Word: deficits
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...five months since Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith held a town hall meeting with the FAS community regarding a then-$220 million deficit, proposed solutions to the budgetary quagmire have been scant, breeding confusion among faculty and staff, who hope that this afternoon’s “Discussion with the Dean” will end the dry spell...
...Nothing. Nothing, other than Mike [Smith] sending out a notice saying there will be a meeting...There’s no transparency,” said Engineering Professor Frederick H. Abernathy, who expressed frustration at the absence of administrative outreach in the face of a gaping deficit...
...plausible explanation for this happy outcome is that Japan was willing to recycle into Treasuries the dollars it earned selling us cars, TVs and stereos. That demand for U.S. debt kept interest rates low. By the early 1990s, though, the national debt - the accumulated product of those years of deficits - approached 50% of GDP, and bond investors abroad and at home seemed to shy away from Treasuries, driving interest rates up. Also, billionaire Ross Perot spent a good part of his fortune making deficits into a political issue. In response, Washington focused for a few years on getting...
...time last year, it appeared that this deficit-ignoring bliss might end. Chinese officials said repeatedly that they were uncomfortable holding so many U.S. securities. Interest rates on Treasuries inched up. And another billionaire launched an assault on deficit spending - this time private-equity kingpin Peter Peterson, who took most of the $1.9 billion he made from the 2007 initial public offering of his Blackstone Group and put it into a foundation devoted to raising fiscal awareness...
Then came the Panic of '08. Investors saw Treasuries as a safe haven and poured money into them, driving down interest rates. Officials in Washington spared no expense in battling the crisis. The result is a deficit of unprecedented size but with no perceptible pressure from financial markets to reduce it. No pressure so far, at least. The federal debt, at $7.6 trillion, is now above 50% of GDP and rising. The government faces commitments to Social Security and Medicare that dwarf that figure. Republican congressional leaders have decided they care about deficits again - and seem to be making headway...