For two centuries, the idea that the federal debt would be the ruin of America was among the nation's great political hobgoblins -- right up there with the Red Menace and the Yellow Peril. Public indebtedness, said Thomas Jefferson, who spent $27,267,622 of the national treasure to purchase Louisiana, is "the greatest danger to be feared." Herbert Hoover, whose policies helped usher in the Great Depression, declared that "government borrowing . . . is a device to load our extravagance and waste onto the next generation." Eventually, though, as Armageddon kept getting postponed and new generations thrived, the issue receded into...
Leaning on The Panic Button
An executive's best-selling jeremiad about the federal budget deficit is a good scare but a weak prescription
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