Transcripts

"Two Ways to Play"-Kevin Depew of Minyanville

SUSIE GHARIB: Did soaring budget deficits save us from a second great depression? Tonight's "Two Ways to Play" has two takes on Uncle Sam's red ink. Here's and Minyanville's Kevin Depew.

KEVIN DEPEW, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, MINYANVILLE.COM: New budget projections show the U.S. facing a deficit of $9 trillion over the next 10n years, a catastrophic figure according to dooms sayers. The irony of course is that the deficit spending is what averted a full blown depression. In fact it was a lack of deficit spending that contributed to the severity of the great depression. It's true, $9 trillion is a large number, but the U.S. has a large economy and we're able to borrow money at a very low rate. The bottom line is government spending ended this crisis. So if there is a concern today, it's less an economic one than a political one. OK so, the conclusion is what, throwing taxpayers' money at the crisis ended it? Well, call me a simpleton but I never thought of economies as having a beginning, a middle or end so much as cycles and events. I agree with you on one thing. Over the paths two years, responsibility for our economic future has clearly moved from Wall Street to Washington. All we need to look at are car sales to see this dependency on government growing in real time. So while the crisis phase (ph) may be past, I'm not sure that what we have begun is a sustainable recovery so much as the beginning of an economic Vietnam.