By John Miltimore, American Institute for Economic Research
In late December, after US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen borrowed $90 billion in just one day, the federal government’s public debt eclipsed $34 trillion for the first time in history.
The steady accumulation of public debt has become a mainstay in modern America, seemingly as inevitable as death and taxes. But something strange happened when the US passed yet another trillion-dollar debt milestone.
There appeared to be concern.
“The federal debt starts the new year at a level that is hard to grasp: $34 trillion,” the New York Times declared in a piece titled “The Debt Matters Again,” and even “…federal deficits now look scarier.”
CNN, the Associated Press, and other legacy media outlets also reported on the debt situation, offering bleak soundbites.
“Unsustainable,” Marc Goldwein, senior vice president at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told the Washington Post while describing the situation.
“Dangerous… a truly depressing ‘achievement,’” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in a CNN interview.
“Pretty grim,” Loyola Marymount University economics professor Sung Won Sohn told the Associated Press.
That legacy media are no longer shrugging off concerns about the federal debt is encouraging, if long overdue.
After all, it doesn’t take a PhD in economics to realize that racking up $34 trillion in debt — an amount 20 percent higher than the nation’s GDP, with a debt-to-GDP ratio higher than during World War II — is a serious problem.
Nothing to Fear?
Yet one media crown jewel informed listeners they had little to fear. NPR’s Leila Fadel asked Stephanie Kelton, a professor of economics at Stony Brook University, if Americans should “be afraid” of this mountain of red ink.
“No. They shouldn’t,” Kelton responded. “It’s the word debt that makes people afraid. And so when I think about this, you know, I look at this number, and I think, well, it’s just keeping track of our savings.”
The idea that debt is just “keeping track of our savings” is peculiar. But Kelton is a peddler of strange ideas.
For those who don’t know, Kelton, an advisor to Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential run, is a disciple...(READ THIS ARTICLE FREE HERE).
