Mere om statsbankerot

Professor Richard Posner og professor Gary Becker diskuterer statsbankerot i deres seneste blogindlæg. Posner gennemgår en nylig rapport fra Morgen Stanley, "Ask Not Whether Governments Will Default, but How", der viser, at den amerikanske stat er insolvent, hvis man opgør aktiver (nutidsværdien af fremtidige indtægter og skattepotentiale) og passiver (statsgæld, nutidsværdien af stigende udgifter og andre forpligtelser). Posner konkluderer:

"The deeper the financial hole that the government has dug for itself by incompetent economic management—and our government has dug itself a very deep hole, largely because of the mismanagement of monetary policy and financial regulation by the Federal Reserve under Greenspan and Bernanke and by other government agencies—the more difficult it is to climb out of the hole on the backs of holders of entitlements and recipients of government services. The political resistance is too intense. It’s at that point that the bondholders, and holders of other contractual rights against the government, have to start worrying about the prospects for outright default or default through inflation. These are possibilities in our future, just as in the future of Greece".

Becker diskuterer risikoen for at USA ikke kan tilbagebetale landets statsgæld. Han påpeger, at en række politiske initiativer, herunder sundhedsreformen, har øget udgiftspresset og derfor vil muligheden for at gælden ikke tilbagebetales. Omvendt kan i økonomisk politik, som fokusere på at øge væksten, reducere risikoen.