Newsgroups: alt.flame,alt.politics.elections
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 22:15:31 -0400 
From: Conrad Poelman <conradp+@CMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Email Copy of REPUBLICAN PLATFORM to me
	<1992Sep12.161929.24984@news.cs.brandeis.edu>

Given that this thread has degenerated into a name-calling fest by both
sides, I'm not sure why I'm even bothering to interject some reality...

Excerpts from netnews.alt.politics.elections: 12-Sep-92 Re: Email Copy
of REPUBLICA.. Bis@chaos.cs.brandeis.ed (3833)

> >          We have a Congress that can't even balance their personal checking
> >accounts.  Only a moron would fail to see the connection between personal
> >hot checks and a HUGE national debt.

> ...

> CLUE:  Bounced checks CANNOT incur a debt, no matter how much money
>   they're written for.  Since you are obviously a child who has never
>   had a bank account and does not understand banking, allow me to
>   explain it to you:  Checks are vouchers for money.  When a check is
>   cashed, the amount is withdrawn from the account of the person who
>   wrote the check.  If the account lacks sufficient funds, the
>   transfer is not made, and the check is returned.  Then the check can
>   be cashed again.  The monetary gain/loss for both parties is no
>   different in the end if the check bounces than if it doesn't.  The
>   one exception to that is that most banks impose a fine for writing a 
>   check that bounces.  The Congressional bank previously did not
>   impose such fines, and many congresspeople were criticized for
>   abusing that privilege.

No, the problem with the Congressional check "bouncing" scandal is that
the House bank *honored* the checks even though the Congressmen didn't
have enough money to cover the account, giving in essense a penalty-free
interest-free loan.  Thus Congressmen were "deficit spending" with their
own money just as they do with ours.  I think much of the confusion over
the issue is because it is erroneously referred to as the
"check-bouncing scandal" when it fact it is a check-kiting scandal, but
fewer people know what that means.

Excerpts from netnews.alt.politics.elections: 12-Sep-92 Re: Email Copy
of REPUBLICA.. Bis@chaos.cs.brandeis.ed (2478)

> >Speaking of clueless! That's the centerpiece of the revisionist 80s
> >history, isn't it? Reagan presided over the longest peacetime economic
> >boom in the nation's history-> ergo we will assert it didn't really exist.
> >The Reagan-era debt was not particularly large historically- so we'll
> >report it in nominal terms to make it look big.

> ...

> CLUE:  There was no "boom" in the 1980s!  The economic "prosperity"
>   was never anything more than an illusion.  Reagan borrowed money and 
>   called it prosperity, and now we're paying for it.  And shockingly,
>   when the man who was the first to aptly describe Reagan's
>   borrow-now-and-spend-spend-spend-and-worry-about-it-later economic
>   plan as "voodoo economics" took over as president, he continued the
>   same idiotic policies.

I agree, though clearly Congress deserves its share of the blame as
well.  In another thread, someone pointed out that Americans themselves,
not just the government, discovered unbridled spending on credit during
the 80s.  Some of the difficulty getting out of the current recession is
attributed to the fact that, when consumers get more money, they're
using it to pay off their debts rather than on increase purchasing.  It
seems that Americans as individuals have realized that one can't get
ahead by spending beyond one's means.  When will our government wake up
and realize this too?

--Conrad
Newsgroups: alt.flame,alt.fan.kevin-darcy