Mark Thoma:
Economist's View: Misplacing the Blame for Budget Problems: It's not just in Europe, the false narrative is thriving in the US as well. Bankers, with the help of their purse string controlled puppets in government, have been able to successfully blame our budget problems on social insurance and other government spending they oppose. According to this narrative, our budget problems have nothing to do with the Bush tax cuts, higher spending on the war, and the the loss of revenue and higher spending on social programs from the recession, it is Social Security and Medicare that are the problem. As for the recession itself, it wasn't financial executives in the private sector who made the bad decisions that caused our problems (as they made a mountain of money along the way), it was bad government housing policy that was somehow to blame. And, of course, to solve the problem we shouldn't use higher taxes to claw back any of those large, large gains those at the top made during the bubble years…
