Glenn Beck Threatens to Expose U.S. Government Cover-Up

[Username28]

Glenn Beck Threatens to Expose U.S. Government Cover-Up of Boston Bombing (Video)

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/ ... bing-video

As it SHOULD be!! I wish someone WOULD expose everything the government is doing!!!

[crashmister]

Well calling Glen Beck a bag o hammers is an insult to the bag o hammers.

[fishnfool73]

Still waiting ????

[fishnfool73]

I agree Jetty. He does bring up some interesting points at times especially when Bush was in office. Now he just seems to attack Obama and his policies blindly.

[Northwoods]

I would be able to tolerate Beck more if he just stuck to the facts without turning to propaganda tactics. Obama was a creation for the democratic party and as such has plenty of legitimate skeletons that could be brought out. The guy was a wallflower in the Senate, but was the perfect show piece to be formed into a puppet for the 1%. He has a hint of Malcom X without the substance, plays to blacks and Hispanics, and satisfies the latent racial guilt of white people.

Beck could have a field day on actual issues with Obama and the corruption in Washington, but he plays the same games as they do. I used to watch his show about once a month but I noticed several times that he would play a video clip, minus the audio up until the person said one good sound-byte. Several times what was played was taken out of context, but it made for good drama. It would be nice to have one show out there telling the truth and bringing some attention to the shady things that are going on without the Jerry Springer tactics.

[ringonose]

Democrat, Independent, Republican, that's not my point here. My point is, Glenn Beck has made himself very rich sucking the general American public into watching his side show antics and passing it off as some sort of intelligent political analysis. I think (INHO)part of the reason the rest of the world laughs at the U.S is because of guys like Glenn Beck. There are thousands of examples. Glenn Beck once claimed cows produce more greenhouse gases than coal-fired power plants. Yes, he said this. Let's put the shoe on the other foot. What is Bill Maher said something as moronic and un intelligent as this? Or Obama? Or Clinton? All credibility would be LOST. Oh no, but not when Glenn Beck says it, because let's face it, he's a side show entertainer posing as a political analyst. I wish people would stop comparing idiots like Glenn Beck to presidential figures, it's a drag and disappointing. It validates a guy who should have long ago been ignored or just laughed at.
Glenn Beck quote: "I didn't think I could hate victims faster than the 9/11 victims… And when I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh shut up!' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining. And we did our best for them."
He's entitled to his opinion, after all opinion's can be entertaining. I just wish they'd sell Glenn Beck as just that, an entertainment figure, not anything else, for he so often misses the FACTS (and makes so much stuff up) that he turns himself into a side show.

[Northwoods]

I don't think Beck was that far out of line with the September 11th comment.

You know what a Veteran that dies in combat gets? The family gets 2000.00 to have a funeral, and they also get a free headstone. If their surviving spouse has a very low income, they might qualify for a pension benefit of up to 625.00 a month. The spouse can also wade through months to years of paperwork to try and get Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC), which pays at least $1,091 a month. If a combat veteran gets lucky and only ends up with a TBI or gets their arms or legs blown off, and can be considered 100% disabled; they get 2,769.00 a month.

If your spouse died on 9/11, it's a whole different story. Congress created a $7 billion fund to compensate 5,562 family members of the people killed on 9/11. That is not counting the concerts, benefits or multitude of other feel good fundraising that the family members received. If you lost a family member on September 11th, that's too bad, but get over it. What makes their loss so much greater than that of anyone else? I just don't see how someone that worked in an office building in downtown New York is worth that much more than a Combat Veteran.
.

[fishnfool73]

It's easy one signs the dotted line knowing these disgraceful facts the other didn't. One was replayed a few thousand times and people felt horrible for them. The other gets little coverage at best and the majority of the American people not directly effected by their deaths turns a blind eye. I'm all for a complete overhaul of benefits for service people regardless and am not taking sides against you just pointing out sad facts.

[Northwoods]

I agree with what you said. Our society loves watching a car wreck. Shooting, bombing, whatever it happens to be; people glue themselves to the TV for days. I used to be guilty of it myself, but I stopped. If the news shows more than five minutes of a mass shooting or a bombing, I turn it off and send them an email saying that I stopped watching because they are giving the killer what they wanted and doing it in the name of profit, and that I won't be watching their channel for the rest of the day. Maybe it doesn't make a difference, but It's a start.

