Balkinization: What is he waiting for? Reflections on the 14th Amendment, Section 4 argument

Comments:

Maybe invoking the Fourteenth Amendment is a useful negotiating ploy for the White House, but it's hard to see how they could do so in practice without facing political disaster.

The public is against raising the debt limit by huge margins. Presumably they do not understand the economic catastrophe that would result from a U.S. default. But if Obama invokes some kind of super-power in order to keep paying the bills, the public will never understand. Republicans will be able to demagogue the President's "lawlessness" and, since the public opposes raising the ceiling, they will likely side with the GOP.

It seems that the public will not "get it" unless there is an actual default, and the White House surely is unwilling to go that far.

# posted by

Steve M : 2:45 PM

The so called "constitutional option" argues:

1) The Public Debt Clause of the 14th Amendment requires the United States to pay its debts;

2) The United States cannot pay its debts if the Congress does not raise the debt ceiling;

3) Therefore, the President may seize the Congress' power to authorize the issuance of debt pursuant to the Public Debt Clause.

The problem with this theory is the false assumption that the United States cannot honor its debt obligations without an increase in the debt ceiling. In reality, our current tax revenues can pay 60% of spending. Treasury can roll the principal owed on old bonds into new bonds and stay under the debt ceiling. The tax revenues are far more than enough for the Treasury to honor the Public Debt Clause and pay off the interest accruing.

If President Obama attempts to seize the Congress' power of the purse as suggested under the poorly named "constitutional option," he will in fact be acting illegally and trigger a constitutional crisis. The GOP majority in the House would be more than happy to impeach him under these circumstances in a very drawn out public display for their center-right electoral coalition.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 2:48 PM

If Obama had the guts to use the 14th A argument, he'd never have gotten into his current position anyway.

# posted by

Mark Field : 3:05 PM

Bart,

If what you say is true, then I agree with you. (The Treasury and the Federal Reserve could also sell assets to make up the difference between incoming taxes and debt payments.) I suppose there might be some issue, though, about whether rolling over debt counts as new debt under the ceiling. I'm not sure.

# posted by

Gerard N. Magliocca : 3:48 PM

He sure does resemble a punching bag for McConnell & Cantor to me.

By the looks of it default is about the best option available to him. It wouldn't be pretty (how ugly no one knows) but it would in my view leave the GOP holding an extremely unsavory bag.

# posted by

mattski : 4:17 PM

I'm not sure what the "constitutional option" is poorly named. The language says what is ays, and it's surely not frivolous (even if, at the end of the day, it's ultimately unpersuasive) to say that the President, with his sworn duty to uphold the Constitution, could ignore a refusal to increase the debt ceiling.

Also, I literally don't believe that anyone in Treasury agrees with Mr. DePalma's complacent views, elsewise there would be no sense of urgency, which seems altogether genuine and not merely "political theater."

I want to emphasize that what I'm curious about is the White House silence about the Section Four argument. at least as much as I'm curious about the up-or-down legal argments about the one true meaning of Section Four.

# posted by

Sandy Levinson : 4:25 PM

The GOP isn't rolling the dice on default. That's just a Democratic party talking point to justify the President usurping the power of the purse in advance of their complete loss of control of Congress. They're rolling the dice on a balanced budget. That's all not raising the debt ceiling demands, not default.

This false equivalency between not raising the debt ceiling, and default, tells us more about what's going on in the minds of the people advancing it, than it does about the President's real options. It tells us that they consider a balanced budget completely unimaginable.

# posted by

Brett : 4:26 PM

The GOP isn't rolling the dice on default.

They're threatening default. How's that? (In an unprecedented attempt at extortion.)

# posted by

mattski : 6:10 PM

Off topic, I wonder if Prof. Levinson read the somewhat negative book review of the Ike book cited in that thread.

As to this, I'm with Laurence O'Donnell that Dems will be the "adults" here (as usual these days when it comes to fiscal matters) and some settlement will be made.

This 14A issue is interesting (as it was a few years ago when it was raised regarding Social Security benefits being "just paper") but I'm unsure how useful it practicably will be.

# posted by

Joe : 6:23 PM

mattski said...

The GOP isn't rolling the dice on default.

They're threatening default. How's that? (In an unprecedented attempt at extortion.)

