| Teesus | Date: Thursday, 2013/05/23, 10:32 PM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
|
|
Private
Group: Checked
Messages: 817
|
With Congress gridlocked by the debt-ceiling debate, the Federal Reserve is conducting a radical experiment with the American economy
Welcome back to the dumb season. It's debt-ceiling time again.We've been at this two years now. It was back in 2011 when the Republican Party, seized by anti-government furor, first locked on the
lifting of the federal debt ceiling – an utterly routine governmental
mechanism that allows the Treasury to borrow to pay for spending already
approved by the entire Congress, Republicans included – as a place to
hold a showdown over . . . government spending. That first battle
resulted in a "Mutually Assured Destruction"-type stalemate, in which
both parties agreed that if they couldn't reach a deal by New Year's Day
2013, a series of brutal, automatic, across-the-board spending cuts
would take effect. At the time, it seemed unthinkable Congress would let
that happen. By the time we passed that date, the thing that seemed
unthinkable was the idea that Congress would ever make a deal. The cuts
took effect in March and we were headed for a full-on fiscal crash on
May 19th, when fate intervened to stop this stupidest-in-history
blue-red catfight in its tracks, if only temporarily.Read Full Story
|
|
|
| |
Main 
