America is unjustly worried about ”national debt,” believing it can no longer do the many things that mark it as a great nation. Discussions of national undertakings–including infrastructure repair, jobs programs, military modernization, and disease prevention–have all been stifled through fear of insolvency. America has convinced itself that it can no longer afford, as a nation, to do many of the productive things that it has done so well over its history.
That’s a great shame, because America remains a nation of tremendous resources in every sense, and the underlying assumptions about U.S. government financial instruments are not correct. America can never face the debt problems of nations like Greece, thanks to its fundamentally different financial system.
This short book explains why such fears should not hold back America, and why even the expression ”national debt” is neither meaningful nor appropriate for the United States.
Clear and Candid This is more than a good overview of the way Treasury bonds work. It’s also a thought-provoking look at what they actually are, following a clear, logical argument.I came to this after the author’s previous book, Six Myths. This is an excellent companion, but it’s not necessary to have read the previous book. The aims are slightly different, with the former looking more at flows of money and inferences to be drawn from China. This current book focuses squarely on the question of…
Finally, common sense in economics! Frank Newman, former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and the first American to run a bank in China, has a truly global and macro understanding of how the world’s economy works and he spells it all out here. It’s refreshing to have somebody debunking these fatal views of national economies needing to act like they are on a family budget. In “Freedom from National Debt”, Newman strikes a clarion call for a truly global view of finances and a different view of debt, but also a proactive…