Not a single GOP representative or senator is threatening to trigger a default. Instead, this is an incredibly reckless claim by the Obama Administration to pressure Congress to authorize enough new borrowing to finance about 98% of current spending levels past the 2012 election along with a few new taxes.

Yes Sandy, this is political theater of the worst kind.

Far from being radical, the GOP demand for a $200 billion cut in annual spending is far from adequate and only lowers the now $1.8 trillion deficit (under yesterday's new Administration estimates) by a little over 10%. This means we will join Greece in sovereign insolvency in a bit less than a decade rather than a decade from now.

If the GOP retreats from even this wholly inadequate start, perhaps it will be time for the Tea Party to start cleaning house again. Both parties are screwing with our country's future.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 6:40 PM

Is the WH silence on Section Four really that surprising? First of all, I am assuming that no one in the Administration had heard of Section Four before a few weeks ago. Second, Obama, Biden, Clinton, among others, have been involved in a number of previous contested votes to raise the debt limit. Presumably, no one ever mentioned to them that the debt limit was unconstitutional (and, of course, Obama and I believe the others voted against raising it on occasion). Third, the Treasury Department has dealt with debt limit crises since at least 1986. There must be memoranda in the General Counsel's office which (a) discuss all of the legal options without considering the possibility of declaring the debt limit unconstitutional or (b) consider that possibility and reject it.

So it may seem relatively easy for academics and Members of Congress to declare this to be a valid or at least plausible argument (it is, of course, a nonfalsifiable assertion). But if the administration raises it as a formal argument, there is going to be a lot of blowback.

Come to think of it, maybe it is time to send a FOIA request to the Treasury General Counsel . . .

# posted by

mls : 7:39 PM

Bart, you're playing semantic games in the first instance. In the second, your credibility is less than zero.

"Far from being radical..."

No, the GOP isn't radical. They just believe, on no evidence, that tax cuts are the solution to every problem society faces. They aren't radical... they just care so deeply about fiscal responsibility that any talk of eliminating the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans causes them to leave the negotiating table.

And so on.

# posted by

mattski : 9:03 PM

Mattski:

Forget about the partisan nonsense.

A $200 billion per year reduction in spending no matter which party proposes it is only a slightly longer road to national suicide. There is no country that can bail out the US the way the EU is trying and will eventually fail in bailing out Greece. If we do not take immediate and massive action, the US will plunge into a massive and long term depression (See post Civil War Egypt) or a hyper-inflation attempting to print money to pay off the debt (See Peronist Argentina or Weimar Germany) in the next decade. This is not hyperbole.

The Ryan Plan calling for an eventual (not immediate) $400 billion total annual spending cut will not reduce our current deficit by even a quarter.

My friend, if we are going to survive as functional country nevertheless a superpower, we need to return to the FY 2000 baseline and cut $1.5 trillion in total annual spending over about five years and hope that returned economic growth can make up the rest. This means we need to find about $300 billion in additional real spending cuts every year for the next five years. Even then we will have a massive debt to service for generations.

Neither of our parties are even remotely serious about this.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 11:57 PM

Returning to the FY2000 baseline on taxes, of course, is unthinkable in Bart-land. Speaking of not being remotely serious.

# posted by

Steve M : 1:38 AM

There is more relevant case law and discussion than has been quoted, mainly on extending constitution protection of government obligations beyond bonds. The 14th Amendment and the debt ceiling has been talked about on economics blogs for several months now - I and others were posting on it since August 2010 or earlier.

In addition to Perry, there is United States v. Winstar Corp. et al. (95-865), 518 U.S. 839 (1996). " [I]t is clear that the National Government has some capacity to make agreements binding future Congresses by creating vested rights, see, e.g., Perry v. United States ... " although “the extent of that capacity, to be sure, remains somewhat obscure.” & quotes John Marshall -“if an act be done under a law, a succeeding legislature cannot undo it. The past cannot be recalled by the most absolute power.”

There is also the 2004 Cherokee Nation case, where IIRC a unanimous court said that the palefaces had to pay the tribe what it was owed, even though Congress had not made a specific appropriation. Interestingly the Obama DOJ's APPLICABILITY OF SECTION 163 OF DIVISION B OF PUBLIC LAW 111-68 TO PAYMENTS IN SATISFACTION OF PRE-EXISTING CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS said the US could not "breach a pre-existing binding contractual obligation" to ACORN, even though Congress had passed a law trying to cheat them. It's a good source for prior cases.

