Defaulting on the Debt Is the Meaningful Thing to Do

The US is within the midst of another “ debate” over the debt ceiling.

In the twenty-first hundred years, this is a ritual that Wa politicos and journalists experience every few years when the potential customer of default and authorities shutdown is used as a way to hold Americans hostage until these people cave to a debt-ceiling walk.  

I will not bore you with the information on which politicians are voting against a higher debt ceiling this time around. Outside a tiny handful of principled eccentrics of the Ron Paul variety, virtually everyone in Washington favors more deficit spending. The fact that the leadership from one of the parties currently pretends to are at odds of higher debt levels tells us nothing about what the program really wants.

What wants, of course , is sky-high spending, forever, and it desires to borrow huge amounts— in rock-bottom interest rates— to do it. A default— brought about by a well balanced debt ceiling— would confuse that goal.   A failure to hike the debt would certainly also  limit the power of the regime, so we can expect most everyone inside the Beltway to be seriously opposed.

So , it was not exactly a bg surpise when Janet Yellen accepted the pages of the  Wall Street Journal   earlier this month to call for an immediate increase towards the debt ceiling. She would not hold back when it comes to predicting certain and immediate doom when the debt ceiling is not improved.

“ Our current economic recovery might reverse into recession, with billions of dollars of growth and millions of jobs dropped, ”   Yellen demands, and she predicts that

failing to raise the debt limit would generate widespread economic catastrophe. In a matter of days, millions of Americans could be strapped for cash. We could see indefinite delays in critical obligations. Nearly 50 million elderly people could stop receiving Interpersonal Security checks for a time. Soldiers could go unpaid. A lot of families who rely on the particular monthly child tax credit could see delays.

And if a financial crisis weren’t enough, Yellen claims the US “ would certainly emerge a  completely   weaker nation” (emphasis added), supposedly since the US government would not be able to borrow more cheaply than its unnamed and ominous “ economic rivals. ”  

Needless to say, this is quite the laundry list of ills  all of stemming from the fact the government would have to live with spending only the $3. 4 trillion approximately that it collects in taxes. Not piling on an extra $1 to 3 trillion in debt on top of that every year? The reason why, that would just be madness!  

Raising the debt ceiling is presented as a moral choice. Do it, or else you favor poverty and “ calamity. ”   But here’s the problem with Yellen’s position— and the prodeficit place in general:   she’s not actually offering a choice among pain now or pain  never . That it is only a choice between pain now or even  more   pain in the future.  

The moral policy here is to hold fast on keeping the debt ceiling stable.   Raising the debt ceiling only perpetuates the status quo and paves the way for future fiscal chaos.   By throwing the can down the road just as before, those who favor raising the debt ceiling merely encourage  another   decade of historically  fragile growth and employment , while bringing  higher funding costs, instability, and slashes to social programs. By doubling down on all this, Yellen is courting the very outcomes  she claims to oppose. In the mean time, approving yet another increase to the debt ceiling only rewards the regime for its profligacy.

Rising Interest Levels Will Force Cuts in order to Government Programs

Huge debt loads are actually cutting into social applications and military spending. For example , American taxpayers are now being  fleeced annually for around $350 billion just to pay attention on the debt. And that’s with ten-year Treasurys at a measly 1 . 5 percent. That’s $350 billion that can’t visit families or seniors or soldiers. It’s certainly money the taxpayers will never discover again. And what if interest rates double to a still lower but historically more regular 3 percent? This isn’t specifically an outlandish prospect.   We’re then looking at curiosity payments of  a lot of hundreds of billions more ,   which would mean significant cuts to those programs Yellen claims she’s saving.  

Moreover, the continuation of the current debt-to-infinity “ strategy” will  also  lead to raising borrowing costs— although Yellen implies an increase in the debt ceiling will somehow avert  that fate. In reality, because even the Congressional Budget Office  admits :

Debt that is high and rising as a percentage of GDP boosts federal and private borrowing costs, slows the growth of economic output, and increases interest payments abroad. A growing debt burden could increase the risk of a fiscal crisis and higher inflation as well as undermine confidence within the U. S. dollar, which makes it more costly to finance public and private activity in international markets.

So all that stuff about a stable debt roof making America “ the weaker nation”? That’s precisely what the current deficit-spending tactic  is certainly   already carrying out . It drives upward borrowing costs, and endangers the dollar’s status since the global reserve currency. Yes, the Fed has made this seem for now that funding costs are stable by purchasing up trillions in US bonds. But the Fed are unable to keep buying up large sums of government debt  forever. With asset price pumpiing already sky-high and with goods price inflation mounting, the particular Fed is  facing the particular limits of its monetization of the US’s federal debt.

There is no end sport here that avoids the fate Yellen seems to believe can be magically made to vanish with more debt.   She is only offering a short-term placebo.

Rewarding the Regime

An additional problem is the fact that constantly raising financial debt limits rewards the regime for its profligacy, and also impoverishes the private sector by giving the government an advantage over the personal sector in terms of borrowing. Claims have long benefited from your fact that it is presumed declares can always just tax more to pay off their lenders. Or, failing that, states can just inflate the currency.

Every time the taxpayers buckle to yet another demand to  increase the debt limit, another new pile of government debt continues to suck the air from private sector debt markets. But states keep getting away with doing it because of the misplaced belief that regimes must never be allowed to arrears. This only perpetuates the exalted position of the regime’s debt and borrowing privileges above the people who really create the wealth and pay the bills.  

If anything, the voters and taxpayers have a moral obligation to threaten to force default at regular intervals. It’s an obligation to future generations and to all those who are squeezed associated with tax dollars every year to pay a few hundred billion more in debt service on older loans piled up to pay for the regime’s wars and other boondoggles. That is, with this more practical view of government financial debt,   the regime will be forced to live within its means far more often. There  would be a far more real and immediate chance of default. As  Lew Rockwell has noted , government financial debt would be priced more genuinely, and the power of the routine would be curbed:

[A] permissive attitude toward default … should be extended to … the federal government. All provides issued by governments should have a default premium, much like those in the private field.

Among all the privileges the government sector loves, the most coveted is the ability to print itself away from any financial crisis. That is furthermore the one that is most dangerous since it generates ongoing incentives to pick financial socialism over fiscal soundness.

Yes, bringing back the default would create short-term lack of stability, but that is a far better selection than the current path.

Don’t We Have a Moral Obligation to pay for Our Debts?

And as a final note, take a look at not be fooled by the incorrect claims that the US government has some sort of moral obligation to its creditors. Keep in mind that. Public debt is paid off with tax dollars through taxpayers who had no choice in the matter and were not parties to the agreements between the creditors and the debtors. Or, as David Henderson  put it   in the form of a question: “ It’s  worse to default on creditors who took the risk than to forcibly get money from taxpayers who have no choice? ” The implied answer, of course , is “ no, it’s not even worse. ”   Rothbard  sums it up :  

The public debt transaction, then, is very different from private debt. Instead of a low-time-preference creditor exchanging money for an IOU from a high-time-preference debtor, the government now receives money from creditors, both parties realizing that the money will be paid back not out of the pouches or the hides of the political figures and bureaucrats, but from the looted wallets and purses of the hapless taxpayers, the particular subjects of the state. The federal government gets the money by tax-coercion; and the public creditors, faraway from being innocents, know full well that their earnings will come out of that selfsame coercion. In short, public lenders are willing to hand over money to the government now in order to receive a share of tax loot in the future.  

The moral policy? Default.  

Editor Manager

See author's posts