user: IN: Issa, Grassley say Fast and Furious document releases a 'fraction' fails to meet subpoena
Republicans lawmakers who led probes into the Obama administration’s botched Operation Fast and Furious gun-trafficking operation are criticizing the court-ordered release Friday of related documents, saying they are only a “fraction” of those requested in subpoenas.

“What we need from the president is an explanation of why he felt these documents couldn’t have been seen by the American people and why there has been no real accountability for the officials involved,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, who as chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform led congressional investigations.

“Was he protecting the failed gun … operation or the cover-up?" the California Republican asked Friday.

Issa made the announcement hours after the Justice Department said that it had given to Congress additional documents related to Fast and Furious.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation from 2006 to 2012 allowed gunrunners to buy weapons along the southwestern U.S. border in hopes that tracking the firearms would lead federal agents to drug loads and break up Mexican gun-smuggling rings.

However, only about one-third of the roughly 2,000 guns have been recovered and at least some were recovered at crime scenes along the U.S.-Mexico border, including where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in 2010.

Reports about such incidents created a political firestorm and set off a documents dispute between then-Attorney General Eric Holder and Congress that resulted in Holder being held in contempt of Congress.

The administration had for the last four years refused to provide the records to GOP-led House, invoking a claim of executive privilege.

But a federal judge in January turned aside that argument, saying a blanket assertion of executive privilege was inappropriate since the Justice Department had already disclosed through other channels much of the information it had sought to withhold.

“Given that even after years of stonewalling these are only a fraction of the documents that were subpoenaed by the House of Representatives, at this point, the usefulness remains to be seen,” Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley said Friday.

Grassley began asking questions in January 2011, after whistleblowers came to him alleging about the illegal “gun-walking” being allowed by the administration.

“I look forward to seeing what was actually produced, and what President Obama continues to refuse to be transparent about,” Grassley continued. “It shouldn't have taken a lengthy court battle to get this far. The rest of the documents should be turned over so that the litigation can end.”

Issa also in his statement Friday that Obama has failed to fully comply with subpoenas.

In a letter Friday, the Justice Department said it was moving to end the legal dispute with the House oversight panel, despite disagreeing with the order from Judge Amy Berman Jackson.

"In light of the passage of time and other considerations, … the department has decided that it is not in the executive branch's interest to continue litigating this issue at this time," Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik, wrote in a letter to new committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican.

House Republicans sued in 2012 to obtain thousands of emails related to the failed effort.

The Justice Department had already produced tens of thousands of pages of documents, but Congress continued to seek records that the department argued it was entitled to withhold.

The department said that, in producing the documents Friday, it had completed its obligations under the court order.

Chaffetz said in a statement that while the department had turned over "some of the subpoenaed documents," the committee remains entitled to "the full range of documents for which it brought this lawsuit."

He said the committee was appealing in hopes of getting additional documents.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
What is a short summary of the above article?

OUT: Republicans lawmakers who led probes into the Obama administration’s botched Operation Fast and Furious gun-trafficking operation are criticizing the court-ordered release Friday of related documents, saying they are only a “fraction” of those requested in subpoenas.


Q: Consumer Spending and the Economy

The U.S. economy is predominantly driven by consumer spending, which accounts for approximately 70 percent of all economic growth. But if consumers are to continue to drive the economy, they must be in a sound financial position; if they become overburdened with debt, they are not able to maintain their position as the primary driver of economic growth. To that end, consider the following table which shows the total amount of household debt (all consumer loans and mortgages), total nominal gross domestic product, total nominal disposable personal income, the ratio of household debt to G.D.P. and the ratio of household debt to total disposable personal income. All numbers are in billions:

The table clearly shows that over the last 30 years, the typical U.S. consumer has increased both his total amount of debt and the percentage of that debt relative to overall G.D.P. and disposable income. While there is no bright line rule for “too much debt” in an economy, it is fair to say that at some level, the total amount of debt — and the percentage of debt to key economic numbers such as G.D.P. and disposable personal income — becomes so large that it forces consumers to slow their spending on other items in order to start devoting a larger amount of their income to paying down debt.

This observation is hardly new. In fact, it is largely based on the writings and observations of Irving Fisher, whose 1933 paper, The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions, provides a tremendous amount of insight into current situation of U.S. consumers. Mr. Fisher observed that slight misallocation of economic resources were generally not responsible for depressions. He noted that, “Any of them [traditional business cycle dis-equilibrium events] may suffice to explain small disturbances, but all of them put together have probably been inadequate to explain big disturbances.”

As a present example of the previous point, the wheat market specifically and the grain markets in general are currently experiencing what Fisher called “dis-equilibrium” – an economically unbalanced situation where supply and demand are not perfectly equal. Earlier this year, the Russian wheat harvest was severely damaged by fires throughout Russia, eventually leading the Russian government to ban all wheat exports. These events led to an increase in wheat prices because of the decrease in available product. While disquieting, the wheat market “dis-equilibrium events” were not serious enough to cause a depression. Instead, two interrelated and regular economic events occurred: the overall market experienced a period of higher prices caused by a decrease in product and new supplies and suppliers started to emerge.

The recent events in the wheat market are indicative of numerous events that occur throughout a market economy on a regular basis; too much of one product is produced, leading to lower prices to clear excess merchandise or too little of a product is produced, inviting new companies and producers to enter the market. However, Fisher argued even large numbers of these events occurring at the same time are typically not severe enough to cause a depression. What really caused depressions was “over-indebtedness to start and deflation following after that.”

Fisher argued when an economy has too much debt, it becomes susceptible to the following chain of events. An event occurs which creates a “mild gloom that shocks the conscience.” In other words, a news event occurs which lowers consumer confidence, leading investors to sell assets to start to pay off debt. As asset prices fall, investor confidence is lowered further as others see the value of their investments drop. This leads to further selling, lowering prices further. At some point, consumer’s net worth drops to a point where they slow down their purchases, lowering business profits, which eventually leads to lay-offs, further exacerbating the downward cycle.
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assistant: The theory of Irving Fisher and how it relates to the U.S. economy.