One of the nice things about not blogging, is that I can now go back in time.

Just testing out my new toy (homemade time machine), I set it for August 4, 1999….  (It was supposed to be April 4, but I belatedly realized I needed to put more than just an initial for the month…Sigh. Life is a learning process… )

Since this was just a test (I didn’t want to get lost in time), I just took it the millennial equivalent of around the block.

While there, I came across this and said:  “Damn”.


Courtesy of BBC

Wow. We’d just paid down $38 billion of the debt and could see how the national debt would disappear in 2008….

And here are some other items lifted out of that context…. doesn’t it seem like so long ago?

Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said that “reducing the supply of Treasury debt held by the public brings enormous benefits for our economy”.

Savings could be used instead for more productive investment in factories, while reducing the total amount of debt would help cut interest rates.

Official projections suggest trillions of dollars in budget surpluses over the next 15 years, boosted by a strong economy and strict controls on spending.

The Republicans are proposing a $792bn tax cut, while President Clinton and the Democrats want to add funds to the social security retirement programme and Medicare, which provides health care for older people.

Wouldn’t that have been nice?

Such a course of action has long been advocated by Alan Greenspan, the influential chairman of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve.

He argues that reducing government debt should take priority over tax cuts, as the move will free funds for private investment and lower government spending.

We blame Greenspan for a lot of things, but even he, was against what became known as the Bush Tax Cuts. Simply because they are harmful to the United States of America.

The government hopes that by making repurchases, rather than just selling less debt in the future, it can better manage its portfolio to save money.

By retiring longer term debt, while issuing more cheaper short-term bonds, it will keep the cost of the debt repayments lower.

Can someone tell me again why we went away from this policy? Oh, yeah, Republicans won….

So today the National Debt stands at $16 Trillion in debt. If we made no changes, and just taxed all corporate profits at 100% like we did during WWII, at $2 Trillion a quarter, we could pay off the entire national debt in 2 years….

Without hurting a damn thing.

Let’s get started. To do so we need to send NO Republicans to any office. When the scale of their loss becomes apparent, all guilty parties will know, that this IS the will of the people. No increase in spending; just tax all the profits of the Bain Capitals and use THAT money to buy back Treasury Bonds early….

The only downside to this plan, is a roaring economy. But we’re a big nation. We can handle that….