Republicans are always claiming to be so worried about debt and how much debt the Obama administration is getting us into. Meteor Blades' diary does a good job at explaining who's really at fault for the public debt (don't expect the Republicans to admit it), but like the Republicans, he only addresses public debt.
One of the biggest misconceptions going around these days and one that needs to be hammered home again and again and again: private debt, not public debt, is what got us into this crisis. Yeah, George Bush ran deficits, but our economic recession/depression happened because of private debt bubbles, namely the decade-long housing bubble combined with consumer debt bubbles everywhere. The takeoff in private debt-to-GDP started around 1983.
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