Obama on pace to borrow $6.2 trillion

Remember this oldie but goodie from four years ago?




Mr. Obama is on pace to borrow $6.2 trillion in one term. That's more than all the presidents from Washington through Clinton combined.

The national debt will, at the current rate, be raised by $2 trillion more in Mr. Obama's first term than the figure he cites above, late in Dubyah's second.

HT: Drudge

Comments

Jeff D said…
How much would Willard Romney borrow? My guess, maybe not $6.2 trillion, but probably a lot. Any number >0 is too much.
No more than he has to, and certainly nowhere near what the last couple of presidents have. And I'm afraid there's no way to say this nicely: your last statement indicates an ignorance of economic reality and even the way that the world's economy works that is almost Paulesque in its thoroughness.
Jeff D said…
"The way the world's economy works" isn't working very well, in case you hadn't noticed.
Actually, on the whole, capitalism has worked pretty well since Adam Smith's day. And borrowing and lending among nations is an essential part of capitalism. And we don't have the option of opting out of the world economic system, I'm afraid. We have to pay our bills somehow, and the cost of running a country in the 21st Century would be prohibitively expensive if we didn't borrow from time to time.

I'm afraid that even governments which balance their budgets will still have to borrow to deal with cash flow shortfalls. And the international economic system that has been in place and evolved for a couple of centuries isn't going to change because Paul wants it to. Nor is Austrian economics going to work. Ever. Maybe on Paul's home planet, but not on this one.

The thing Paul doesn't realize is that this isn't 1789 anymore. The delusion that it is is ultimately behind his espousing a foreign policy that would be suicide in a modern, economically and geopolitically interdependent world. The same holds true of the utterly crazy idea that it would be remotely possible for any government on earth to go without borrowing on occasion no matter how neatly it kept its own financial house. The world is too complex for simplistic ideas, Jeff-
and precisely because times are so tough, we can afford even less than usual to resort to the kind of crackpot solutions that Paul and other fringe types talk about so glibly.

You and Ron really ought to leave international and economic affairs to folks a bit more grounded in reality.