In essence we already agreed to the bail out some time ago. Have you ever spent $17,000 on a car and asked the dealer what the warranty for the car "really meant"? Well, the Chinese spent $340 billion on agency debt and probably asked the same question at least once or twice. They live in a world of secret agreements with leaders, not transparent democratic arrangements. So when it comes to the U.S government decision, we're not just starting from scratch here. How many phone calls do you think Hank Paulson has received from the Chinese central bank since August 2007?"Are you *sure* that paper is safe enough for us to keep on buying?"
We'll never know exactly what kind of verbal dance Paulson concocted in response, but just look at the resulting flow of purchases and the relatively slight mark-up over Treasuries over that period of time. The Chinese (among others) thought we were standing behind the securities, at least in any world-state short of federal government quasi-bankruptcy. (In fact Paulson is in a total bind once that phone call comes in. He doesn't have much incentive to just say "tough luck" and precipitate a crisis when otherwise no crisis is on the horizon.)
So should we try this: "Oh, is that what you thought? Guaranteed? Did we use that word? Sorry, try reading our signals better next time. We love you. Great job with those Olympics. And when it comes to those Treasury Bills, we really do still mean it."
The libertarian critique of the mortgage agencies is, in my view, very much on the mark. But still the error has been made and we must pay up. As Steve Chapman points out, the bailout is a necessary evil, but with emphasis on the word "evil."
Hard libertarians often give short shrift to both the moral and practical consequences of just letting things fall apart with a bang. Yes, we all concede that Social Security and Medicare are bad programs that should, at the very least, be structured very differently than they are. But that doesn't mean we can just try shock therapy. For one thing, a lot of old people would starve because they believed their government--a valuable object lesson in the problem with relying on government programs, to be sure, but it is perhaps a mite rough to let millions of old people die pour encourager les autres. For another, there is no political possibility of enacting a law that causes millions of old people to starve.
Likewise, it might be fun to let the financial markets collapse catastrophically in order to teach people that they oughtn't to speculate, either on securities or government bailouts. On the other hand, the Great Depression sort of sucked, and not just for people who took a flyer on AT&T at 87.
Going forward, of course, we should take pains to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again, first among them ensuring that the shareholders and managers suffer for the mistakes made by their firms---and of course, by refusing to make those sorts of implied guarantees for ostensibly private companies. Perhaps we should even pass a law forbidding the government to bail out insolvent banks. But we already lost this round.
Exaggerate much?
Would millions of people starve if social security were cancelled?
I call B.S.
No one in the United States has to starve. There are plenty of options to not starving, having sat in on several church meetings where we specifically discussed families in our community (church goers and non alike) who needed food/help/finances (and subsequently got it) I can call this B.S.
There are other organizations like the one I was in. Secular and religious alike. And there are also food programs.
No old person will start if we cancelled SS.
All that will happen is they will all whine. Some will no longer have the option to eat their preferred foods. Others will go back to work for a few more years. Others will eat the basic staple foods that are provided by various charitable and governmental orgs.
I think one of the things that really does put me off from a lot of libertarians is the extent to which their policy ideas seem to revolve around some personal standard of what is "fair," often divorced from the pragmatic standards that one would expect policy to be, uhm, based off of.
The libertarian line on Social Security is a great example. There's a huge number of elderly individuals who, without Social Security, would face a severe risk of poverty. But, hey, we libs don't like big government, so let's get rid of it!
It's just a worldview divorced from political and economic realities, on so many levels. And it's sad, because a lot of libertarianism's saner, more moderate strains could do some great things for our political environment, if there wasn't such nuttery out there.
Move over, John. sam is here to challenge you for the title of Poster With The Least Marbles.
The silliness of "just get rid of Social Security" is that you're talking about a program that people have paid into (in most cases) for their entire lives. Taking away their payback would be the largest and most egregious example of government theft in history.
If it happened you'd end up with a lot of politicians getting shot by pissed off citizens, and quite rightly, too. I would certainly vote to acquit if I were on such a jury.
"Perhaps we should even pass a law forbidding the government to bail out insolvent banks."
Done, assuming a reciprocal agreement.
I never said people would live pleasant lives. Tough times will no doubt occur for many. But I disagree that millions will starve if the government stops handing out money.
I didn't realize it was so controversial to some. When you can dial back the exaggerations, people can reasonably debate.
If the starting point is, unless this program is continued, millions will starve, naturally you'd be crazy to cancel the program.
So in setting up your argument for debate you've already declared yourself the winner before the other side has a say. But the truth is if social security disappeared tomorrow, millions -would not- starve.
I paid into social security most of my entire life too. Go ahead and take it back and give me nothing, providing you stop charging me tomorrow.
Good going, Megan
You highjacked your own thread topic by encouraging an onslaught of worthless bloviating on SS.
You encouraged attacks on the weakest presentation of the "privatize social security" argument(strawman) by somehow letting it be believed that such a move, hypothetically, would ever be done in a fashion that pulls the rug out from underneath people who've paid into it their whole life. You that's not true and would never happen. I know that. Most people know that. But now you've let people licking at the chops and falling over themselves to say something anti-libertarian have a free rein at attacking windmills in Quixotic fashion.
Now, if a hand full of libertarians actually advocate some cold turkey abolition of the program with no recourse and no context, I'd like to know who they are so I can laugh at them.
But serious policy discussion even goes and we all know that. But like Julian Sanchez would say, never underestimate the fatigue that ensues from an "outsight" by those who want to believe otherwise.
Please don't open yourself (and the rest us) to this drain of bandwidth in the future. I'm sure you're regretting your wording on the matter already.
Now, if a hand full of libertarians actually advocate some cold turkey abolition of the program with no recourse and no context, I'd like to know who they are so I can laugh at them.
Here's how the majority of people argue SS. I'm too invested for SS to be taken away from me, so I think that we should start doing something about it in X years since I've paid into it for this long. With X being the amount of time where it doesn't affect them. But for all of you younger than me, please feel free to pay into SS your whole life and then have the rug pulled out from under you.
MLJ,
Let's do it now, before they saddle us with single payer health insurance, which would just be SSDD.
Jordan,
My point is simply that the cold turkey strawman is just that...a strawman. Wouldn't you rather just spare yourself the irritation of watching people accuse you of wanting to put grandma in the street?
Obviously, there needs to be a cut off point or some sliding scale of benefits during which time people divert their income into something else.
My point is that all this is obvious. And hypothetical thought experiments whereby we imagine the long "good" of abolishing it cold turkey have no serious place at the table. We all know that, so why encourage trollish criticism of something that isn't even a seriously considered option.
That's all I'm saying.
"Going forward, of course, we should take pains to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again.."
Um...by regulation, perhaps?
And also: "...first among them ensuring that the shareholders and managers suffer for the mistakes made by their firms."
It's easy to make the shareholders suffer, but of course the ones who *should* suffer are the managers. Any suggestions? (no snark intended)
And also: "But we already lost this round."
Give me a call when there's a round that the taxpayers actually win.
Not sure the analogy is apt. However little sympathy I feel for someone who might be forced to rely on voluntary private charity rather than social security, I have none for the Chinese Central Bankers to which Cowen refers.
The idea that Chinese officials couldn't foresee a misstatement or outright lie from a political appointee is laughable.
"[W]e should take pains to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again, first among them ensuring that the shareholders and managers suffer for the mistakes made by their firms . . ."
I don't understand this comment. Fannie's and Freddie's stock is close to worthless, and their CEOs have been fired. So we have already done Ms. McArdle's first priority. More generally, most of the complaints I read about "bailouts" seem to ignore the huge number of investment bankers, mortgage brokers etc. who have lost their jobs, and the severe declines in share prices that have occurred.
All Ponzi schemes fail when the number of "marks" available or willing to participate falls below the number needed to fund payouts to the earlier participants. Eliminating the "or willing" constraint merely delays the inevitable.
The fact that the Ponzi scheme which is the "crowning achievement" of Saint Franklin is a "creature of government" does not exempt it from its ultimate fate.
The fact that the Ponzi scheme which is part of the "crowning achievement" of Saint Lyndon (Medicare) is in worse shape financially is partially a function of the fact that it began on day one paying the early participants with money it hadn't collected yet.
While agonizing about the two existing, failing Ponzi schemes is fundamentally unproductive, we would be far better to concern ourselves with the new, potential Ponzi scheme championed by Toady Kennedy, attempted by HRC and embraced by "The Big O" - single payer health care. Its potential for catastrophe dwarfs both SS and Medicare.
