Buffett: Eliminate the Debt Ceiling
From my lips to Moody’s ears to Warren Buffet’s lips:
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says the debt ceiling should be done away with, arguing it is nothing more than an “artificial limit” that ends up wasting time in Congress.
“All it does is slow down a process and divert people’s energy, causes people to posture. It doesn’t really make any sense,” the Berkshire Hathaway CEO said in an interview with NBC News conducted Monday afternoon at the White House after he and Bill and Melinda Gates met with President Barack Obama about charitable giving.
Gerry Canavan 
I wonder why conservatives support a debt ceiling at all. With their blind reverence for free markets, shouldn’t they instead believe that the optimal level of the nation’s debt should be left to the markets to determine? What if the markets are willing and able to buy up more federal debt above the current limit? I would think conservatives would consider the debt limit to be an arbitrary, government-imposed hindrance to the free flow of capital.
Yes, of course I realize that conservatives are simply exploiting the debt limit situation to force a downsizing of government. But it’s total hypocrisy given their general belief in free markets.
Pete
July 19, 2011 at 11:37 am
But it’s hypocrisy all the way down, as “free markets” is itself just better branding for oligarchy and kleptocracy. They like the debt ceiling for the same reason they like anything else: because it allows them to manufacture a crisis to justify pro-austerity, pro-corporate shock doctrine. Everything else is just words.
gerrycanavan
July 19, 2011 at 11:43 am
I mean, TARP wasn’t “free market” policy either. They’re not interested in free markets except when free markets help rich people get richer. When regulated markets are better for the rich, they like regulated markets instead…
gerrycanavan
July 19, 2011 at 11:57 am
I think the anonymous hackers have a point, wanting Berneke to leave. President Clinton also has a good point, but the 14th amendment, if it works, why has President Obama not used it, and if it works, the extra money needed should ONLY be used for cheques to the American people . He doesn’t seem to know where to stop in his haste for spending. A small purse will provide less freedom to waste it.
Mary Dicerni
July 19, 2011 at 4:26 pm
[…] can offer that’s better than eliminating the debt ceiling altogether in one fell swoop. And as I’ve been saying eliminating the debt ceiling completely is now the only way left to calm the markets and prevent a […]
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