I get why 9/11 victims received a thousand times more money; I don't agree with it, but I get it. My point is that I agree with Beck in the respect of move on. My parents have been dead for years, stuff happens and I don't play the sympathy card because everybody dies at some point; many in horrible ways. I work in the prison system and there are a lot of families that lost loved ones in much more tragic ways than a plane into a building. I don't mean to make light of their loss, but it is no greater than anyone else that has lost a loved one, and they are not special in my opinion. If some family member is complaining about getting more money, then what's most important? The loss of a loved one or how much cash you can get?

[ringonose]

I can't comment on Obama, or Bush, or Clinton (though I respect him the most; can't dis respect a guy who can score a BJ while in office, sorry, that's just my opinion..LOL). Beck just bugs me, that's all. O'Riley brings it to the table, at least tries to be level headed about it, backs his claims up with some facts, unlike the crazies like Hannity and Beck. Proper intelligent analysis is too much to ask? Beck comes up short more often than not. O.K sure he has a few interesting view points, but if one shoots off their mouth that much, well you know what they say, turn over a full deck of cards and there's bound to be a FEW ace's in there right? just sayin'....
As far as Obama goes, I won't go there. He has his supporters who love him. So does Beck. That is about all they have in common! But, I'm under the belief that ALL politicians are PAID to lie anyways. This applies to every country, every island, every city, all around the world. Lest we live among monks. I'll say this: if Glenn Beck passed away, how much will he be missed past a simple changing of the t.v channel, or someone else taking his spot? The world will not miss him (most of the world doesn't even know who he is). Can't say the same about our presidents, including the last two. Not going there about Obama. That's a separate thread.

[crashmister]

So why do the Arizona sailors deserve a memorial, or the WWII vets, or Nam vets? Many sailors died on other ships, they don't deserve a memorial? America has had many wars besides WWII. Vietnam Nam was never a declared war. So why build the wall?
2 reasons, first to honor our fallen, second but more important, to show the real cost of war is not money but lives. We're supposed to learn from war memorials the human cost, But we never do.

I don't know if anyone could reasonably answer your question northwoods. I for one never could grasp the concept of a life price tag. We in SAR never thought about rescue in dollars and cents. People needed us so we went, we jumped, we swam as hard as we could, we saved all we could, and the sea took the rest. Truth is no amount of money can compensate for the loss of a loved one. But I fully agree we owe our solders better. Unfortunately that takes money and the gang in charge love to start wars, & hate to pay for em. Agent Orange and gulf war syndrome are great examples of that. The fed never did recognize AO as having been caused by military defoliating efforts using a dioxin based defoliant. Thousands of troops died without military benefits, many with massive medical bills insurance refused to pay.
Beck is as crazy as an out house rat. He's got a following who pay to be members of his media circle or whatever. Thing is Beck didn't leave fox to save his soul, more to save his azz. His show was loosing sponsors so fast fox had to fire him. Lush Windbag is looking down the same gun as his sponsors are fed up as well. Hannity and Coulter are on the same bus, they'll reach their stops next year most likely as their contracts are up. Do a little research, glen beck has been fired from every broadcasting job he's ever had, including fox. If it weren't for a group of devout followers, beck would be on unemployment. Instead, he's living quite well telling fairy tales to "low information voters". (Code for really gullible morons who believe the moon landing was faked and professional wrestling is real) this goof has nothing on Benghazi and neither does Jason Chaffetz (R) chair of the congressional security committee. They're both a pair of bad jokes. In the 9 months since Benghazi, neither of them or anyone else for that matter has come up with anything to say this was covered up or the White House misled anyone on anything. There never was anything. But if Susan rice took over for Hillary then John Kerry's senate seat would not become available. I believe that's what this was about from the start. It was no secret that hildog was done and Rice was next but Kerry was a strong second. The pugs saw early this was not a situation they could build on in Benghazi because there was no coverup. Just a string of bad calls on a number of people that ended in tragedy. Beck and fox have really gone out on a limb and it just broke for Chaffetz at least. He tried to say on fox Sunday that the entire admin was involved in a coverup. But he's got no evidence! We're just supposed to take his word that everyone lied to protect the prez. Well now that the whistle blowers hearing is over, nothing new of any substance has been reveled. BIG SHOCK!!! Here's the thing, if OB would have come out the next day and said anything other than what he did he would have been lying. Nobody knew, and even by the time Rice made the rounds, they still weren't sure. I agree they suspected, but had no real evidence, earlier testimony from Petraeus even said the suspected group denied any involvement. and in the absence of any group claiming responsibility, (Not normal terrorist SOP BTW) They ran with they knew for sure. Considering at the exact same time there were protests in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, India's Kashmir, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the UK, I guess you had to be a moron to think this Benghazi thing was a protest! Really? This whole thing has taken a turn now that Hillary is looking to be a strong runner in 2016. Now they're feigning outrage over information they've had for over 2 months. "Blow the lid off Benghazi"? Really? From what I heard, the whistle blowers need to learn a new tune and Beck needs several years in a rubber room, in a backwards shirt, on a Valium holiday. The guy took a permanent break from reality years ago.

