Instapundit Responds
Here is Glenn's complete response to my post: "Well, I was hoping for a thoughtful email from an expert, but instead I got a typically intemperate blog post from Bruce Bartlett. Bruce, I’m not trying to turn the United States into Zimbabwe. That would be the guy in the White House, whom you seem surprisingly anxious to defend."
Addendum: On Monday Glenn linked to this Stephen Bainbridge post about the rising risk of a federal debt default.
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The entire exchange is rather amusing
I assumed Bruce was commenting on a widely held proposal among conservatives that I had somehow missed in my daily scanning of major conservative websites and blogs including Redstate, Daily Caller, Next Right etc. I really did not think all of this strum and drang could be based on two lines clearly thrown out as a "what if" intellectual excercize. So I did google and bing searches on various default and balanced budget word combinations. I found ONE other reference in Reason Magazine from 2008 that discussed the possibility of default in a positive way. Everything else I fund discussed a BBA as a means of AVOIDING default.
So is this all the evidence of conservative, or even libertarian, support for default? Two lines on Instapundit? Please tell me which other conservative leaders have expressed support for default.
what
Bartlett responded to a post by Reynolds; Reynolds is a figure of the right. It's a dumb right-wing idea. No big deal.
That was some response from Reynolds there, btw. "Oh yeah?!? My idea is too awesome! In conclusion, did you realize that Barack Obama and Robert Mugabe are both black?? It's true!"
Dumb Ideas
I never meant to imply that defaulting on the debt is a widespread idea. However, it is one that I have personally heard conservatives express. Stan tells me that he has heard it as well. The point of my post was to make sure that it doesn't become a widespread idea.
I would just add that I would not have responded as I did if it was some lone tea party crackpot expressing the idea on an obscure blog. But not only is Instapundit one of the most widely read blogs anywhere, but the author is a respected professor of law at a major university. For this reason, I feared that the idea might be taken seriously and spread throughout the right wing blogospehere and eventually become a topic of serious discussion on Fox News.
"serious discussion on Fox News"
"Serious discussion on Fox News" - you're joking right?
Instapundit's habit is to
Instapundit's habit is to toss off stupid ideas or post other people's stupid ideas (while implying that he agrees with them) and then get indignant when you challenge him on the ideas he's advocated.
of course
in other words "I was hoping for a well thought-out response, not one that disagreed with me!" Why are so-called conservatives suggesting that we default on our obligations? Doesn't that go against conservative moral teaching to own up to your responsibilities?
I wonder if he seriously considers defaulting on his home mortgage, too.
Wait - the entirety of his
Wait - the entirety of his point is (1) you're mean and (2) you're not being partisan enough? Congrats Glenn - you've admitted by omission that you don't really care about your country, you care about your party. Bravo.
And hey, that tells me a lot about the quality of reasoning I should expect from his U of Tennessee students.
Bruce, I’m not trying to turn
Bruce, I’m not trying to turn the United States into Zimbabwe. That would be the guy in the White House, whom you seem surprisingly anxious to defend.
That's vintage Glenn Reynolds -- obtuse and obnoxious.
Professor Bainbridge: "The
Professor Bainbridge: "The CDS market is sending us a signal. Do we have the will to listen?"
Of course, in the summer of 2006 the CDS market was sending us the signal that subprime mortgage CDOs were a really, really safe bet. I suppose we should have been listening then, too.
What my post was about
My post to which you link was not really about the risk of a federal default. I explicitly stated that "Although sovereign defaults are hardly unknown, things would have to get incredibly bad for the US to default on Treasuries. And if they got that bad, you'd probably have been better off investing in a survivalist camp than CDSs."
Nor do I understand why it's relevant to your fight with Glenn that he linked to my post. Nothing in my post is relevant to that debate, since nothing in my post remotely suggests the desirability of a federal default. Trying for some guilt by association?
In any case, do you think it's irrelevant that prices on US Treasury CDSs are rising?