Yes, with the unemployment rate about to hit 10 percent, Robert Samuelson yet again expresses concern over the country's biggest problem: the prospect of defaulting on its debt. Never mind that investors are prepared to hold U.S. government bonds for an interest rate of just 3.5 percent -- the lowest rate (except for earlier in this crisis) in almost 60 years. There is still nothing more important for Post readers to hear about than the risk that the U.S. government will default on its debt. Who knows, maybe if the Post and other media outlets run enough pieces touting this risk they may even be able to scare some investors and affect the markets, even if their efforts thus far have failed. It's too bad that the Post could not have been troubled to talk about the $8 trillion housing bubble before it burst. Given the huge additional to the debt that resulted from the collapse of the bubble, which was entirely predictable, anyone who was really concerned about the debt would have filled their pages with talk of the housing bubble in the years 2002-2007. But, the Washington Post could find no space for such warnings. Even today, the paper and Robert Samuelson are such determined protectionists that they refuse to even consider the prospect of free trade in health care, a step that would drastically reduce the projections for long-term deficits. Oh well, this is like War of the Worlds, a scare story, not serious policy analysis.
--Dean Baker
