So, when we invaded Afganistan and Iraq, why didn’t we finance it with a bond drive à la WWII? Civilian citizens could’ve invested in some real sense in the action and much of the US debt might have been owed to … well … us. Instead, national treasure is owed to foreign states and anyone else who buys treasury notes.
Am I wrong here? If we’re going to send young men and women off to fight and die on foreign soil for some shared benefit, why wouldn’t we want to invest in it ourselves? Isn’t that the right thing to do?
Instead, we allowed China and others to invest in our foreign adventures and earn some interest in doing so. Citizens get to pay off the cost plus interest. I guess that the interest would’ve been owed anyway, but the money would be in US circulation.
Instead of paying for our own wars, we borrowed the money and had a real estate mortgage calamity bubble instead.
I recall that someone asked President Bush II about this early on and his recommendation was to “go shopping”. The subtext was that they had it all under control.
I have to be missing some key concept, right?
How can reasonably smart people be- collectively anyway- so wrong? Clearly, their ideas and policies are corrupt or faulty. Parties and their members adopt policies and platforms that are either unsustainable or willfully apply an imbalance of favor.
The party system is corrupt to it’s core and must be taken down. Social networking may be the lightning bolt to do the job.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Relevant? http://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/indepth/ebonds/res_e_bonds_eepatriotbond.htm
The e-bonds have been around for a long time and I even looked into it ten years ago, but woas discouraged by the poor yield. A bond drive requires that people go out and sell it. Having it available on a website absent the ballyhoo is too passive to be successful.
Fair enough. The poor yields are probably part of the issue — I wonder what the WWII generation was getting for their war bonds.
See: http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1682.html
“Known as debt securities for the purpose of financing military operations during war time, the bonds yielded a mere 2.9 percent return after a 10-year maturity.”
And, let’s face it. Anyone making mortgage qualifying income in the early 00’s were hard pressed to justify putting resources into bonds when the real estate was building up steam. I fell into that thinking as well. I’d like to think that Americans might have rallied to the cause, but I’m not so sure now it would’ve happened.
Since you asked, the 0.1% is in charge. They have been for quite some time.
You are right. What I’m incredulous about is the presumption we all had that the “experts” had all of this under control. It’s yet another example of-
Frequently wrong, but never in doubt.
If you live in a parallel universe, where you get to have not only your own opinions,but your own facts as well, it’s not so hard to be right all the time.
Look at what the Very Serious People have done in the field of economics which is admittedly more complex (with higher degrees of uncertainty) than chemistry. Does the current state of our economy tell you anything about how they think?