[Thelonereeler]

I agree Jetty. He does bring up some interesting points at times especially when Bush was in office. Now he just seems to attack Obama and his policies blindly.

Someone has to attack Obama's policies, they are killing us.

[fishnfool73]

If by killing us you mean the stock market is at an all time high then yes. My deferred comp is through the roof.

[crashmister]

Well nothing happened if you're not part of a sequestered program, or one of the ten's of thousands of government employees who weren't lucky enough to be air traffic controllers or TSA agents. Just because you don't see it directly don't mean there's no effect. They fixed flight delays almost immediately but there were thousands of cancels and delays before they did. This sequester will have a ripple effect on the economy and job's. Everyday you hear or read about another battered Women's shelter, Food Kitchen (Meals on Wheels), school,

Was wondering if you read this Jetty?


Benghazi Bombshell: Leaked Emails Were Edited to Make Obama Look Bad

Turns out the press got played again by Republicans. Jake Tapper has the smoking gun of the original email from the Obama administration which differs significantly from the “leaked emails” ABC ran with.

In an exclusive for CNN, Tapper reveals that CNN has the original email sent by a top Obama aide, regarding the administration’s reaction to the Benghazi attacks. Tapper reported, “The actual email differs from how sources characterized it to two different media organizations.”

“The actual email from then-Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes appears to show that whomever (sic) leaked it did so in a way that made it appear that the White House primarily concerned with the State Department’s desire to remove references and warnings about specific terrorist groups so as to not bring criticism to the department,” Tapper concludes (my bold).

The email was sent on Friday, September 14, 2012, at 9:34 p.m. and was obtained by CNN from a U.S. government source. Ironically, the email points out that there is a “ton of wrong information” coming from Congress and people who are not particularly informed (waving hello to Congressional Republicans and Mitt Romney):

“Sorry to be late to this discussion. We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.

“There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. Insofar as we have firmed up assessments that don’t compromise intel or the investigation, we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression.

“We can take this up tomorrow morning at deputies.”

Read the full email here.

Tapper notes how ABC and the Weekly Standard covered the leaked emails, which were “paraphrased” “inaccurately” and “inventing the notion” that the White House tried to protect the State Department:


Whoever provided those quotes and paraphrases did so inaccurately, seemingly inventing the notion that Rhodes wanted the concerns of the State Department specifically addressed. Nuland, particularly, had expressed a desire to remove mentions of specific terrorist groups and CIA warnings about the increasingly dangerous assignment. Rhodes put no emphasis at all in his email on the State Department’s concerns.

Previous reporting also misquoted Rhodes as saying the group would work through the talking points at the deputies meeting on Saturday, September 15, when the talking points to Congress were finalized. While the previously written subject line of the email mentions talking points, Rhodes only addresses misinformation in a general sense.

Tapper condemned the leaker as having the agenda to make the White House look like they were protecting the State Department.

This is why we do not run with these stories when they first come out. Consistently over Obama’s first term, we found that when the facts come out later (as I pointed out in the new shiny ball IRS scandal story), it has turned out that the stories were being planted in the press. The information was wrong. There was an agenda afloat.

What is even worse for Republicans is that the real email expresses dismay at the uninformed spreading bullcrap. The only people screaming bullcrap about Benghazi were Republicans who sought to use it to win an election.

Another day, another conspiracy debunked. Now, when will the press stop falling for this crap? Note to the media, the next time a “Republican congressional aide” or unnamed source has a smoking gun OMG!!11!!! Nixon Bush scandal, you might want to find a back up source, and get the original documents before being Breitbarted by edited emails/videos/etc.