Poor Charles Ponzi is probably rolling over in his grave, agonizing over what a "piker" he was and the opportunities he missed.
The Chinese started their buying binge of FNM and FRE issued mortgage backed securities in late 04. History should not forget that Greenspan mad a call to China in that period.
This is ancient history but also in 04 the F's started to have a bit of trouble. (strangely a wealth of google hits just last week under Falco, former head of the OHFEO, and GSE no longer returns anything) Anyhow there was a dust up about fraud with FRE and concern about the systematic risks of the giants. The result was that armies of green eyeshade guys decended upon the F's and after a couple of years never did really figure out where they stood.
One thing that was done was they were told to start shrinking. That means they were told to start selling off a good portion of their portfolios. Not so easily done. Who had the dollars to buy up the eventual $750 billion they sold off since Oct 04.
Oh, I know, slap my forehead, foreign central banks. So the FCB's started buying the F's paper and cutting back on their purchases of Treasury paper. (The story of this dollar recycling operation is the real foundation of our mess) Now it clearly stated on every prospectus of every F securitization that there was not an explicit Treasury backing. (Wink wink,nod nod) I'm sure Greenspan in China mostly chatted about how nice their big wall was.
mars,
It's not simply a matter of "regulation", it's also a matter of avoiding the gaping flaws on an institutional level so that incentives and responsibility are properly coordinated. Done with these goals in mind, the regulatory necessities are greatly diminished because risk and reward and responsibility are properly balanced to encourage the correct behavior.
For another, there is no political possibility of enacting a law that causes millions of old people to starve.
Thank you. For every starry-eyed libertarian who dreams of an United States without entitlements, this is the salient point: Old people vote, and if they get the slightest whiff of any serious push to eliminate (or, hell, even modify) Social Security, then the metaphorical equivalent of blood will run at the ballot box. You know that South Park episode where the AARP sends in elderly paratroopers to seize the town that took away old folks' drivers' licenses? Yeah, it'd go down pretty much like that, save for the guns.
sam writes: "I paid into social security most of my entire life too. Go ahead and take it back and give me nothing, providing you stop charging me tomorrow."
Since I'd guess you're about 19 I'm not impressed. But if you're actually much older you're a fool with your money. That's your right, but don't expect anyone with any sense to follow your example.
Moe,
I suppose people that fought and died for their country so you might live are fools. They died, losing everything so that you, I and others might gain.
I don't think I'm a fool for wanting to end something like SS. But I should probably just ignore you like most normal people do....
Robert A. Heinlein, who was an experienced political operative in addition to being one of science fiction's resident gods-in-human-form, commented, about programs like Social Security, that many old people just wanted to collect as many bennies as they could, the rest of society be damned. (It's in Expanded Universe as well as Take Back Your Government!.)
Since the elderlies would cheerfully throw me under the bus to keep those benefits a'rollin', my attitude toward them is to think that if I had three wishes, one of them just might be for the whole boiling of "senior citizens" to suddenly think they're dishonored and commit mass seppuku. Or else, at least, all get "Raptured." A world with no selfish elderlies...ah, bliss would it be to be young in that time, but to be young would be very heaven!
sam writes: "I suppose people that fought and died for their country so you might live are fools. They died, losing everything so that you, I and others might gain."
Really? Not many of our recent wars actually fit that description. The one in Iraq certainly doesn't.
I think that anyone signing up now to go to Iraq is making a very foolish move indeed. I can respect their motives in most cases but the idea that American soldiers dying over their are serving a useful cause is ludicrous in the extreme. I feel the same way about Vietnam - we threw away over 50,000 American lives there for no good reason.
"I don't think I'm a fool for wanting to end something like SS."
By all means, give up your own Social Security. You can bet Dick Cheney won't.
Yes, I think you're a fool. And if you think your little church groups and Rotarian clubs would make up the difference in income for our huge and growing population of elders, you're also rather dense.