# posted by

Calgacus : 3:42 AM

There is also the question of how and whether we can get around the debt ceiling, without running business as usual and just ignoring the ceiling by quoting the 14th amendment. The deeper problem is that our government finances are set up in a pointlessly complicated and confusing way - the main object is to confuse everyone into thinking black is white, up is down, and by the way, subsidize some rich people.

Roughly as per Bart's outline, the problem is that Congress is both ordering spending and then preventing it by the debt ceiling. If business is done as usual, Congress is giving the President two contradictory commands. Turns out there are some ways. The most discussed is jumbo coin seignorage. as in The Debt Ceiling Is Not Unconstitutional, Right Now!, say. Basically Congress has given the Treasury Secretary the power to mint coins of any denomination. Say $1 Trillion. Deposit it at the Fed in the Treasury's account. No budget problems. It's equivalent to printing money, which contrary to the dominant quack-economics of the last 4 decades, tends to be less inflationary than "borrowing"/printing bonds. Keynes called this phenomenon "Gibson's Paradox". See some recent articles & comments at The New Republic site for other ways for the executive to print the money Congress has commanded it to without increasing the debt-ceiling-relevant debt.

Of course, Bart is entirely wrong on the economics (sorry Bart). Government spending is the only thing keeping the US economy afloat.

The problem with the deficit is that it is too small - viz high unemployment, which is always and everywhere caused by insufficient government spending. Of course if you want smaller deficits, the economically safest way would be to return to the tax rates of the 50s & 60s on the upper brackets, and cut the enormous amount of welfare-for-the-rich.

# posted by

Calgacus : 4:15 AM

Jack Balkin's latest post on Section 4 is quite thorough and deserves reading and rereading. Section 4 makes reference to the "public debt" but provides no definition. The debt ceiling statute employs the term "public debt" and attempts to define it. But the statute does not trump the constitutional provision in Section 4 of the 14th Amendment. Balkin's lengthy post includes this:

********

What I have just said assumes that not every service that the government provides is part of the public debt within the meaning of section 4. Thus, I assume that a government shut-down, in and of itself, need not violate section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment, if the government does not default or threaten to default on "the public debt," however that is defined.

It is possible that the President and Congress may disagree about what falls within that definition. If so, the President must make the call as best he can, because he has an independent constitutional duty not to violate Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment. He does not have to accept Congress's view. He may view the factors that lead to questioning the public debt more broadly than Congress, because he may worry that markets will see the government's operations (and thus its creditworthiness) as interconnected.

******

The Constitution does not provide for the supremacy of any branch over the others in fulfilling each branch's constitutional responsibilities. So how indeed is "public debt" to be defined for purposes of Section 4? As Balkin points out, the judiciary may not take this on. So apparently that leaves it to the Executive and Congress to work out this mess. If they fail to do so, who suffers? Who will get the blame? And perhaps the "victors" will end up with even bigger crises than Bush/Cheney's 2008 Great Recession that was passed on to Obama. Based upon recent history, just how might that turn out? How's that proverb go: "Be careful what you wish for — you may get it."

# posted by

Shag from Brookline : 6:38 AM

SL did respond to my request above; thank you. Marty Lederman's latest on the Administration's DOMA brief is interesting. Briefly, since no comments there, the plaintiff brief is stronger in at least one way: it doesn't concede rational basis would save DOMA. As to that, I agree.

http://hunterforjustice.typepad.com/files/pltf-mot-sum-judg-golinski.pdf

Jonathan Adler has interesting remarks in response to Balkin's post on the Section Four issue over at Volokh Conspiracy. Comments welcome there.

# posted by

Joe : 8:30 AM

Bart, the confidence you place in your own abysmal judgement reminds me of this guy.

"Forget about partisan nonsense"? What sort of person prefers to forget that one of our two major parties has been commandeered by dangerous lunatics?

Forgive me, but I'd rather pay attention to the assaults on our ship of state.

# posted by

mattski : 8:56 AM

Calgacus said...

Of course, Bart is entirely wrong on the economics (sorry Bart). Government spending is the only thing keeping the US economy afloat.

