The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at no cost.

Ben Bernanke | 30 Bernanke Quotations That Are So Stupid You Won’t Know Whether to Laugh or Cry

(OP LALiberty) (dead link fixed)

(Source: antigovernmentextremist)

[W]hen the Fed lowers interest rates below their natural level on a market, it has the effect of expanding investment beyond a sustainable level. Business begin investing as if consumers had the savings to back up the signals that the interest rates are sending. But real resources are not in fact available. There is no new wealth available to make good on investments. The lower interest rates are creating no new capital; they are merely distorting the signals borrows use to assess risk.

[The] biggest mistake made in the run-up to the recent financial crisis was that people on Wall Street and Main Street and in Washington all thought that it was perfectly fine for housing prices to go up 100 percent or more while peoples’ incomes only went up a few percent. That was a pretty basic economic mistake to make, but that was their fundamental error. It wasn’t Wall Street gods gone bad, or greed overtaking people. It was just plain bad investment judgment at a very fundamental level, and this very bad investment judgment was made by just about everyone, from the least financially sophisticated people in America to the most financially sophisticated people in America.

While there is a temptation to dash off to engage with some silly thing or other that Jim Wallis said, I will for the most part refrain. The point [in this post] is to engage with [author] Hunter, and not with those he is reporting on here. But allow me just one little indulgence? The Sojourners/Call to Renewal document is cited [in this chapter], which says, “The Hebrew prophets consistently say that the measure of a nation’s righteousness and integrity is how it treats the most vulnerable” (p. 138). Exactly. And even if we leave the unborn out of it (which the Hebrew prophets would not allow us to do), this is precisely why leftism is such a pathetic counterfeit of the Hebrew prophetic tradition. Economic illiteracy is a principal cause of poverty, and watching it parade around as though it were capable of creating wealth by simply wishing for it is a bit thick. Watching Jim Wallis advise the president on economics is like hearing that Typhoid Mary got herself appointed as the head of the Center for Disease Control.

The long-run projections of the Congressional Budget Office suggest that the US will never again run a balanced budget. That’s right, never.

The International Monetary Fund recently published estimates of the fiscal adjustments developed economies would need to make to restore fiscal stability over the decade ahead. Worst were Japan and the UK (a fiscal tightening of 13 per cent of GDP). Then came Ireland, Spain and Greece (9 per cent). And in sixth place? Step forward America, which would need to tighten fiscal policy by 8.8 per cent of GDP to satisfy the IMF.