The Fed can’t even hit its inflation target at a time when Republicans are predicting the apocalypse over the meaningless national debt. How long do conservative fiscal hawks have to be proven wrong before they admit they are, in fact wrong?

The national debt is, in reality, the savings and investments of the private sector that haven’t yet been destroyed by paying a federal tax obligation. It is simply an accurate record of the money supply net of private-sector debt. Relabel it “private sector reserves” and get over the knee jerk reaction to the word “debt”. Any serious attempt to actually pay off the debt with austerity and taxation, even if it were possible, would leave us without a store of value in commerce or any possibility to retire our greatly oversized private bank debt levels. Ya, but it would make you “feel” better, and that’s what’s really important, right?