No country as ever borrowed and spent its way to economic recovery from a recession. Ours is no exception. Indeed, such a policy is substantially worse than doing nothing.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 9:06 AM

Our yodeler provides a link with his "editorial" phrase that the link fails to substantiate. Nice try.

# posted by

Shag from Brookline : 10:06 AM

Eric Cantor just floated a trial balloon where the GOP will agree to eliminating the various corporate tax deductions to which the Dems disagree in exchange for offsetting reductions in our industrial world high corporate tax rates.

Obama previously claimed to support such reforms, so it appears the GOP is attempting to hold him to his word or smoke out the lie.

We shall see if this is the outline for a deal.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 11:31 AM

Shag from Brookline said...

Our yodeler provides a link with his "editorial" phrase that the link fails to substantiate. Nice try.

Click to expand the charts included with the linked article. The WSJ drew it out in crayon for you.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 11:35 AM

I trump our yodeler with the charts at Krugman's NYTimes blog. WSJ is a tad, only a tad, above Fox. But the substance of the article does not substantiate our yodeler's wishful thinking editorial phrase for the link. Of course our yodeler did not identify the WSJ as the link in his initial comment. I wonder why?

# posted by

Shag from Brookline : 11:53 AM

"No country as ever borrowed and spent its way to economic recovery from a recession."
Let's just ignore that one.
Look at the WSJ charts. Look at corporate profits and bank lending. And understand how much money the banks are sitting on. And home prices? We supported the banks as opposed to borrowers rather than focusing on the system itself, and what do you expect?

"... in exchange for offsetting reductions in our industrial world high corporate tax rates."

If you're willing to exchange the American tax system for one modeled on those in Sweden or Germany I think most of us would go along.
On top of that you've succeeded recently in attacking both the Heritage foundation and Greg Mankiw.

Bart you're consistently anti-tax and pro-war.
"Hurrah, die Butter ist Alle!"

# posted by

D. Ghirlandaio : 12:49 PM

Shag:

Krugman's charts do not conflict with nevertheless trump the WSJ charts compiling government data.

In sum, this is the worst post-recession economy since the Great Depression in GDP growth, unemployment and nearly every other economic metric, far worse than every other post-WWII recession where the government declined to use Keynesian borrow and spend "stimulus."

Former Obama economic adviser and flack, Prof. Christine Romer, is attempting to resurrect her reputation as an economist by admitting economic reality in her recent lectures.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 12:55 PM

No country as ever borrowed and spent its way to economic recovery from a recession.

Well, except the United States, which borrowed and spent to finance WWII thus ushering in the greatest period of growth & prosperity in history.

Here\'s a chart for you, Bart.

Couple things to notice: 1- We're below WWII debt/gdp ratios. 2- Our dive into red ink started in the 80's because, to quote a Dick, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." 3- Bill Clinton reversed this worrisome trend. 4- GWB reversed Democratic fiscal responsibility and showed how much Republicans love to spend money they haven't provided.

Do carry on, though, it's fascinating to watch.

# posted by

mattski : 1:19 PM

"Bill Clinton reversed this worrisome trend."

No he didn't.

"As the chart shows, all of the improvement in the budget between 1996 and 2000 was due to the fact that the economy performed much better than expected and that CBO had been overly pessimistic about trends in government spending and tax collections. The legislative changes added by Congress in this period actually went the wrong way. So, we did not actually move from large deficits to surpluses by tax increases and/or spending cuts, we did it through a strong economy and some good luck with the cost of government programs and tax collections."

# posted by

D. Ghirlandaio : 1:29 PM

D. Ghirlandaio said...

Look at the WSJ charts. Look at corporate profits and bank lending. And understand how much money the banks are sitting on.

Yes I do. Banks and businesses are sitting on over $3 trillion in capital. We are experiencing a capital strike very much like that the country suffered through during the New Deal for many of the same reasons.

And home prices? We supported the banks as opposed to borrowers rather than focusing on the system itself, and what do you expect?

The government's role in causing and extending the subprime mortgage mess is better saved for another day. For the purposes of my observation, our economic stagnation is not limited to just construction and its associated industries. You can't blame the latest failure of borrow and spend Keynesianism on construction.

BD: "... in exchange for offsetting reductions in our industrial world high corporate tax rates."

If you're willing to exchange the American tax system for one modeled on those in Sweden or Germany I think most of us would go along.

I doubt it. The EU countries tax their middle classes far more heavily than we do to support their welfare states. None of them rely as heavily on the top ten percent of earners as we do. None of them tax their corporations nearly as highly as we do.

Ours is the most progressively punitive national tax code in the G8. The problem here is that if we were to expropriate the wealth of that evil 2% that Obama rails against, it would only partially reduce one year's federal deficit. There are not enough rich to support the US welfare state.

Our choice is to roughly double the tax burden on our middle class to pay for the past decade's profligacy or return to the FY2000 baseline of federal spending and reverse the Bush/Obama spending spree.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 1:31 PM

mattski said...

BD: No country as ever borrowed and spent its way to economic recovery from a recession.

Well, except the United States, which borrowed and spent to finance WWII thus ushering in the greatest period of growth & prosperity in history.

The idea that going to war creates economic expansion is one of the most obscene concepts Keynesian's offer to defend their repeatedly discredited borrow and spend philosophy.

Our war borrowing went to paying 20 million men and women in uniform leave the productive workforce and kill the enemy. The remainder went to weapons and supplies which were destroyed or scrapped. No wealth whatsoever was created by this borrowing and spending.

We rationed the goods and services our civilians could consume and lowered the average standard of living. Moreover, the war killed off 250,000 productive workers and crippled about twice as many.

The private economy did not recover from the Great Depression and WWII until a couple years after the WWII when we stopped the borrowing and spending, put a statutory leash on the unions and thus lowered labor costs, and reversed the tariffs which caused the Great Depression in the first instance. Eisenhower cut spending during his first recession and the economy rebounded smartly.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 1:42 PM

D. Ghirlandaio, correction accepted. Thanks.

# posted by

mattski : 2:11 PM

A very silly person said, "No wealth whatsoever was created by this borrowing and spending [for WWII]"

The mind boggles.

# posted by

mattski : 2:14 PM

mattski:

Wealth = goods and services that people demand and purchase.

Money is not wealth, but is simply a means of exchange.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 2:40 PM

"The EU countries tax their middle classes far more heavily than we do to support their welfare states. None of them rely as heavily on the top ten percent of earners as we do. None of them tax their corporations nearly as highly as we do."

Bart you're right about the corporations if you ignore the various legal avoidance strategies. Wrong about the rest. Europe taxes the middle classes and the wealthy and as result the wealth is more spread out.

And it's funny how US government debt went down when social serves expenditures went up. The rise in debt coincided with the backlash against the Great Society programs (late 70's under Carter).

Union representation in the US peaked in the 1950's. IN Europe today it's still higher than it ever was in the US.

And it's hardly a capital strike:
"In December, the Bank of Montreal (BMO) announced it was buying Marshall & Ilsley (M&I) Bank for $4.1 billion, even though the bank has underperformed by nearly 40 percent during the past four years compared with regional banks of a similar size, according to a report from the CtW Investment Group. In addition, it has yet to repay $1.3 billion in taxpayer bailout money through the TARP program.

But BMO has agreed to pay $18 million in severance payments to Mark Furlong, M&I chairman and CEO, along with $65 million in severance to 15 other M&I executives. BMO also has agreed to pay for the executives’ taxes that are generated by these huge payments."

"Both Kuester and Furlong were behind M&I’s strategy to get rich by making real estate loans in red hot markets like Arizona and Florida. When the bubble burst, M&I’s profits tanked, taking its stock price along down. M&I shares are now worth about $7.70 today, down some 85 percent from the $50 peak back in June 2008."

Banks serve a purpose they can be obliged to perform.
If you can fail upwards why risk success?

# posted by

D. Ghirlandaio : 2:48 PM

D. Ghirlandaio said...

And it's hardly a capital strike: "In December, the Bank of Montreal (BMO) announced it was buying Marshall & Ilsley (M&I) Bank for $4.1 billion, even though the bank has underperformed by nearly 40 percent during the past four years compared with regional banks of a similar size, according to a report from the CtW Investment Group. In addition, it has yet to repay $1.3 billion in taxpayer bailout money through the TARP program."

We were discussing why banks and businesses decline to invest in growth and new workers and instead are sitting on over $3 trillion in investment capital. This is known as a capital strike.

