{"id":25412,"date":"2017-09-09T08:30:39","date_gmt":"2017-09-09T13:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25412"},"modified":"2017-09-09T08:30:39","modified_gmt":"2017-09-09T13:30:39","slug":"the-government-debt-paradox-pick-your-poison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25412","title":{"rendered":"The Government Debt Paradox: Pick Your Poison"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"art-postmetadataheader\">\n<h3 class=\"art-postheader\"><a title=\"Permanent Link to The Government Debt Paradox: Pick Your Poison\" href=\"http:\/\/www.acting-man.com\/?p=51318\" rel=\"bookmark\">The Government Debt Paradox: Pick Your Poison <\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"art-postcontent\">\n<p><strong>Lasting Debt<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cRule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,\u201d said President Obama\u2019s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November of 2008.\u00a0 \u201cThey are opportunities to do big things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-51323\" src=\"http:\/\/www.acting-man.com\/blog\/media\/2017\/09\/rahmemanuel022817.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.acting-man.com\/blog\/media\/2017\/09\/rahmemanuel022817.jpg 763w, http:\/\/www.acting-man.com\/blog\/media\/2017\/09\/rahmemanuel022817-300x200.jpg 300w\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" \/>Rahm Emanuel looks happy. He should be \u2013 he is the mayor of Chicago, which is best described as <em>crisis incarnate<\/em>. Or maybe the proper term is perma-crisis? Anyway, it undoubtedly looks like a giant opportunity from his perspective, a gift that keeps on giving, so to speak. [PT] \u00a0Photo credit: Ashlee Rezin \/ Sun-Times<\/p>\n<p>At the time of his remark, Emanuel was eager to exploit the 2008 financial crisis to raid the public treasury.\u00a0 With the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009, Emanuel\u2019s wish was granted.\u00a0 The Obama administration had the opportunity to do <em>big things.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Politically, the passage of the Recovery Act was a huge success.\u00a0 Washington was able to dole out funds to their preferred projects like never before.\u00a0 What could be better for a Congressman than to direct massive amounts of funds to infrastructure, healthcare, energy, security, law enforcement, and just about everything else?<\/p>\n<p>Some Congressman even directed money to bridges and buildings that were then\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fourstateshomepage.com\/news\/new-building-rename\/803123126\">named<\/a> after them.\u00a0 No doubt, this flattered their egos.\u00a0 But what it really did was memorialize their political swindle.<\/p>\n<p>Economically, the Recovery Act was a great big dud.\u00a0 The money was frittered away without producing any lasting wealth.\u00a0 However, it did produce lasting debt.\u00a0 Since the Recovery Act\u2019s passage, the U.S. national debt has nearly doubled from roughly $10.6 trillion to nearly $20 trillion.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Government Debt Paradox: Pick Your Poison Lasting Debt \u201cRule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,\u201d said President Obama\u2019s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November of 2008.\u00a0 \u201cThey are opportunities to do big things.\u201d Rahm Emanuel looks happy. He should be \u2013 he is the mayor of Chicago, which is best [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5728,195,380,11763],"class_list":["post-25412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-acting-man","tag-debt","tag-government-debt","tag-mn-gordon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25413,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25412\/revisions\/25413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}