Sunday, February 14, 2010

Excessive Reliance on Credit

Between 1960 and 2008, government's share of the total annual interest costs in our economy fell from more than 20% to less than 10%. In other words, total interest costs grew more than twice as fast as government interest costs.

Another look: The government share fell from almost 21% to a little more than 7% of total interest costs. In other words, total interest costs grew something less than three times as fast as government interest costs.

People already know that government interest costs are high. And total interest costs in our economy grew between two and three times faster.

That's excessive reliance on credit.

1 comment:

jbmoore said...

Politicians tend to be spineless liars these days. They hope and rely on the short attention spans of the voters. Increasing taxes are unpalatable. Decreasing costs are palatable, but not if those costs are Medicare. If the Healthcare system is not fixed, then costs will rise unless people are left to die without care. I don't have any answers any more. Not with social safety nets being given to companies instead of the people. Obviously, the definition of a person to a politician involves a wealth metric of some sort. Then too, Freedom of Speech can be measured in terms of dollars by the Supreme Court of the US. However, sovereign nations have the option of defaulting on their debts and that option has been used throughout history (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8973.html or Video 22 from the archive @ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/makingsense/). You and I don't get that option. We have to go through bankruptcy.