Mark Green: 7 Days: Kuttner on Economic Crisis, with Huffington, Reagan & Green: "The part of the national debt that's held by the public, as opposed to one government agency borrowing from another, is 40% of GDP. It's about $6.3 trillion dollars. That is not high by historic standards or by international standards. If that has to go to 60% of GDP, because of two years of large deficit spending, we can easily pay that down after the economy gets back on track. The alternative, letting the economy go into a depression is far worse than a temporary increase in the deficit. After the economy is out of recovery, then you gradually reduce the deficit to something normal, which is 2% or 3% of GDP, and you pay for the additional spending by raising taxes on wealthy people and restoring normal tax enforcement, which was completely gutted under the Bush administration. I mean, there have been study, after study, after study which show that about $300 billion collectible revenue is left on the table every year because the Bush administration stopped auditing rich people."
(Via Huffington Blog.)
