Fed Bank President Warns Again On Deficit

[kysrsoze]

A top Federal Reserve official yesterday urged the White House and Congress to restrain the U.S. budget deficit, warning that its continued growth poses risks to international financial markets.

Current "troubling" projections of the deficit's growth threaten to shake the confidence of international investors, who might become less willing to finance the nation's burgeoning debt, Timothy F. Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said in New York at a business forum on global financial risk.

"It is important that the United States work to build more confidence that it will act on the fiscal front to achieve a better balance between our commitments and our resources," Geithner said, according to a text of his speech.

(snip)

The Bush administration has promised to halve the budget deficit as a share of gross domestic product by 2009, from its current 3.6 percent. But many economists predict that share will rise much higher in later years.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8199-2005Jan13.html

[havocmom]

1. Budget deficits only problematic when Dems in WH and majority of Congress

Geithner didn't get the memo? </sarcasm>

[struggle4progress]

2. kick

[no_to_war_economy]

3. no need to worry

the Rapture will take us all away from this debt created by the devil

}(}(}(}(}(}(}(}(}(}(}(}(}(

[ausiedownunderground]

4. US Deficit is not American's problem - Keep Spending!

This is a Chinese and Japanese Central Bank problem. When they need to use it to "Screw" "The Bush Gang" they will - Don't worry!! So keep spending America!

[UpInArms]

5. FU Cheney sent out the "memo"

Cheney to Treasury: "Deficits don't matter"
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was told "deficits don't matter" when he warned of a looming fiscal crisis.

O'Neill, fired in a shakeup of Bush's economic team in December 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts and said the president balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals because of opposition from "the corporate crowd," a key constituency.

O'Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due." A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.

The vice president's office had no immediate comment, but John Snow, who replaced O'Neill, insisted that deficits "do matter" to the administration.

http://www.issues2000.org/2004/Dick_Cheney_Budget_+_Economy.htm

[NYC]

6. Deficits don't matter.

The inmates are running the asylum.