Category Archives: Op-Eds

Is the US National Debt Finally Coming Home to Roost?

Hundreds (RGBStock)

In March and April, CNBC reports, foreign governments started cutting back on the amount of US government debt they buy and hold.  Russia’s government cut its holdings by 50%, from $96.1 billion to $48.7 billion. China (the single biggest holder of US  debt) dumped $5.8 billion. Japan (the second biggest), $12.3 billion.

Disclaimer: I’m no expert in finance generally or in government debt specifically, and those matters are complex. But I don’t think it’s controversial to say that when large creditors stop buying and start start dumping someone’s debt, it’s a bad sign for future borrowing: A de facto reduction in the borrower’s credit rating.

These dumps seem small — less than $100 billion out of a total US national debt of more than $21 trillion — but they cover only a couple of months. The immediate effect is that  the US government is going to have to offer higher interest rates to borrow more money. It has fewer prospective lenders to work with, and its new borrowing has to compete against that old debt, which is presumably selling at a discount in global markets.

The US government is basically the guy who took out a huge home mortgage, then kept refinancing and borrowing against equity,  while trading in his car for a new one (and a larger payment) every two years, and now finds himself visiting car title and payday lenders every week just to keep himself in groceries.

Nobody realistically expects the US government’s existing debt to ever be paid off. In fact, some American thought leaders — supposedly reputable economists, even — scoff at the idea that it SHOULD be paid off and believe that Uncle Sam can just keep borrowing forever, adding current interest to your tax bill and the tax bills of your descendants, without ever having to tighten his own belt.

They’re wrong, and dangerously so. That debt is something foreign governments can hold over Uncle Sam’s head (perhaps these dumps are strategic moves in the current trade war?) — and prospective default on it is something he can hold over theirs. Sooner or later, one way or another, it’s going to end badly.

Caught in the middle are the more than 300 million Americans in whose name the US government borrows. Every dollar borrowed is a promise to beat a dollar, plus interest, out of your hide and mine, in perpetuity.

If the US government won’t bite the bullet — repudiate its debt, balance its budget, and take the credit beating it richly deserves for a shocking century-plus record of complete financial irresponsibility — the rest of us should do so on its behalf. We didn’t borrow that money. Let the politicians who dug the hole dig their own way out of it. Or bury themselves in it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Negative Social Preferencing, ICE Edition

By U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Department of Homeland Security) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
On June 19, New York based artist, programmer, and activist Sam Lavigne published a list of 1,595 Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees and publicly available information about them (remember those two words: “publicly available”).

Lavigne provided a public service that in anything resembling a free society would be completely uncontroversial. Instead, moral panic ensued.

Github deleted the information from its repository. Twitter suspended accounts calling attention to it. It eventually found a home at WikiLeaks.

On June 24, the US Department of Homeland Security (of which ICE is a subsidiary) claimed “heightened threats” versus its employees and reiterated recommendations (per CBS News) “including not displaying work badges in public, being careful with public conversations and using caution on all social networks.”

Donald Trump’s Internet base — which loved WikiLeaks when it released emails exposing corruption in the Democratic National Committee — exploded with rage, calling for a raid on Ecuador’s UK embassy to drag Julian Assange to America for “justice” (he’s been held incommunicado for months and presumably had nothing to do with this project) and for charging Lavigne as an accomplice in any attacks on ICE employees.

To see what a tempest in a teapot this is, remember the “publicly available” angle.

The sources for Lavigne’s database are the ICE employees’ own public LinkedIn profiles, on which they openly state who they work for. Their reasons probably run to networking with others in similar jobs, and seeking other employment, but once you put something on a public-facing web space, the public gets to notice.

Lavigne didn’t hack into an ICE computer. He just took information that anyone with a web browser could have found any time they cared to look, and organized it into a more convenient format.

But let’s just suppose that Lavigne had instead built his database from, say, a leaked ICE personnel list. If so, so what? These people receive their salaries from taxpayers and claim to work for “the public.” On what grounds can they claim a right  to have their employers not know who they are?

As far as “threats” are concerned, the real but largely unspoken one is well-deserved negative social preferencing.

If decent people know that the guy next door abducts people at gunpoint for a living (or conspires with others to facilitate such kidnappings), they probably won’t invite that guy to their next backyard barbecue. Especially if some of the other guests may speak Spanish.

Until ICE is abolished, which can’t happen soon enough, the next best thing is to make it an unattractive employment option.

If you work for ICE, you should be denied service at restaurants, denied communion at churches, and have to explain to your kids why they aren’t invited to other kids’ birthday parties or play activities. And thanks to Sam Lavigne, we know who you are.

If you work for ICE, give your two weeks notice, find a job in the productive sector, and work hard to redeem yourself and live down your sordid past. This is an opportunity. Seize it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

The Libertarian Party: Bringing Good Ideas to America Since 1971

“‘Abolish ICE!’ is the new rallying cry for progressive Democrats,” reports NBC News’s Alex Seitz-Wald. It’s “a radical idea and one that was confined to the fringes just months ago,” but one that “left-wing insurgents can use to differentiate themselves from more established rivals in Democratic primaries.”

Good idea. So good, in fact, that I wrote a column advocating exactly that three months ago. Welcome to the right side, Democrats.

Like most Libertarians, I’m amused when our ideological opponents see a parade forming around one of our ideas and try to hustle their way to the front to “lead” it.

Unlike some Libertarians, I don’t follow up amusement with getting down in the mouth about being “co-opted.” I’m just happy to see good ideas gain steam from any source.

The Libertarian Party has supported same-sex marriage rights since its founding in 1971. Hillary Clinton finally joined us on that one in 2013. Better late than never.

It’s not just the Democrats we’re a leading indicator for. We began calling for elimination of the federal income tax decades before the (even worse) “Fair Tax” idea embedded itself in the Republican Party as an alternative (unfortunately that terrible proposal — a 30% national sales tax coupled with a monthly cradle-to-grave welfare check for every man, woman, and child in America — has fooled some Libertarians as well).

Marijuana legalization? That was us too, fighting both old party establishments to get medical, then recreational, cannabis off the list of victimless “crimes” from the early 1970s on. Glad we’re getting there.

We’re not always quite so far ahead of the older parties. We beat the Democrats to putting abolition of the death penalty in our platform by mere weeks in 2016. It should have been there since 1971.

The perceived gold standard for a political party’s success is winning elections, and I wish that Libertarians won more of them. But a better standard is successfully pushing our values, our ideas, and our proposals into the public conversation and seeing them adopted. I’d like to see that happen more often as well, but I’m glad when it happens at least occasionally.

Unlike the old parties, the Libertarian Party holds its national convention every two years instead of every four. Ours starts on the last day of June and ends on July 3 in New Orleans. Drop by, or tune in on C-SPAN, to see our next batch of great ideas for America.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY