Lessons for US in Greek debt deal?
| Washington
Greece has approved a package of reduced government spending to gain additional bailout funds from a troika of European and international groups. That package as Americans were going to sleep Sunday night.
Public Notice, an advocacy group dedicated to responsible government spending, is rolling out the ad above on national news networks starting Monday morning. It鈥檚 part of their 鈥淲ashington Could Learn A Lot鈥� campaign, which now adds Greece to the likes of and .
The ad uses language to similar to what many conservative American politicians and activists have employed, particularly at last week鈥檚 Conservative Political Action Conference where one unnamed Republican candidate dropped the following line to Slate鈥檚 Dave Weigel:
"Joke from a candidate I'm covering: "What's the difference between America and Greece? Eight months."
Of course, the fiscal situation in the US and Greece are different by many orders of magnitude - read this somewhat outdated but generally useful on the subject.
听Here are a two other ways to understand the relative size of Greece鈥檚 financial wherewithal versus America鈥檚:
- Greece is getting a $170 billion bailout package, which would close about 16 percent of the budget deficit President Obama plans to run in the US . In other words, the thing that is sending rioters into the streets in Greece would be a drop in the bucket in the American context.
- The US is the world鈥檚 largest economy at north of $15 trillion, with a 鈥淭,鈥� in gross domestic product, or GDP. Greece is the world鈥檚 41st largest economy at $305.6 billion, with a 鈥淏,鈥� in GDP. Why do you care about the size of the economy? Because the ability to grow out of debt problems by changing economic policy is much stronger in a massive economy than in a medium to small one.
However, as your faithful Decoder wrote last week at CPAC, even among America鈥檚 most ardent conservatives.
Which is astounding, given the tall structural - meaning they are baked into America鈥檚 current economic/government spending system - problems the US has. Read this outstanding for more on the political issues around America鈥檚 biggest spending problems.
So could the US learn from Greece鈥檚 austerity plan? Hardly. Could America benefit from a sharper, and longer lasting, focus on financial issues? You bet.
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