I think the most important thing to stop doing is using the mortgage market as an instrument of social policy. HUD and Congress pressured Fannie and Freddie into making more "affordable" loans, which is code of subprimes. Bush even got in on the game, ironically, but calling it part of his you'd-think-it-where-libertarian "ownership society." Let's face it: Fannie and Freddie created the subprime crisis by getting heavy into the subprime game in the early 2000s. Their shear size created and then lifted the subprime market, and private actors started getting into the game – after all, if Fannie and Freddie were assuming that the loans were good, and they were making money hand over fist doing it (that's the thing about the mortgage game: you can pretend everything's alright until people stop making payments, and people don't usually stop making payments immediately), in order to compete on the free (or so they thought) market, the private banks had to get in on the game. And because of the increased ease of buying, home values shot up and the whole thing got worse. Then the bubble burst. And here we are, barely recognizing the role that Fannie and Freddie played in it.
NOTE: I am both a Social Security and a Medicare recipient. I am also a Heinlein fan.
Technomad,
We were "thrown under the bus", starting when we entered the workforce. We had no choice other than to "contribute" to Social Security and to Medicare. Our retirement programs were computed "net of Social Security". Our post-retirement medical benefits were designed as "Medicare supplements". We paid for our parents' retirements and probably your grandparents' as well. We also paid for their post-65 healthcare.
You seem very willing now to "throw us under the bus" again, presumably along with your parents, because you find it "inconvenient" to be forced to do for us what we were forced to do for the previous generation. Your generosity and concern for your "civic duty" are aweinspiring!
Thank you for your support!
Remember your disdain for mandatory participation and future commitments when you vote in November. You probably won't like singlepayer healthcare any better for yourself than you do for us. "Barak-o-care" is just Medicare for all. If you think "unwinding" Social Security and Medicare would be messy, just visualize "unwinding" national health care.
Sleep well tonight.
It is all Ponzi financing, and the failure to recognize this means that when it does collapse, and the collapse is inevitable, the effects will be completely systemic. This is the fallacy of the "lender of last resort"- it is an impossibility to have a lender that will not fail, and the attempts to create such an entity simply means that you will eventually create an entire financial system completely dependent on the solvency of this "last, largest lender", and by definition, the failure of this lender is failure of the entire system. The consequences will cost the lives of millions.
This is why financial systems of all kinds should be completely decentralized with failure of smaller firms/currencies allowed. It is insane to ever have a situation arise in which an institution is "too big to fail".
sam wrote:
I suppose people that fought and died for their country so you might live are fools. They died, losing everything so that you, I and others might gain.
I imagine that most of the good people who fought in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam want their social security checks, too.
Ed Reid,
No one serious is talking about throwing current (or even near term) SS or Medicare recipients under the bus. We know you are screwing us, but we also know your parents screwed you. It sucks all around.
What has been seriously suggested is to stop the bleeding by transitioning in a reasonable and sustainable way to a private retirement system. The will entail a certain amount of this generation (of which I'm a part) sucking it up and getting screwed by the generation that came before us while agreeing not to screw our children. But the buck has to stop somewhere, and the sooner it stops the less catastrophic.
Re: Would millions of people starve if social security were cancelled?
I call B.S.
I would say it's BS too-- because millions of people would rise up and overthrow a government that attempted such a thing, and the fate of the rulers would make the end of the Bourbons and Romanovs look quite genteel in comparison.
FYI... here's a simple, sane proposal to privatize social security while retaining a retirement safety net and doing no harm to current (or near prospective) retirees.
1) Pick an age (like 40). If you are older than 40, you can stay in the existing system.
2) Pick a minimum acceptable retirement income level.
3) Pick a retirement age.
4) If you are under 40 you are required to put 10% of your income into your own private retirement account.
4) Out of that 10%, you are first required to purchase each month a micro-annuity that covers a portion of the inflation adjusted minimum acceptable retirement income from retirement age till death (a schedule can be prepared).
5) Any excess you can invest as you please to supplement your retirement.
6) If you don't make enough in a given month to purchase the scheduled micro-annuities with your 10% contribution, you have to liquidate your 'excess' assets in your retirement account to purchase it.
7) If you don't have enough 'excess' assets in your retirement account to liquidate to purchase your requred micro-annuity, then the government will lend it to you.
8) Such loans from the government have to be paid down first with any 'excess' future contributions before you can begin accumulating 'excess' assets.