Will the media apologize to Obama and Clinton? Will the leaker be outed? Will an investigation be set up to find out who misled the public on such a serious matter? We await House Republicans investigating themselves to stop the misinformation leaks.



Update 7:44PM EST: Jonathan Karl, who wrote the original ABC story in which he claimed to have reviewed the actual emails, now admits that he did not read the actual emails, but rather was “quoting verbatim a source who reviewed the original documents and shared detailed notes.” As Media Matters notes, Karl’s original report read, “White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department.” The emails were not actually reviewed by ABC News.

Or maybe you read this,

Robert Gates on Benghazi: ‘There just wasn’t time’
By Max Fisher, Published: May 13, 2013 at 10:06 am

Former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who began his tenure under President George W. Bush in 2006 and retired in 2011, has never been one to mince words. Famously blunt and skeptical even as a senior CIA official during the Reagan administration, Gates has become, as is often the case with top intelligence and military officials in retirement, even blunter after leaving office.

Gates, appearing this weekend on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” discussed the ongoing controversy over the September 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. Critics have charged that the Obama administration could have pursued a more aggressive response that might have saved the lives of the four Americans killed in those attacks. But Gates pushed back on that idea, arguing that the most-discussed possible responses might appear viable in hindsight but were not so at the time. Here are Gates’s comments, as noted by Micah Zenko at the Council on Foreign Relations:






I only know what I have read in the media. I haven’t had any briefings or anything. And I think the one place where I might be able to say something useful has to do with some of the talk about the military response. And I listened to the testimony of both Secretary Panetta and General Dempsey. And frankly had I been in the job at the time I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were. We don’t have a ready force standing by in the Middle East. Despite all the turmoil that’s going on, with planes on strip alert, troops ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. And so getting somebody there in a timely way – would have been very difficult, if not impossible. And frankly, I’ve heard, “Well, why didn’t you just fly a fighter jet over and try and scare ‘em with the noise or something?” Well, given the number of surface to air missiles that have disappeared from Gaddafi’s arsenals, I would not have approved sending an aircraft, a single aircraft – over Benghazi under those circumstances.

With respect to sending in special forces or a small group of people to try and provide help, based on everything I have read, people really didn’t know what was going on in Benghazi contemporaneously. And to send some small number of special forces or other troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on on the ground, I think, would have been very dangerous. And personally, I would not have approved that because we just don’t it’s sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces. The one thing that our forces are noted for is planning and preparation before we send people in harm’s way. And there just wasn’t time to do that.”

Zenko, a skeptic of U.S. military involvement, also pointed out this telling passage from Gates’s 1996 memoir, “From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How they Won the Cold War.”


It was my experience over the years that one of the biggest misimpressions held by the public has been that our military is always straining at the leash, wanting to use force in any situation. The reality is just the opposite. In more than twenty years attending meetings in the Situation Room, my experience was that the biggest doves in Washington wear uniforms. Our military leaders have seen too many half-baked ideas for the use of military force advanced in the Situation Room by hairy-chested civilians who have never seen combat or fired a gun in anger.

Gates is hinting here at two things: both at a popular misunderstanding of how top military leaders think (if you’ve ever watched TV shows such as “24″ or “The West Wing,” you might perceive generals as the hawks in the room) and at the dynamic between military and civilian leaders. Just because military leaders believe one policy is preferable does not make it so. But it is revealing that those who are least familiar with the use of military force in complicated and difficult situations — say, an ongoing firefight in the middle of the night in a Middle Eastern city — seem to often hold far more confidence in the abilities of military tools than do people like Gates, who have more experience applying them.

This seems to be the pattern with people who have actually had to make these calls before. Rear Admiral Mullen came to the same conclusion in his assessment & review. Patreas stated that "sending anyone into a situation like that risk's a (Blackhawk Down) scenario" where your rescuers become trapped. Think you'd ever hear any of this from Beck? He's a side show crier who's seen to many movies. Benghazi is a manufactured scandal! That's been evident since last October. This has all been about who said/did what and when, so when they get an email chain from the White house of that exact exchange, Republicans release an edited version designed to make OB look bad. Did these nutsac's think the originals wouldn't come out?

