurely for the elections of '36. It was even more deficit spending (for WWII) that took us out of the Depression. There's a time for deficit spending and a time for paying back the debt and banking surpluses. Brooks' timidity is wholly out of phase and would park us in the recession that gripped Japan in the eighties, or worse.
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