9) All governement loans to buy your required micro-annuities are forgiven when you hit the retirement age.
10) You can't tap your 'excess' savings in your retirement account until you reach the retirement age...
11) Unless you purchase 'gap' micro-annuities to guarantee you the minimum acceptable income until the retirement age.
What the above does is
1) Privatize retirement savings
2) Force you to responsibly manage your risk of not saving enough or investing to poorly to cover the minimum acceptable retirement income for the rest of your life.
3) Make sure that no one doesn't get at least the minimum
acceptable retirement income.
4) Make's sure that most people pay for their own retirement.
5) Puts the risk management in the hands of the insurance folks who do it best (governments are *really* bad at risk management).
6) Converts the governments role in the retirement program from accumulating liabilities to accumulating assets.
7) Allows for orderly early retirement.
I have to explain this to my academic colleagues all the time. The clerical and cleaning staff don't hate Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. They hate us. The nomenkature thinks they will reduce income inequality by bringing people who are higher on the scale down to their level. The person cleaning your office doesn't care about Steven Jobs. They care about you. You are the one who isn't worth your enormous (to them) pay check.
When the next real Che comes, he will take all the people wearing the Che tee shirts and do to them what Che did to all of his enemies. And it won't chnge income inequlity a jot.
For one thing, a lot of old people would starve because they believed their government--a valuable object lesson in the problem with relying on government programs, to be sure, but it is perhaps a mite rough to let millions of old people die pour encourager les autres. For another, there is no political possibility of enacting a law that causes millions of old people to starve.
So what you're saying is that it's politically impossible to renege on government promises, but that if only the government would renege on its promises, that would finally teach people "the problem with relying on government programs" -- i.e. that you can't trust the government.
See, it looks to me like the correct logic here is that because it's politically impossible for the government to renege on its promises, you can trust the government. This may also be the reason why many people, including the Chinese, buy Treasury bills.
The government might of course be untrustworthy if it were run by people who believed for ideological reasons that governments are bad and should renege on their promises in order to show everyone how bad they are. Fortunately it would be impossible for such strange people ever to come to power. Right?
Some time ago I was dragged from my political apathy and started learning about how our government works. Specifically, I researched how Social Security is implemented, and I was amazed at how the "surplus" is nothing more than a collection of treasury bonds (IOUs, in other words). Going to the official ssa.gov site, this was confirmed - but I was ensured that the bonds were backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. Oh boy. And in that moment I understood how there is no honest discussion of the unfunded and ever-growing entitlement programs (god save the welfare state), and because politicians only care about the short-term (it's the nature of the job), it would never get fixed until it was too late. And now some "libertarians" claim that the necessary evil (to fix a problem caused by government interference in the housing market to begin with) is to nationalize the mortgage industry. Oh boy. I liked it better when I was apathetic.
Why can't people form consensual groups to take each other's money to fund whatever safety nets or social engineering plans they want? Why do they always advocate using force (government) to push their agendas on others?
Megan, I know it's not how you mean it, but you type the defense of Social Security like it's a bad thing that you can't starve the elderly.
This is what turns people off to libertarianism, you realize? In most of our eyes, it just seems kind of cruel to take away safety nets just so we don't have to pay quite so much in taxes.
I mean, I realize that you want a bigger apartment and all, but don't you have enough junk? Can't you just concede that it's a GOOD THING that we sacrifice some efficiency in order to ensure that everyone can live to at least a certain standard?
This is why I think a reform based on "privatizing" Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac would be a disaster; everyone would assume that they're still GSEs after such a privatization.
Instead, set things up so that some small number of years from the current date, they'll stop buying mortgages, period. The years is in advance is preparation period, so that people in the mortgage markets can start making preparations for a world minus them, when you'd have to get government-free capital to back loans.
The leadership at Fannie and Freddie are going to get their perky severance contract. Its a contract for a reason. You shouldn't privatize Fannie or Freddie because the functions they serve in the market are the kind that if things go wacky, congressmen get more calls than the owners. Like utilities, which we may want to put through a different ringer somewhere down the road.
Look they work the way they're supposed to. The negligence is due to a time honored sin: Greed. It is no mystery that these agencies backed the foolish practices that were meant to draw more business.