[swordfish]

All I know and care about is that with a still high 7.5% unemployment rate (more like closer to 11% if you count those OFF unemployment) Florida, which already has the WORST unemployment program in the nation just pulled out the rug from under the long term unemployed and pretty much put about 100,000 Floridians in a VERY precarious situation... I have been to a few job interviews and they have in one way or another hinted at the fact that since I have been unemployed since May 2012, they have no interest in hiring me... They in fact rather hire people who are CURRENTLY employed... You following here?

The point is... The people making all these decisions don't have to choose between eating tonite, or using their last 20 bucks to put some gas in the tank in case they get a call for a job interview... All of them are financially secure, with most I am certain using their political position as leverage to get there. Not only did they basically cut me from 30 weeks of unemployment I had left to 3, but they turned around and used that money to "help" out businesses with 10% tax cut as well as fund new sports projects... The same businesses who will now take at as profit and will still continue to NOT hire new people, and hey I don't blame them, things look very bleak unless you have a trust fund.

At the end of the day, the rich will get richer and the poor poorer. We will never really know what is going on either. I take no sides, red or blue left or right, neither has our interest in mind... I considered going back to school, but I happen to have a friend who graduated from college a year ago and has yet to find anything!BTW I DONT WANT A CHECK I want a JOB.

/rant over

[crashmister]

Yeah, how many times have they voted to repeal OB care at a cost of how much and a possible passage into law probability of 0%. 55 million dollars spent by the fiscally conservative republicans.

Jetty the story started at CNN, they broke it. They are also the first ones to run Hillary's testimony before the congressional budget committee in 2011 when they, (Republicans in congress/Ryan budget) cut the S/D security budget by 128 million, and 331 million in 2012. She stated for the record the republican cut's to the state department security budget would be detrimental to countries national security interests abroad. My guess is she was talking about the state department here,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html

Here is the CNN link and there is a link to the original email as well at CNN.
http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/14 ... azi-leaks/

I said awhile back Jetty, this is starting to shape up as both sides have their "Crosses to bear" here with respect to who's responsible. EVERYBODY dropped the ball here including Chris Stevens. He knew the situation in Benghazi and he knew how dangerous that whole area was.
Pugs own part of the blame any way you look at it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html

Hillary should have done whatever it took to make sure her house had enough security.
Pugs should have at least left the security budget alone, not cut it. How do they get away with cutting 450 million over 2 years, we have an attack, and it all the fault of the people we won't support.

[swordfish]

Wisdom crash... The first rule of fight club is you dont cut the defense budget... You cut anything BUT the defense budget, especially in these times.

-swordfish

[crashmister]

That's kind of the point Sword, if state department got its budget from the military, this same group would have been fighting to maintain or raise it. But, because a dem appointed the SOS, and that same dem was president, not to mention the dem who's killed or captured more known terrorists in 4 years that his predecessor did in 8, they need to do everything to make his foreign policy look weak. Even if they have to edit white house emails to do it. This is more about Hillary and 2016. Party wise, their best candidates are double digits down from her in polls and they're overreacting. 3 1/2 years is a long time. Plus, their best shot right now is knock off the manufactured scandals and start working on the job's they have been promising since 2010. Think where unemployment would be if those 37 congressional votes to repeal OB care were job's bills instead.

Thing is, when a college student finds an error in the programing that makes up your whole economic philosophy, and you refuse to accept the evidence that your data was miscalculated based on an incorrect program value, and when corrected, proves the conclusions reached based on that same incorrect data were flat out wrong, but you keep pushing the defective philosophy, you're a cult!

Sunday, Apr 21, 2013 09:00 AM EDT
Meet the grad student who upended the GOP

The party has long relied on a single study to justify austerity measures. Then Thomas Herndon crunched the numbers
By Lynn Stuart Parramore

Topics: AlterNet, Carmen Reinhart, Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard, economy, Austerity Measures, thomas herndon, Politics News

Meet the grad student who upended the GOP (Credit: Shutterstock)


This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

The world of economics has just changed, and somebody has some ‘splaining to do! Please savor the following twisted tale of bad math, academic folly and pundit hubris.
AlterNet
Since 2010, the names of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have become famous in political and economic circles. These two Harvard economists wrote a paper, “Growth in the Time of Debt” that has been used by everyone from Paul Ryan to Olli Rehn of the European Commission to justify harmful austerity policies. The authors purported to show that once a country’s gross debt to GDP ratio crosses the threshold of 90 percent, economic growth slows dramatically. Debt, in other words, seemed very scary and bad.

