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The Post continued its editorializing in its news section by gratuitously pointing out in a front page article that negotiations to extend tax cuts and unemployment benefits will:
“would add hundreds of billions of dollars to future deficits, even as a bipartisan commission appointed by Obama is trying to build support for a plan to balance the budget.”
If the Post was interested in informing its readers rather than pushing its budget agenda it could have pointed out that deficits during a period of high unemployment need pose no burden to the economy or future taxpayers since the Federal Reserve Board can simply buy and hold this debt. In Japan the central bank holds an amount of debt that is close the size of its GDP, which would be $15 trillion in the United States.
This can be seen in the difference between the IMF’s estimate of Japan’s gross debt (227.2 percent of GDP) and its net debt (121.7 percent of GDP). In spite of these massive holdings of government debt by the central bank Japan continues to experience deflation instead of inflation.
To some extent the Fed is already following a similar course. As a result of its holdings of government debt and other assets it refunded $77 billion to the Treasury last year, an amount that was more than one-third of the government’s net interest payments. A newspaper that was interested in informing its readers rather than pushing an agenda would have explained that deficits in the current context do not impose a burden rather than gratuitously pointing out that spending and tax cuts add to the deficit.
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No news outlet is explaining anything. They are simply taking dictation from the GOP. The talking points the media spews simply reinforces the austerity measures that the right and most on the left at the top want.
Agreed, the WaPo tendency these days is to push its right wing talking points. The same is true at CNBC business reports for the most part, too, as business representatives are constantly promoting the line that businesses will not hire because of the uncertainty of policies. The push to get everyone on board with Chamber of Commerce beliefs that workers must be suppressed for business to thrive, as has been proved patently untrue over the past decades, is continuing the economic crisis it created.
The media, Dean, is not interested in “informing” the people about anything. You and I, and many thousands more, understand, most clearly, the critical role which the “fourth estate” performs and must perform in a genuine democracy …
Ergo … with the rule of law quite dead, the Constitution dismissed as “quaint”, and “endless” war our “future”, we must consider that the government regards the people as the enemy and truth as something to be avoided at all costs.
The media have simply picked up on this “reality” (which the poweerful “make” to suit themselves, rfemember) sooner than others, especially as individuals within the media “look forward” to their own person futures and fortunes.
Ah well, as empires go … ours is going.
Cheers.
DW
(Parenthetically, those of us with fingers clearly in business for themselves, have come to consider “edit” to be a most wonderful thing, especially when the eyes are in cahoots … ah, well …)
DW
Yup
They are simply taking dictation from the
GOPMoney Party.For Christ’s sake peasant. Understand this is class warfare, not left right warfare.
Of course, the WaPo expresses its ideological neo-liberalism in its news reports and on its editorial page. I think the paper may have literally sold out to Peterson and his allies. Today, Lori Montgomery dared to claim that the Catfood Commission Report was non-ideological: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR2010120107445.html
Clearly, she’s a great humorist in the making.
It’s a problem though when progressives buy into the same paradigm as the deficit hawks as indicated in this piece, and I’m afraid that the problem extends to a Report to which you contributed. See:
http://my.firedoglake.com/letsgetitdone/2010/12/03/the-%E2%80%9Cprogressive%E2%80%9D-give-up-formula-is-alive-and-well-in-the-latest-deficit-reduction-plans/
This is why we should organize on two fronts: the end of corporate personhood and the end of gross media consolidation. I think that both ideas would attract people from both the political left and right and those in between.