July 06, 2015
Yep, some things never change. Robert Samuelson tells us the tragic story of Greece: it needs to reduce its debt, but to do so it has to raise taxes and/or cut spending. That slows growth, which raises unemployment and also lowers its GDP, quite possibly raising its debt-to-GDP ratio. After telling us that there is no easy exit from this problem for Greece, Samuelson goes on:
“But it’s important to note that Greece’s predicament, though extreme, is shared by many major countries, including the United States, Japan, France and other European nations. …
“When only a few countries are over-indebted (meaning they cannot borrow from private markets at reasonable interest rates), this isn’t necessarily true. Countries can dampen domestic consumption and rely on export-led growth to take up the slack and limit unemployment. Nor is debt automatically bad. It has obvious productive uses: to fight severe recessions; to pay for wars and other emergencies; to finance public “investments” (roads, schools, research).
“Unfortunately, this standard view of government debt — we’re not talking about household and business debt — does not fully apply now. The reason is that numerous countries face similar problems.”
So Samuelson thinks that many countries cannot borrow at reasonable interest rates? That’s not what I read in the newspapers.
Let’s see, according to the Economist, the United States can borrow long-term at less than 2.3 percent interest. That’s less than half of the rate during those wonderful Clinton years when we were paying down the debt. Canada can do even better, paying just 1.7 percent. Those no-good-lazy-croissant-eating French types can borrow at a less than a 1.3 percent rate. The frugal Germans have to pay just 0.8 percent, a bit more than the hugely indebted Japanese who can get away with paying less than 0.5 percent.
In short, almost everyone other than Greece can borrow at extremely low interest rates. (Those high rates are their euro zone dividend.) Rather than being some difficult conundrum as Samuelson tries to tell his readers, this story is about as simple as it gets. The world is suffering from a huge shortfall in demand. We need people, businesses, and/or governments to spend money.
Unfortunately, the deficit gestapos are preventing more spending for reasons that defy logic but undoubtedly make sense to them. Anyhow, this is a really simple story, even if there is a lot of money to be made in trying to make it appear complicated.
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