Their historical data appeared impressive, as did their credentials. Policymakers and journalists cited the paper to convince the public that instead of focusing on the jobs crisis that was hampering recovery, we should instead focus on deficits. The deficit hawks jumped up and down with excitement.

But something didn’t smell right.

Progressive economists I knew were shocked at what appeared to be the shoddiness of the research and the absurdity of the conclusions. In their paper “A World Upside Down? Deficit Fantasies in the Great Recession,” Thomas Ferguson and Robert Johnson observed that R&R had truncated their sample of British data in a way that skewed their conclusions, eliminating more than a century of data in which British debt loads exploded but economic growth raced ahead (see pages 11–13). The always savvy Marshall Auerback called them out in a blog for New Deal 2.0, which I edited at the time, criticizing the relevance of the cases they had used to justify their conclusions.

But plenty of pundits took their suspect arguments as gospel. The editorial board of the Washington Post declared that “debt-to-GDP could keep rising — and stick dangerously near the 90 percent mark that economists regard as a threat to sustainable economic growth.” The economists cited were Reinhart and Rogoff, whom the WP passed off as speaking for the entire field. A new Washington consensus was born, and the public was hammered with the idea that cutting jobs, stripping away vital public services and letting infrastructure crumble was a good way to get the economy going. Most any ordinary person on the street would probably intuit that this made no sense, but there was this Academic Research By Esteemed Persons, so the argument was over.




Enter Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin of University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the heroes of this story. Herndon, a 28-year-old graduate student, tried to replicate the Reinhart-Rogoff results as part of a class excercise and couldn’t do it. He asked R&R to send their data spreadsheet, which had never been made public. This allowed him to see how the data was put together, and Herndon could not believe what he found. Looking at the data with his professors, Ash and Pollin, he found a whole host of problems, including selective exclusion of years of high debt and average growth, a problematic method of weighing countries, and this jaw-dropper: a coding error in the Excel spreadsheet that excludes high-debt and average-growth countries.

Herndon, Ash, and Pollin write: “A coding error in the RR working spreadsheet entirely excludes five countries, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, and Denmark, from the analysis. [Reinhart-Rogoff] averaged cells in lines 30 to 44 instead of lines 30 to 49 … This spreadsheet error … is responsible for a -0.3 percentage-point error in RR’s published average real GDP growth in the highest public debt/GDP category.”

A coding error! Reinhart and Rogoff had been so sloppy in their work that they had not bothered to check their own spreadsheet.

When you fix R&R’s problematic methodology and coding errors, you get a very different result that – guess what? – does not support austerity and shows that countries can most certainly cross the phony debt-to-GDP “threshold” and grow.

In their newly released paper, “Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff” Herndon, Ash and Pollin show that “when properly calculated, the average real GDP growth rate for countries carrying a public-debt-to-GDP ratio of over 90 percent is actually 2.2 percent, not -0:1 percent as published in Reinhart and Rogoff. That is, contrary to R&R, average GDP growth at public debt/GDP ratios over 90 percent is not dramatically different than when debt/GDP ratios are lower.”

Herndon, Ash, and Pollin have set off a firestorm, with those who long suspected that R&R’s work was crap shouting hallelujah and defenders scrambling to figure out a way to support deficit hysteria despite the body blow to their theory.

Bottom line: The foundation of the entire global push for austerity and debt reduction in the last several years has been based on a screwup in an Excel spreadsheet and poorly constructed data.

Reinhart and Rogoff are on the defensive. As Mathew O’Brien at The Atlantic put it, “this is the academic’s version of the dream where you’re naked in public.” They have screwed up royally. They have also done a great deal of damage to the world. As Paul Krugman has observed, their replies to their critics have thus far only compounded the confusion. They need to come clean, stop talking like their mistakes are minor, and own up to the enormity of their errors. And a big round of applause goes to the folks at U Mass Amherst for getting to the bottom of this insanity.

[swordfish]

I knew something smelled the wrong kind of fishy... I mean its simple math, me not working = no tax revenue... So get into debt to get people working and your revenue well grow ala 1930s depression. Hell, bring defense manufacturing back to the USA and let's make our boys the tools they need to keep on carrying the folly that has been this stupid war. Make made in USA a thing of beauty like it used to be! Excellent read krash, one of these days when I get back on my feet lunch sir is on me.

-swordfish