America’s economy is faltering not from too little infrastructure spending, but from too much debt—-$67 trillion of total public and private debt, to be exact. So it appears that the bond vigilantes are returning from 24 years of hibernation just in the nick of time to put the kibosh on the Trumpite/GOP’s latest hare-brained scheme to balloon the public debt.
As if the impending FY 2019 collision between $1.2 trillion of new Treasury borrowing and the Fed’s $600 billion bond-dumping campaign (QT) incepting this coming October were not enough, word now comes that Tuesday’s night’s State of the Union (SOTU) adress will feature a $1.7 trillion infrastructure plan.
We’d say rechristen the Donald as “Boondoggle Don” and be done with it. On top of the $1 trillion + deficits already rumbling down the pike, the very idea of a massive debt-financed, pork-barrel driven borrow and spend spree 104 months into a business cycle expansion is sheer lunacy.
And don’t take our word for it—even if we have been smoked by the bond vigilantes up close and personal, and more than once. With this morning’s breakout to a 2.72% yield on the 10-year treasury note, it is more likely than not that the bond-selling stampede has commenced.
Read the rest at David Stockman’s ContraCorner.
TGIF: Thomas Szasz – Unappreciated Libertarian
I maintain that mental illness is a metaphorical disease: that bodily illness stands in the same relation to mental illness as a defective television set stands to a bad television program. There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography. --Thomas...