The Bank of Montreal's investment of $4.1 billion to buy another bank is not part of our discussion. If you dislike the fact that the BoM may be using a US government loan to finance part of this acquisition, then perhaps we can agree on the necessity of ending TARP, calling in these loans and allowing any insolvent banks to liquidate - which is what we should have done in the first instance.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 3:15 PM

The banks should have been taken over and sold. That's government action, not inaction.

You argue as if everyone is as friendless as you are, but other people have friends. The rich have friends and they look out for each other. Their friends not run the country.

I read an interview recently with a successful banker, running a small but not too small bacnk. It still one of the highest performing banks in NY State. He avoided the easy money and he and his bank came out fine. He says banks should serve their community; and he wasn't referring to the community of bankers. He's ashamed for his profession.

You're with Margaret Thatcher: "There is no such thing as society." God save us all from the moralizing lower middle class.

I'm done

# posted by

D. Ghirlandaio : 3:47 PM

mattski,
Thank Dean! :-)

# posted by

D. Ghirlandaio : 3:48 PM

Thankfully, it appears that the White House is declining to flirt with creating a constitutional crisis by employing the so called "constitutional option.". Geithner is saying that the Administration believes it would be unconstitutional to borrow money above the debt limit set by Congress.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 8:17 AM

Reports say that Obama has told congressional leaders that he would veto a short-term hike in the debt limit. I wonder, for those who have bought into the Section Four argument, would his veto be "unconstitutional"?

# posted by

mls : 1:14 PM

Here's a rephrase of mls' question:

"I wonder, for those who have not bought into the Section Four argument, would his veto be 'unconstitutional'?"

Are there any precedents for a presidential veto being unconstitutional?

# posted by

Shag from Brookline : 3:08 PM

"I wonder, for those who have bought into the Section Four argument, would his veto be "unconstitutional"?"

After reading Jack Balkin's
latest with a link to Bruce Bartlett-PDF the answer might be yes. Is it Constitutional to use default explicitly as a threat?

Larry Tribe: "A core function of the Constitution is to “force us into a conversation” about our future, Mr. Obama once wrote. Sometimes, it does this by establishing principles citizens can invoke when they believe the government has overreached. At other times, it does so by directing us back to the political drawing board.

It is this second message the Constitution is sending at this moment. As Justice John Marshall Harlan II presciently warned, “the Constitution is not a panacea for every blot upon the public welfare.” Only political courage and compromise, coupled with adherence to traditions that call upon Congress to fulfill its unique constitutional duty, can avert an impending crisis."

Read Balkin's response and Read Bartlett's statement.

You've used low rhetoric and high dudgeon to hide a defense of extremism. At what point does high politics become low? In the end the internal politics and law of a system are based on the shared assumption that all officers have an interest in the survival of the system. Obama at this point is not doing his job. Doing his job would be stating that the Republicans are not. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

# posted by

D. Ghirlandaio : 3:58 PM

No country has ever borrowed and spent its way to economic recovery from a recession. No, basically every country has done this. (Except that government "borrowing" - selling its own bonds for its own currency, simply is not borrowing in the ordinary sense.)
In fact that is an explanation of why we humans have so many wars. Wars like WWII can have highly effective, even essential financial and economic consequences. The US is a particularly clear example of this throughout its history. The wars (or equivalent amounts of government spending) were necessary "rebootings" of its financial and economic system, without which we would have had unending depressions.

Recently there have been "scholarly" "economics" papers arguing as Bart does. But a key word is "recently". The idea that the New Deal and military Keynesianism in WWII did not cause prosperity during and after the war is crazy. We relied on the financial stability - the high level of government debt - caused by the war for 60 odd years!

To my mind, the decisive refutation is a question - "Do you have parents and grandparents? - What do/did THEY think?" These insane papers, dismissing a period of enormous, true economic growth as a failure are refuted by the universal and true belief of everyone who actually lived through it that times were getting better. If someone had written such papers, or some of their foundations, like the crazy idea that monetary policy has any importance relative to fiscal, back in the 50s say, they would have gotten an appointment with a psychiatrist, not publication in academic journals.

# posted by

Calgacus : 6:56 PM

# posted by

Unknown : 10:20 AM