The following is in response to our article, A Historical Perspective on the Slight Depression, which appeared last week:
Niall Ferguson’s is more of an economic illiterate than I thought. Nowhere did Ferguson note that the long-run fiscal imbalance of the US was and is due entirely and completely to the forecasted growth of Medicare/Medicaid expenditures. This forecast predates by years the “Great Recession.” If allowed to continue, the growth in health care expenditures will indeed lead to catastrophe inducing unsustainable levels of debt relative to GDP. These forecasted expenditures have nothing to do with any current expansion of the “welfare state,” as Ferguson claims, or anything initiated by the Obama administration. They have been baked in the fiscal cake for a long time. Ferguson should slow down and actually gather some useful facts.
Thomas F. Mullaney, Jr.
Mullaney, Keating & Wright, Inc.
West Hartford, CT
