On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 00:05:36 -0500, Ed Huntress wrote:

And that's why, as I pointed out in my last message, the Treasury Dept. and
nearly everyone else doesn't count those bonds.

Their website seems to show they do count those bonds, Ed.

Now, you may still insist on counting them. That's fine, then you'd have to
say that the national debt accumulated *more slowly* during the late '90s
than at any time since 1972. That fact is true either way.

Yes, that we can agree on, and it shows that there was no surplus during
Clinton's years, contrary to his habitual lying about it.

Also, you brushed off the idea of counting debt as a portion of GDP, as
nearly everyone does.

You're either taking in more than you're spending, or you're not. What
the rest of the economy is doing doesn't change a red number into a
black number.

They do it for a good reason: because debt has no
economic meaning whatsoever EXCEPT AS a portion of GDP.

The polarity of the number is what's in question here, Ed, not the
proportion.

So, I'm done. g You may accept these things or not; it doesn't matter,
because everyone who makes the key economic decisions that affect the
national debt, and SS, and so on know them perfectly well, and these are the
basis on which those decisions are being made. And that, I suppose, is as
close as we're going to get here to the bottom line.


All I can tell you, Ed, is that Clinton claimed to have a surplus,
and in each of those years the amount of debt went up. If my checkbook
balance gets more negative on any given month, I don't call that a
surplus.