"For one thing, a lot of old people would starve because they believed their government--a valuable object lesson in the problem with relying on government programs,"
Maybe the old people should believe in markets and place their hope for the future in tech stocks, real estate, maybe oil futures. No risks or lessons to be learned there about asset values. And as for comments about SS and ponzi schemes, these market bubbles certainly remind me of ponzi schemes.
You can put lipstick on a beltway libertarian, but it's still a pig.
Stuhlmann Says:
"And as for comments about SS and ponzi schemes, these market bubbles certainly remind me of ponzi schemes."
They are very much like Ponzi schemes in that the last ones in get screwed, but don't start patting yourself on the back yet. I assume you, like most leftists, think pointing out instances of negative market outcomes for participants somehow constitutes an equivalence or justification of poor government outcomes. However, the libertarian disagreement with Social Security isn't an opposition to Ponzi schemes freely entered into, rather, an opposition to a Ponzi scheme which we have been forced to join on pain of violence.
"Going forward, of course, we should take pains to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again, first among them ensuring that the shareholders and managers suffer for the mistakes made by their firms---and of course, by refusing to make those sorts of implied guarantees for ostensibly private companies."
Why not creditors taking the hit? They were just as speculative. This administration bails out the private sector, to the detriment of the public debt. It cares not for labor, doesn't mind offshoring of jobs, as long as the holders of capital are bailed out. This is simply robbing from the poor to pay the rich.
Okay, slow down libertarians and libertarian-haters.
There are serious, competent libertarians that have coherent arguments for *not* cutting off current SS recipients. See Kip Esquire and the doctrine of detrimental reliance.
Basically, such people have fundamentally changed their habits in anticipation of receiving the benefits so they have a (long-recognized right in common law) not to be cut off.
From the fact that SS is flawed, from the fact that it shouldn't exist, it doesn't follow that it must be immediately cut off today. And the same argument applies for other stupid, distorting taxes and regulations.
Yes, get rid of the stupid laws. But phase them out gradually so as to avoid crippling disruptions.
And, by the way, naive liberals, the government has ALREADY reneged, several times, on its promise to pay seniors. It starts taxing their benefits, it raises those taxes, it "massages" cost-of-living adjustments, it debases the currency in which its paid, it delays the age at which benefits start paying ...
You get the point. I hope you do, anyway.
You can put lipstick on a beltway libertarian, but it's still a pig.
No, then it's a lipstick libertarian.
a lipstick libertarian.
Rob, I can't believe you just suggested Sarah Palin is gay. Just because she plays basketball. Disgusting. I demand an apology from you, and your elitist little dog, too.
Oh come on, brooksfoe, those glasses are at least bi-curious. (hat tip: Alec Baldwin)
There are no atheists in foxholes and no libertarians in financial crises.
Mike Mc nailed it. The deregulation crowd sure sees the light when it's their investments or tax dollars at stake.
Megan,
This is not serious commentary because with the fox watching the hen house, it will happen again.
Mars has it right. Just in case you missed it:
"Going forward, of course, we should take pains to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again.."
Um...by regulation, perhaps?
And also: "...first among them ensuring that the shareholders and managers suffer for the mistakes made by their firms."
It's easy to make the shareholders suffer, but of course the ones who *should* suffer are the managers. Any suggestions? (no snark intended)
And also: "But we already lost this round."
Give me a call when there's a round that the taxpayers actually win.
Fannie's and Freddie's stock is close to worthless, and their CEOs have been fired.
"Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd is expected to walk away with $9.2 million, including some stock he already owns."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122101596474218261.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
the government had to do it. so trusting of the Secretary are we.
fre stock was trading in the free market friday for $5.10
paulson didn't pay market price for the shares. that would have really upset libertarians. cause by purchasing the shares you would see it for what it was.
the government buying a company.. ie. nationalization
so, instead, pualson just took the company.
didn't pay anything for it (which the first glance is to say, well, good, glad my tax dollars weren't used).
the point is paying nothing for a $5 stock is not a "necessary" "bailout". It is stealing.
if paulson didn't do anything last weekend, fnm and fre would be doing all right this week. the government didn't HAVE to do this.
from a historical point of view, it's hard to object to the government's mass bailouts since similar debt-producing methods were used to bring the U.S. out of the Depression... our economy has been supported and driven by debt ever since